difficulties in teaching toeic speaking skills to students at bac ha international university

During these two years, BHIU lecturers of TOEIC speaking have encountered some certain difficulties which can be classified into three categories: from students low level of English com

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-NGUYỄN THỊ YẾN

DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING TOEIC SPEAKING

SKILLS TO STUDENTS AT BAC HA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

sinh viên trường Đại học Quốc tế Bắc Hà)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-NGUYỄN THỊ YẾN

DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING TOEIC SPEAKING

SKILLS TO STUDENTS AT BAC HA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

sinh viên trường Đại học Quốc tế Bắc Hà)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Certificate of originality of study project report i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

List of abbreviations vii

Table of figures viii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 3

4 Significance of the study 3

5 Methodology 4

6 Organization of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 An overview of the TOEIC test 5

1.2 The TOEIC speaking test 6

1.3 Difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills 9

1.3.1 Difficulties from teachers 9

1.3.2 Difficulties from students 10

1.3.3 Difficulties from objective factors 13

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 15

2.1 The research context 15

2.1.1 Description of the English language teaching and learning at BHIU 15

2.1.2 Description of the students at BHIU 16

2.1.3 Description of the teachers at BHIU 17

2.2 Methods of the study 18

2.3 Research design 19

2.3.1 Sample and sampling 19

2.3.2 Research instruments 20

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2.3.3 Data collection 22

2.3.4 Data analysis 22

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 24

3.1 Difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking from teachers’ perspectives 24

3.1.1 General difficulties 24

3.1.2 Specific difficulties 26

3.2 Difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking from students’ perspectives 27

3.2.1 General difficulties 27

3.2.2 Specific difficulties 29

3.3 Difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking from both teachers’ and students’ perspectives 30

3.3.1 General difficulties 30

3.3.2 Specific difficulties 31

3.4 Solutions to the eight most common difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills 32

3.4.1 Students' low level of speaking competence 32

3.4.2 Students' passive learning style 33

3.4.3 Students' low motivation level 34

3.4.4 Big and multi-level class 36

3.4.5 Helping students to have inappropriate intonation and stress 37

3.4.6 Helping students to improve their listening competence 38

3.4.7 Helping students to recognize the relationship between the sender and receiver of the message 38

3.4.8 Helping students to support their answers with reasons, examples 40

PART C: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION 41

CHAPTER 1: IMPLICATIONS 41

CHAPTER 2: CONCLUSION 44

2.1 Summary of the findings 44

2.2 Limitations of the study 45

2.3 Suggestions for further studies 46

REFERENCES 47 APPENDICES I

Appendix A: Sample of a complete TOEIC speaking test I Appendix B: TOEIC speaking test scoring guide IV

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Appendix C: Questionnaire for students VIII Appendix D: Questionnaire for teachers XII Appendix E: Transcript of group interview XIV Appendix F: Sample of information gap activity XXVI Appendix G: Sample of graphic organizer XXVIII

BULATS The Business Language Testing System

BEC Business English Certificates

EFL English as a Foreign Language

BHIU Bac Ha International University

viii

TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills in general - from teachers’

perspectives 26 Figure 2: Difficulties in teaching six different parts of the TOEIC speaking test - from

teachers’ perspectives 28 Figure 4: Difficulties in teaching six different parts of the TOEIC speaking test - from

students’ perspectives 29 Figure 5: Difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills in general 31 Figure 6: Difficulties in teaching six different parts of the TOEIC speaking test 32

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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Nowadays, with the rapid pace of globalization, English as an international language

is playing a more and more important role in all walks of life As a result, the teaching of EFL has been paid more attention than ever before English has become

a compulsory subject in all education institutions from primary schools to universities To meet the demand of the society, a lot of reliable international English tests such as IELTS, TOEFL, GMAT,….have come into being It is, however, a fact that most of these tests serve the academic purpose That is to say they aim at providing learners with academic English for their further study, especially for overseas study Obviously, a very important sector of English learners has been left behind with very few tools to evaluate their English – English for the workplace Recently, BULATS and BEC have been introduced to ease the situation but they seem

not to fully satisfy most of the learners’ expectation

Businesses, government agencies and English-language learning programs around

the world have been using the TOEIC test as the standard for English-language

assessment in the workplace for more than 30 years Today, more than 10,000 organizations in 120 countries turn to the TOEIC test to make their hiring, placement and training decisions While TOEIC listening and reading tests have been widely used, TOEIC speaking and writing tests are considered fairly new to English-language learners despite their introduction in December 1996 The introduction of TOEIC speaking and writing test was to satisfy the increasing need

of the global workforce for employees who are capable of speaking and writing at a certain level In Vietnam, most of the colleges choose to focus on the traditional version of TOEIC test: TOEIC listening and reading Meanwhile some others start

to integrate TOEIC speaking and writing into their syllabus with a view to

providing students with an effective tool to apply for their future jobs

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Despite its recent appearance, TOEIC speaking has proved itself a reliable tool to evaluate students’ ability to communicate in the real workplace Bac Ha International University where I have been teaching for more than 2 years is one of the leading universities for this new trend of teaching TOEIC speaking to students Having been introduced in Bac Ha International University for 2 years, TOEIC speaking is believed to be very practical and useful for third year students who are going to graduate and struggle to find their positions in the workplace During these two years, BHIU lecturers of TOEIC speaking have encountered some certain difficulties which can be classified into three categories: from students ( low level of English competence, low motivation level….), from teachers ( large amount of talk time in class, inappropriate error correction techniques,….), from objective factors ( large and multi-level classes, lack of facilities….) Some other difficulties may also emerge from the nature and construction of the TOEIC exam itself which is quite different from speaking tests developed by Vietnamese educators

This study attempts to figure out the difficulties faced by BHIU lecturers when teaching TOEIC speaking as well as draw out some feasible solutions suggested by the lecturers to overcome these difficulties

2 Aims of the study

The primary goal of this thesis is to study the difficulties of lectures when teaching TOEIC speaking from both lecturers’ and students’ perspective in BHIU Some suggested solutions would also be given by the lecturers to overcome these difficulties These issues can be tackled through answering three questions:

1 From the perspective of lecturers, what are the difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking to students at Bac Ha International University?

2 From the perspective of students, what are the lecturers’ difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking at Bac Ha International University?

3 What are the lecturers’ suggestions to overcome these difficulties?

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3 Scope of the study

It is a fact that there are many different types of difficulties which lecturers may encounter when teaching TOEIC speaking However, this paper only focuses on the most common difficulties voted by lecturers and students in teaching TOEIC speaking in general and in teaching 6 parts of the TOEIC speaking in specific Some suggestions will also be made by the lecturers with a view to improving the teaching of TOEIC speaking in BHIU

Since this study is carried out to figure out BHIU lecturers’ difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking, the findings of this paper may not be necessarily generalized to lecturers at other universities

4 Significance of the study

The globalization of education has triggered a greater demand for good English speaking ability in the job market As a new and worldwide standard of English language learning, the TOEIC test has added speaking to its original format as a way to prove the importance of speaking in the real workplace Nevertheless, very few colleges take advantage of this new format and adapt it to their syllabus Also, even less research on the TOEIC test, especially on TOEIC speaking has been implemented All the previous research on TOEIC speaking focuses on proving the

reliability and validity of this test (“TOEIC Research” ).

The lecturers of TOEIC speaking have met some certain difficulties but seem to have no chance to raise their voice, to discuss with other colleagues and to figure out the best solutions to their problems This study is carried out to set a light on this important issue BHIU lecturers as well as students are expected to recognize lecturers’ difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking while the lecturers themselves can possibly gain some advice to overcome these difficulties from their colleagues All in all, the teaching of TOEIC speaking is expectedly, to some extent, improved

in BHIU in the next semesters

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5 Methodology

This study aims at investigating difficulties of BHIU lecturers in teaching TOEIC speaking through questionnaire and interview surveys The population of this study consisted of 12 lecturers who have been teaching TOEIC speaking at BHIU The students’ sample included 95 third year students of BHIU The lecturers took part in the questionnaires and seven of them attended the group interview By answering the questionnaire, they exposed their difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking while during the interview they were expected to give some solutions to these difficulties The students participated in the questionnaire survey to illustrate what they think are the lecturers’ difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking To achieve the goal of this study, the researcher designed the questionnaire into two main parts: difficulties

in teaching TOEIC speaking skills in general, difficulties in teaching 6 different parts of TOEIC speaking test The suggestions were collected through the group interview with seven full-time lecturers of English in BHIU

6 Organization of the study

The study consists of three parts Part A, Introduction, deals with rationale of the study,

aims of the study, scope of the study, significance of the study, methodology and the

organization of the study Part B, Development, is composed of three chapters Chapter One, Literature Review, reviews the TOEIC test and the difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills Chapter Two, Methodology, mentions the research context, methods of the study and research design Chapter Three, Findings and discussions, presents and

discusses findings of the difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking to third year students at

BHIU, and some solutions suggested by the lecturers The last part, Implications and

Conclusion, gives some implications from the study It also summarizes important

findings, suggests the limitations of the thesis as well as the areas for further studies

strengths typical of test-takers performing at various score levels” (“The TOEIC

Tests — the Global Standard for Assessing English Proficiency for Business”)

To achieve this primary goal, standardization of format and criteria for assessment are essential for both the examiners and the candidates The TOEIC test consists of

two main parts: The TOEIC test and TOEIC Bridge™

The TOEIC Bridge™ test is a paper-and-pencil test that measures a test taker's

ability to listen to and read everyday English It may be considered a bridge to link

up English language learners to the TOEIC test which has been widely used by companies, institutions as well as private test takers to measure the level of English language learners in the workplace

The TOEIC Listening and Reading test was developed about 30 years ago as a

measure of receptive language skills and has been widely accepted and used worldwide This test measures a non-native speaker’s listening and reading skills in

English as these skills are used in the workplace The TOEIC Listening and Reading

is a paper-based test which lasts for 2 hours (45 minutes for Listening section and

75 minutes for reading section) The total scores range from 10 to 990 for both sections

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Recognizing the increasing needs of the market place for employees with speaking and writing ability, ETS decided to launch the computer-based TOEIC Speaking and Writing tests in December 2006 They are valid assessments of English-language speaking and writing skills for business The speaking section is composed of 11 tasks and takes approximately 20 minutes to complete The writing section is composed of 8 tasks and takes approximately one hour to complete The score ranges from 0 to 200 for both sections

When the TOEIC Listening and Reading test is taken together with the TOEIC Speaking and Writing tests, TOEIC test scores provide an accurate measure of

proficiency in all four English language skills

1.2 The TOEIC speaking test

Recently, ETS has added TOEIC speaking and writing tests to the TOEIC product line in order to directly assess the ability to speak and write in English in a workplace setting This addition is in response to multinational corporations’ need for employees with high-level speaking and writing

As stated in TOEIC Speaking and Writing Examinee Handbook (2009), speaking is assessed by six different kinds of tasks requiring various types of responses, which are evaluated according to the following criteria: pronunciation, intonation and stress, grammar, vocabulary, cohesion and the contents’ relevance, and completeness Scores are reported on a scale of 0 to 200 and proficiency levels are reported In the first part (Question 1 and 2) of TOEIC speaking test, students are asked to read a text aloud The second part (Question 3) asks students to describe a picture Part 3 (Questions 4 to 6) requires students to listen to some questions and respond to them immediately In part 4 (Questions 7 to 9), students read a text, then respond to questions about the text Part 5 (Question 10) asks students to propose a

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solution to a problem Finally in part 6 (Question 11), students must express their

opinion toward an issue

Communicative competence in TOEIC speaking

The TOEIC speaking test was developed to align as closely as possible with theories of Communicative Competence (Powers et al, p 1) As a tool to evaluate communicative competence of language learners, TOEIC speaking test is designed

to cover five components of communicative competence Different scholars defined and classified communicative competence in different ways, but the description of Hedge (2000) may be considered the most elaborate Communicative competence includes 5 main components: linguistic competence, pragmatic competence, discourse competence, strategic competence and fluency

Linguistic competence means that learners can build a range of vocabulary in the

first place They are then required to pronounce the forms accurately, to use stress, rhythm and intonation to express meaning It is also necessary to for them to learn

the script and spelling rules Another requirement is accuracy in the grammatical

forms of language, in syntax and word formation

To achieve pragmatic competence, learners need to use stress and intonation to

express attitude and emotion The relationship between grammatical forms and functions are also supposed to be learnt It is essential to learn a scale of formality,

to understand and use emotive tone, to use the pragmatic rules of language and to select language forms appropriately to topics, listeners, etc…

Discourse competence shows how sentence elements are tied together It means the

ability to take longer turns, to use discourse makers and cohesive devices, as well as

to open and close conversations

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Strategic competence is the ability to use language strategies to compensate for gaps

in skills and knowledge In other words, learners are encouraged to take risks in both spoken and written language, and to use a range of communication strategies

Fluency is defined as “responding coherently within the turns of the conversation,

linking words and phrases, using intelligible pronunciation and appropriate intonation, and doing all of this undue hesitation” (p 261)

Hedge’s model of communicative competence shares some common features with other scholars’ models (Canale & Swain, 1980; Bachman, 1990) The main difference lies in the terms used for types of competence Instead of using the terms: linguistic competence, pragmatic competence, discourse competence, strategic

competence and fluency, these scholars use sociolinguistic competence, strategic

competence, discourse competence which includes cohesion and coherence, fluency and accuracy

A striking feature which should be noticed by teachers is the confliction between

fluency and accuracy Unlike fluency, accuracy is the ability to use the correct

words, grammatical structures and expressions to convey the intended meaning Students at lower levels of English proficiency cannot supposedly achieve both fluency and accuracy at the same time It is because students at these levels are still

on the way to learn new words and structures If they try to speak fluently, they may make some mistakes of accuracy like incorrect use of grammatical structures or inappropriate word choice Vice versa, if students try to speak slowly and carefully

to acquire accuracy, their fluency level will be certainly very low In other words, teachers should be aware of what extent of accuracy and fluency they expect students to get in different levels

In short, in order to help students get better results in TOEIC speaking tests, teachers should be aware of five components of communicative competence

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1.3 Difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills

The teaching of TOEIC speaking bears a lot of resemblance to that of speaking skill

in general Hence, lecturers of TOEIC speaking may encounter the same difficulties

as those of speaking skill

According to Larsen-Freeman’s view, difficulties in language teaching in general and difficulties in teaching speaking skill in particular may stem from teachers, students together with objective factors affecting the teaching process (Larsen-Freeman, 1986)

1.3.1 Difficulties from teachers

The teachers’ inappropriate pedagogical practices may, to some extents, cause troubles to their English teaching Two most popular difficulties may result from the teachers’ inability to adjust the amount of teacher talk in class and to use appropriate teachers’ error correction techniques

1.3.1.1 The amount of teacher talk

According to Nunan (1991), “Teacher talk is of crucial importance, not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the processes of acquisition It is important for the organization and management of the classroom because it is through language that teachers either succeed or fail in implementing their teaching plans In terms of acquisition, teacher talk is important because it is probably the major source of comprehensible target language input the learner is likely to receive.”

It is, however, proved in a lot of research that teachers tend to make up over 70% of the total talk in the classroom (Chaudron, 1988; Cook, 2000) Once teacher talk dominates the classroom, students will have less opportunity to further practice the language and hence tend to be unable to develop their language proficiency

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1.3.1.2 Teachers’ correction techniques

Students’ errors are crucial evidence to show how they acquire the language through certain strategies or procedures (Brown, 1994) Consequently, it turns to teachers’ duty to correct students’ errors to clarify students’ understanding of meaning and construction of the language

It is a controversial issue as to how correction should be expressed Some prefer nice, gentle and tactful correction while the others are in favor of assertive, encouraging and frank one Ur (2000) preferred the later as students may lose their confidence and feel disappointed if teachers correct their errors in an insensitive way

In short, teachers should be sensitive and tactful when giving corrections so that students recognize their errors comfortably without any negative feeling

1.3.2 Difficulties from students

Different scholars classified difficulties from students in different ways In his study, Tsui (1996) listed five factors to determine learners’ hesitancy to speak in class: “students’ fear of making mistakes and losing face in front of their peers, students’ low opinion of their own proficiency level, teachers’ intolerance of silence, uneven participation and incomprehensive input.”

Dwyer and Heller-Murphy (1996) carried out 6 interviews of Japanese students at the University of Edinburg and came to a conclusion that the reticence of students

in EFL/ESL classrooms resulted from fear of public failure, fear of making mistakes, lack of confidence, low English proficiency, and inability to keep up with native speakers, incompetence in the rules and norms of English conversation, disorientation, and etc

According to Burns and Joyce (1997), there are three main factors that possibly cause reluctance to learn a second language including cultural, linguistic and affective factors

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1.3.2.1 Cultural factors

Cultural factors are those that emerge from students’ prior learning experiences as well as from the expectations that are formed on their basis The American linguist Sapir (1921, pp 60-90) insisted that language and culture are dual entities Culture represents what a society thinks and does, while its language expresses and embodies the ideas of that society In other words, if a learner expects to speak a language well, he must appreciate the way it is used in social contexts According to Berns (1990), each language has its own rules of application as to when, how and to what degree a speaker may impart a given verbal behavior to one’s conversational partner Hence, it is challenging for non-native speakers to choose the appropriate

forms for different communicative situations

One of the most evident learning experiences is students’ learning style Keefe

(1979) defined learning style as “cognitive, affective and physiological traits that are relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with and respond to the learning environment.”

Willing (1987, as cited in Bailey 2005, pp 169-170) divided learners into four groups basing on their behaviors Concrete learners are the students who feel really interested in social aspects of language learning whereas analytical learners prefer working individually on reading and grammar The third type of learners is called communicative learners who are really willing to communicate with other speakers The last type, authority-oriented learners tend to be independent and prefer to work

in non-communicative classroom It is clear from Willing’s classification that the participation in oral activities of a class will be certainly at a low degree if most of the students belong to concrete and authority-oriented group

Ellis (1985, p.120) divided learners’ learning styles into two main types: extrovert and introvert Obviously, extrovert learners are more willing to interact with others

Hence, with regard to the difficulties caused by linguistic factors to students’ learning, they may be resulted from transferring the learners’ first language into the target language in terms of the sounds, rhythms, and stress patterns The poor knowledge of grammatical patterns or low awareness of cultural background and social conventions that are necessary for processing meaning in the target language are also important factors

1.3.2.3 Affective factors

Affective factors that hinder the use of spoken language may be a low motivation level, timidity or anxiety in class, negative social experiences and culture shock

Motivation is considered to be an important aspect which can determine the failure

or success in any learning situation (Melton, 1990) According to Dornyei (2001)

motivation consists of three sets of components: course-specific motivational

components, lecturer-specific motivational components and group-specific motivational components The first one involves the learners’ interest and needs to

syllabus, teaching materials, teaching methods and learning tasks The second concerns such factors as the lecturer’s personality, teaching method, modeling, task

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presentation and feedback The third one relates to the characteristics of the learners’ group cohesiveness, classroom goals being structured as cooperative, competitive or individualistic (Dornyei, 2001) To get students really motivated, lecturers need to ensure all the three sets of components which are, however, very difficult to satisfy Hence, in his book, Nunan (1999) pointed out some main reasons for students’ de-motivation Students’ de-motivation may result from lack

of success over time or lack of perception of progress It is possibly caused by teachers’ uninspired teaching or simply their boredom with the subjects Another reason is the lack of perceived relevance of materials Failing to get the goals of the instructional program or receive appropriate feedback also makes students de-motivated

Anxiety is “the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry

associated with an arousal of the autonomic nervous system” (Shank, & Terril, 1995) In Zhang’s research (2006), he identified some main causes of language anxiety including less proficient English, fear of making mistakes, large class size, unwillingness to take risks, low tolerance of ambiguity and competitiveness

Obviously, all mentioned studies agree on the popularity of difficulties from students in the EFL speaking classroom These difficulties (stemming from cultural, linguistic, and affective factors) need considering carefully so that students’ participation will be increased and teachers’ speaking lessons can be improved as a result

1.3.3 Difficulties from objective factors

A lot of recent studies have pointed out difficulties caused by large and multilevel

classes According to Le Phuoc Ky (Teacher’s Edition, 2002), the number of

students should be kept small to maximize the interaction between teachers and students In large classes, students have different learning styles, preferences and

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levels of English proficiency Hence, teachers cannot pay equal attention to all

students in a large class

Ur (1996, p 303) shared the same view that teachers of large classes face such difficulties in maintaining disciplines, choosing suitable materials and activating students, especially silent ones Consequently, only supposedly good students have chance to practice the language leaving behind other weaker ones

Whereas, Mathews-Aydinli and Van Horne (2006), in their minor study, insisted that multilevel classes made it difficult for teachers to design and organize speaking activities for learners Hess (2001) believed that a multilevel class can be uncooperative and the students tend to get bored easily in the classroom

In his research, Dalle and Thrush (2003) suggested “Even though it may be common, large classes challenge even well-trained and experienced teachers.” Another idea stated that “most college professors believe small classes to be superior to larger ones in many respects” (McKeachie, 1980) In other words, it is widely believed that the smaller the class size is, the better the teacher can teach and the students can learn

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Research context

2.1.1 Description of English language teaching and learning at Bac Ha International University

The study was conducted at BHIU – a five year old university Since it was founded, the teaching and studying of English have been always paid serious attention to and become one of the most outstanding features of BHIU in comparison with other private universities With 700 hours of English study, graduate students are supposed to be able to have communicative competence at intermediate level Students also have opportunities to study with foreign teachers during the first two years During the first year, students have time to revise all their previous English studies and develop their General English communicative competence in all four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing Moving on to the second year, students are supposed to improve their four basic skills for English for Business Communication The basic knowledge of Business is expected to set a good and firm foundation for students to study two terms of TOEIC

During the last two terms, TOEIC (reading, listening, speaking) are obligatory subjects in the syllabus TOEIC writing is, however, excluded as students have already studied English for Commercial Correspondence and there is no need for them to study over writing skill again The exclusion of TOEIC writing skill also results from the limited time for the last two terms That is to say instead of studying 10 periods or 8 periods per week like in the first two years, students have only 6 and 3 periods per week to study the TOEIC test in the fifth and sixth term respectively Each term lasts 14 weeks, hence in total the preparation for the TOEIC listening, reading, speaking tests is in 168 periods TOEIC speaking is spent 56 periods for the whole course

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The two course books used for TOEIC speaking are TOEIC Speaking by Lee yeong and TOEIC Speaking Flow by Kim Hyeonju – Lee Boyeong As mentioned earlier, the TOEIC speaking test is a computer-based test which needs preparing carefully before the exam In BHIU, the TOEIC test is not carried out according to the standard requirements Instead of speaking to a computer, students still go into the exam room and are interviewed by teachers For this issue, the reliability and validity of the TOEIC speaking test are not guaranteed Another problem which also arises from the new format of the TOEIC speaking test is the lack of reference materials Except for the two course books, the reference materials including both printed and online materials are very limited

Se-2.1.2 Description of the students at BHIU

BHIU students come from two faculties: Economics and Information and Technology Only Economics students must study TOEIC as an obligatory subject

A common feature of BHIU students is their family background Most of them come from first or middle-class families while their starting English level is very low, supposedly beginners or elementary After two years of studying General English for Communication and English for Business Communication, some students have improved their English level greatly to pre –intermediate or intermediate level of communicative competence However, for many others, despite having successfully struggled to pass the tests, their English level nearly stays the same

Also, instead of dividing students into different classes according to their English levels, from the second year, students are free to join any available classes which suit their study schedule For this reason, with a single class, there may be three levels of English communicative competence: elementary, pre-intermediate and intermediate

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Last but not least, students of TOEIC speaking class often have very low motivation level There may be different reasons for this issue, one of which is the assumption that what they need to apply for a good job is the TOEIC listening and reading, not speaking Their assumption is, to some extent, accurate since most of the companies still accept the result of TOEIC listening and reading tests

Without doubt, there is a lot to be done to improve student’s English speaking competence in general and TOEIC speaking skills in specific

2.1.3 Description of the lecturers at BHIU

Together with students, lecturers play a vital role in the second language acquisition BHIU lectures may be divided into two main categories The first one includes seven full-time lecturers who have been teaching TOEIC speaking skills The second one consists of the 13 visiting lecturers, three of who have experience in teaching TOEIC speaking skills

With regard to lecturers of TOEIC speaking, most of them are quite young, in the age range between 22 and 38 Being young and active, they try to apply different teaching methods to improve their lessons Nevertheless, these young lecturers are quite inexperienced in teaching preparation courses for the international tests like IELTS, TOEFL or TOEIC

In terms of qualifications, most of the lecturers have master degrees in English language teaching with an exception of two lecturers Some are also trained in Business Administration, the background of which is of great help to their teaching

of Business Communication as well as TOEIC

As teaching The TOEIC speaking test in BHIU, the lecturers have confronted a lot

of difficulties which will be made clear in the latter part of this study

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2.2 Methods of the study

According to Cohen and Manion (1985) (as cited in Nunan (1992)), “surveys are the most commonly used descriptive method in educational research” It is due to the fact that they are suitable to different studies from “large-scale” investigations to

“small-scale” ones carried out by a single researcher In particular, in survey research, the researchers do nothing to the subjects of research rather than collect data from them In other words, the data are gathered from people or things without altering anything (Nunan, (1992)) For this reason, this study made use of survey research which includes questionnaires and interviews

The questionnaires are used to collect quantitative data while the interviews should bring about qualitative one As stated by Bouma (1996, p.173), “both qualitative and quantitative approaches are essentials to the research process in social sciences.” As a means of quantitative research, questionnaires are believed to “offer ways of testing hypothesis that are widely accepted or standardized” (Burns, 1999, p.2 2) The data collected from questionnaires are more amenable to quantification” than discursive data like the observers’ journals, field notes, and etc Therefore, two questionnaires were designed for both lecturers and students of TOEIC speaking to have a cross-check over the real difficulties faced by lecturers in their teaching TOEIC speaking skills

Meanwhile, interviews in qualitative research are of great help in “capturing people’s opinion, feelings and practice, their experience… ” (Wisker, 2001, p 164) The interviews are conducted to follow up the questionnaires for in-depth and broader information (p 165) In this study, the group interview was implemented to chosen lecturers to find out feasible solutions to the most common difficulties in TOEIC speaking lessons

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2.3 Research design

2.3.1 Sample and sampling

To achieve the aim of the study, the survey questionnaires were carried out among two different groups of subjects The first one was administered to 12 lecturers of TOEIC speaking to figure out what confront them in teaching TOEIC speaking to BHIU students 11 female lecturers and 1 male lecturer are in the age range from 22

to 38 10 lecturers have master degrees of English teaching while there are two lecturers that have bachelor degrees of business administration, the knowledge of which is supposed to be of great help to the teaching of TOEIC test All of them have one or two year experience of teaching TOEIC speaking in BHIU

The second questionnaire was administered to 95 third year students who have been studying TOEIC speaking in BHIU These students in both sexes were randomly chosen from 4 classes of TOEIC with the total number of 198 students They are from

20 to 24 years old from two different faculties in BHIU They have finished 4 or 5 terms of English study and now moving on to their fifth and sixth terms of TOEIC study The data collection from BHIU e-learning websites enabled the researcher to have students’ personal information of gender and their English levels 73% of the students are female while the remaining 27% are male This figure clearly shows the dominance of female students over male students in BHIU The percentages of students at three levels of English proficiency: intermediate, pre-intermediate, and elementary are 9%, 53% and 38% respectively The researcher delivered the questionnaire to those students in order to investigate what they think are the common difficulties their lecturers have in teaching them TOEIC speaking skills

As an addition to the two questionnaires, a semi-structured group interview was conducted among 7full-time lecturers The researcher chose them as a matter of convenience since they are full-time lecturers of English Department in BHIU That

Instrument 1: Survey questionnaires

The first data collection instrument was two survey questionnaires (Appendix C: survey questionnaires for students, Appendix D: survey questionnaires for

lecturers), which helped to answer two first questions of the study 1) From the perspective of lecturers, what are the difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking to students at Bac Ha International University? 2) From the perspective of students, what are the lecturers’ difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking at Bac Ha International University?

The questionnaires for teachers and students have the same content The only difference falls into the language in which they are written While the questionnaire for lecturers is written in English that for students is translated into Vietnamese to ensure that students fully understand the meaning of the questions as well as the answer choices Each questionnaire consists of two scaled questions written in English to find out the difficulties lecturers encounter in teaching TOEIC speaking skill in general (Question 1) and in teaching six different parts of TOEIC speaking

in specific (Question 2) In the first question, nine common difficulties stemming from teachers (large amount of teacher talk in the classroom, inappropriate error correction techniques), from students (low level of speaking competence, passive learning style, low motivation level, anxiety) and from other objective factors (large and multi-level class, lack of facilities, lack of reference materials) are listed and the lecturers or students are asked to tick the appropriate scale of difficulties (extremely difficult, very difficult, difficult, slightly difficult, not difficult at all) In the second

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question, the same scale of difficulties is used but for different difficulties which lecturers confront in teaching six different parts of the TOEIC speaking test

Lecturers are supposed to have certain difficulties in helping their students to have

intelligible pronunciation; have appropriate intonation and stress; use suitable vocabulary and structure; answer the questions accurately, fully and relevantly; use effective cohesive devices to connect ideas; follow time limit; improve students’ listening competence to understand the questions in the recording; recognize the relationship between the sender and the receiver of the message; support their answer with details, reasons or examples

The surveyed subjects also had an opportunity to state further difficulties which also trouble lecturers’ TOEIC speaking teaching in “Others” session

In this study, the self-completion questionnaires with scaled questions were employed As its name suggests, the respondents will complete the questionnaire by themselves without the assistance of the interviewer In using the self-completion type, the researcher could seek better cooperation from the respondents as they might complete the questionnaire as being given sufficient time to think over the answers In two survey questionnaires above, the respondents were asked to answer and tick the appropriate scale of listed difficulties

Instrument 2: Interviews

The second research tool employed in this study was semi-structured group interview The pre-determined interview questions were to ask for teachers’ suggestions to solve the 8 most common difficulties which have been found out after the analysis of questionnaires During the interview, the researcher would add some other questions to make clear the responses of the interviewees These questions fell into two main categories: causes of a certain difficulty and examples

to clarify a solution These questions were open enough to allow the interviewees to express their thoughts, feelings, or opinions freely

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2.3.3 Data collection

In the first phase, questionnaires were administered to 95 third-year TOEIC students

at the end of the second semester of the academic year 2012 and 12 teachers of Department of Foreign Languages at BHIU Questionnaires for lecturers were sent

by email and they were expected to send them back to the researcher within a week The researcher sent an email with the attached file of the questionnaire to all 12 TOEIC speaking teachers

Meanwhile, the questionnaires for students were carried out via BHIU e-learning website The students were asked to answer the questionnaire before they could log

in their English course The deadline for this “signing in” process was also within one week before the new course started The first 95 complete responses to the questionnaires were chosen for analysis To minimize the reluctance to answer the questionnaire, an email to inform and ask for their help to do the questionnaire had been sent to them 2 days before the e-learning system was re-opened

After the collected data were analyzed, in the second phase, all the 7 full-time English lecturers were contacted for a group semi-structured interview with the researcher in their office where they felt, as expected, at ease and at the most convenient time for them The interview was in English and tape-recorded to free the interviewer to participate naturally in the discussion and to allow the content to

be reviewed in details At the beginning of the interview, the teachers were explained clearly, explicitly and unambiguously about the nature of the study During the interview, the researcher modified the questions and procedures according to the subjects’ responses The group interview lasted 25 minutes

2.3.4 Data analysis

Data analysis is not simply a single description of the collected data, but the process

by which the researcher interprets the data collected from the survey questionnaires and interviews The scheme and coding categories in this research were not pre-

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determined and imposed on the data, but resulted from a careful examination of the data As the two questions in the questionnaires were designed in Likert scale of difficulties, the data were first coded according to the five scales That is to say if a subject choose “Extremely difficult”, a number 5 will be added while number 4 is assigned to “Very difficult”, number 3 for “Difficult”, number 2 for “Slightly difficult” and number 1 for “Not difficult at all” The difficulties will then be ranked according to the means they get

The data collected from the questionnaires were analyzed in three different ways First of all, in order to find out the most common difficulties from students’ perspective, a table listing the number of students choosing different scales of difficulties with their means was presented The same procedure was done to find out the most common difficulties voted by teachers themselves Finally, two bar graphs of the most common difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills from both teachers and students’ perspective were used The last method also aimed at finding out the considerable difference between teachers and students with regard to their voting these difficulties

Whereas, the information from the interviews was transcribed and major themes were identified with a view to suggesting some solutions to the eight most common difficulties During the analysis process, the researcher eliminated laughter, pauses and unclear answers which are irrelevant to the purpose of the interview The interviewees were coded as A, B, C, D, E, F, G to protect their confidentiality The solutions to the most common difficulties found out in the previous part were drawn out on the basis of frequency or agreement level among interviewees

In short, the chapter has described in detail the setting of the study, the research methods, instruments and procedures used in this study Major findings will be presented and discussed in Chapter three

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CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 The difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills from teachers’ perspective

3.1.1 The general difficulties

Teachers have difficulties with…

Scales of difficulties (F)

Means

Extremely Difficult (x5)

Very Difficult (x4)

Difficult (x3)

Slightly Difficult (2)

Not Difficult

at all (x1) Adjusting the amount of teacher's talk 0 0 0 4 8 1.33 Using appropriate error correction techniques 0 0 0 3 9 1.25

Inappropriate course book and syllabus 1

F: The frequency of teachers choosing scales of difficulties

Figure 1: Difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills in general

(From teachers’ perspective)

It is clear from the chart that there is a significant difference among the means of 9 general difficulties from the perspective of teachers The difficulties caused by students’ low level of speaking competence, large and multi-level class, students’ low motivation level and students’ passive learning style are the most widely voted difficulties by teachers with comparatively high means of 3.42, 3.67, 3.75, 3.85 A surprisingly common feature of these four difficulties is that no teacher rated them

as “not difficult at all” The percentages of teachers regarding them as “extremely difficult and very difficult” are equal to or higher than 50%

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Following these difficulties are those from students’ anxiety, lack of reference materials and lack of facilities with the means of 2.08, 2.33 and 2.5 respectively More than one third of the teachers voted them as “not difficult at all”

It can also be seen from this graph that according to the teachers the difficulties stemming from themselves including their large amount of talk time in class, or their inappropriate error correction techniques are not really serious and do not trouble their teaching very much Their means being less than half of the top four chosen difficulties clearly prove this fact

There was only one teacher who suggested another difficulty of “inappropriate course book and syllabus” She herself rated it as “difficult” Her suggestion was, however, not supported by other teachers

In short, from the perspective of teachers, the difficulties they met in teaching TOEIC speaking skills in general mainly stem from students (3 difficulties) and partly from an objective factor (1 difficulty)

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3.1.2The specific difficulties

Teachers have difficulties in helping students to……

Scales of difficulties (F)

Means

Extremely Difficult (x5)

Very Difficult (x4)

Difficult (x3)

Slightly Difficult (x2)

Not Difficult

at all (x1)

Use suitable vocabulary and structures 0 2 2 6 2 2.33

Answer the questions accurately, fully and relevantly 1 2 2 4 3 2.5

Use effective cohesive devices to connect ideas 0 1 3 5 3 2.17

Improve students’ listening competence to understand the

questions in the recording 3 4 4 1 0 3.75

Recognize the relationship between the sender and the

receiver of the message 3 3 3 2 1 3.42

Support their answer with details, reasons or examples 3 3 4 1 1 3.5

F: The frequency of teachers choosing scales of difficulties

Figure 2: Difficulties teaching 6 different parts of TOEIC speaking test

(From teachers’ perspective)

As it comes to teaching 6 different parts of TOEIC speaking test, the specific

difficulties seem to be slightly more troublesome to teachers than the general ones

with the means ranging from 1.75 to 3.75

The teachers found it very difficult to help students to “improve students’ listening

competence to understand the questions in the recording”, to “support their answer

with details, reasons or examples”, to “recognize the relationship between the

sender and the receiver of the message” and to “have appropriate intonation and

stress” These most popular difficulties have the means higher than 3.25 In

particular, 6 or 7 teachers (50 or 58%) considered them as “extremely or very

difficult” There was no or only 1 teacher rating them as “not difficult at all”

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Just following these difficulties is the difficulty in helping students to have intelligible pronunciation with the mean of 3.25 This is comparatively easy to understand as pronunciation has a strong connection with intonation and stress Guiding students to follow time limit does not seem to trouble teachers very much

7 out of 12 teachers said that it is not really a difficulty

3.2 The difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills from students’ perspective

3.2.1 The general difficulties

Teachers have difficulties with…

Scales of difficulties (F)

Means

Extremely Difficult (x5)

Very Difficult (x4)

Difficult (x3)

Slightly Difficult (x2)

Not Difficult

at all (x1) Adjusting the amount of teacher's talk 9 11 12 29 34 2.28 Using appropriate error correction techniques 10 5 5 38 37 2.08

Lack of reference materials 18 17 10 15 35 2.66

F: The frequency of students choosing scales of difficulties

Figure 3: Difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills in general

(From students’ perspective)

As can be seen from the table, the students divided their teachers’ general difficulties into two groups The first one including “large and multi-level class”,

“students’ low motivation level”, “students’ passive learning style”, and “students’ low level of speaking competence” are those voted as “extremely or very difficult”

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by more than 50% of the students They have considerably high means of 3.76, 3.74, 3.65 and 3.54 respectively Particularly, 3 out of the 4 difficulties emerged from the students themselves It is, therefore, possibly inferred that the students were fully aware of the difficulties which they caused for their lecturers In particular, the “extremely difficult” scale of the later three difficulties making up 33.7, 32.6, and 31.6 per cent of students each apparently clarified that their lecturers nearly failed to get over these difficulties

The second group with the means from 2.08 to 2.66 seems to get different ratings from the students Such difficulties stemming from teachers and objective factors were mainly voted as “slightly or not difficult at all” 66% to 80% of students assumed that their lecturers did not have serious problems with adjusting their amount of talk in class or correcting students’ errors effectively More than half of the students stated that the difficulties causing by the lack of facilities and reference materials did not trouble their lecturers very much

There were five students mentioning that the total number of periods for TOEIC speaking is not enough As a result, teachers could not manage enough time for students to practice speaking in class Among these 5 students, one rated the difficulty of inadequate time as “very difficulty” and four rated it as “difficult” Six other students also complained about the final TOEIC speaking test format which is quite different from the real TOEIC speaking test Obviously, teachers instruct students to reply to a computer in class, but students must, in the end, reply to an interviewer in the final TOEIC speaking test This fact does, to some extent, reduce the reliability of the TOEIC speaking test

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3.2.2The specific difficulties

Teachers have difficulties in helping students to……

Scales of difficulties (F)

Means

Extremely Difficult (x5)

Very Difficult (x4)

Difficult (x3)

Slightly Difficult (x2)

Not Difficult

at all (x1) Have intelligible pronunciation 29 27 19 10 10 3.58

Use suitable vocabulary and structures 19 29 29 10 8 3.43

Answer the questions accurately, fully and relevantly 29 29 24 5 8 3.69 Use effective cohesive devices to connect ideas 10 19 29 19 18 2.83

Improve students’ listening competence to understand the

questions in the recording 30 23 31 10 1 3.75 Recognize the relationship between the sender and the

receiver of the message 38 29 17 3 8 3.91 Support their answer with details, reasons or examples 48 19 10 10 8 3.94

F: The frequency of students choosing scales of difficulties

Figure 4: Difficulties in teaching 6 parts of the TOEIC test

(From students’ perspective)

The most outstanding feature of this table is that 7 out of 9 difficulties have the means over 3.00 The two remaining difficulties account for the same mean of 2.83 which mean they are mainly voted as “difficult”

Also, the most common 7 difficulties are rated with more than 50% students as

“extremely or very difficult” This rating is, to some extent, quite corresponding to that of “students’ low level of speaking competence” in the previous question Among these 7 most common difficulties, 70.53 percent of students considered the difficulties in helping students to “recognize the relationship between the sender and the receiver of the message” and “support their answer with details, reasons or examples” to be the most challenging to their lecturers This fact is not surprising as these difficulties appear in teaching the last two parts-the most challenging parts of

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the TOEIC speaking test The matter of helping students to know how to support their answer with details, reasons or examples stands at the highest percentage of 50.53% as “extremely difficult” and needs solving as soon as possible

Another trend which should be noted in this table is less than 20% students voted these 7 difficulties as “not difficult at all” Conversely, the lecturers were said to meet slight or no difficulties in helping their students to follow the time limit or use cohesive devices to connect ideas by approximately 39% students each

3.3 The difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills from both teachers’ and students’ perspective

3.3.1 The general difficulties

Figure 5: Difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking in general

As can be seen from the bar graph, the four most common difficulties with the means of approximately 3.5 or higher voted by both teachers and students are students’ low level of speaking competence, students’ passive learning style, students’ low motivation level, and large and multi-level class

It is also quite clear from the graph that there is a considerable difference between the teachers and students with regard to their ratings over the most common

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difficulties faced by teachers in teaching TOEIC speaking in general 7 out of 9 difficulties have the students’ means higher than the teachers’ means This difference is especially obvious for the first two difficulties of teachers’ large amount of talk time and teachers’ inappropriate error correction techniques The students’ means for these two difficulties are just over 1.5 times higher than the teachers’ means The difficulties of students’ passive learning style and students’ low motivation level show a different trend with the teachers’ means a bit higher than the students’ means

3.3.2 The specific difficulties

Figure 6: Difficulties in teaching 6 parts of the TOEIC speaking test

The most striking feature which can be seen from this graph is a very high average mean among the 9 means voted by both teachers and students The 4 most rated difficulties are those in helping students to “improve students listening competence

to understand the questions in the recording”, to “have appropriate intonation and stress”, to “recognize the relationship between the sender and receiver of the message”, and to “support their answer with details, reasons and examples”

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The difference between teachers’ and students’ means for the 9 specific difficulties

is quite easy to notice in this graph 8 out of 9 difficulties have the students’ means higher than the teachers’ means The only difficulty with no difference is in helping students to improve students’ listening competence Both teachers and students rated this difficulty quite high with the mean of 3.75 each

To sum up, among the 21 difficulties listed, the 8 most common difficulties are summarized in the following table:

parts of TOEIC speaking

test (Teachers have

difficulties in helping

students to…)

Have appropriate intonation and stress Improve students’ listening competence to understand the questions in the recording Recognize the relationship between the sender and the receiver of the message

Support their answer with details, reasons or examples

It can also be possibly inferred from the graphs that the 8 difficulties seem to be more serious from students’ perspective than from teachers’ perspective

3.4 Solutions to the 8 most common difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills

3.4.1 Solutions to the difficulty of students’ low level of speaking competence

It is widely agreed among the 7 interviewed teachers that this difficulty is very popular among non English major students and that it may result from not good English education during students’ school years

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As for very weak students, they are advised to join the other lower-level classes in their free time so that they can have a chance to revise their knowledge and bridge the gap between them and their classmates rapidly Besides, students should be advised to find any opportunity inside and outside the classroom to speak English so that using English in communication will become one of their daily habits For instance, according to teacher D, these weak students should take advantage of BEC (Bac Ha English Club) to practice speaking English Joining this club can also help them to meet and ask for advice from senior students and hopefully they can make progress in their English speaking study These two ideas were approved by 5 participants

Last but not least, teacher A introduced to her students a free web-conference website (http://iimeeting.com/English/) in which they can hold free English club to practice their English She also added that teachers should guide the students carefully how to use the website and take part in some first meetings to make sure that students are capable of running the club meetings well All the other six lecturers were very interested in her introduction

3.4.2 Solutions to the difficulty of students’ passive learning style

Two teachers believed that this difficulty resulted from the education system Instead of being active and cooperative, students prefer keeping silent and noting down in the notebooks in the classroom According to teacher G, this is particularly true for female-dominated classes Teacher F agreed with teacher G and added that it’s very hard to brainwash the passive learning style of students

Teacher F did not, however, regard students’ passive learning style as a really serious problem She suggested giving positive comments on any students’ arguments to motivate students to speak, give comments and even argue with friends and the teacher in class Such comments as “Well-done, Good job, Excellent, Great, You’re absolutely right, Thank you very much for your great