skkn DIFFICULTY IN TEACHING SPEAKING IN VIETNAMESE HIGH SCHOOLS AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM DIFFICULTY IN TEACHING SPEAKING IN VIETNAMESE HIGH SCHOOLS AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS Người thực hiện: TRẦN THANH TRÚC Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu: Quản lý giáo dục ..... KINH

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI Đơn vị: Trường THPT TRẤN BIÊN Mã số:

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM DIFFICULTY IN TEACHING SPEAKING IN VIETNAMESE HIGH SCHOOLS AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS Người thực hiện: TRẦN THANH TRÚC Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu: Quản lý giáo dục 

Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn tiếng Anh 

Phương pháp giáo dục 

Lĩnh vực khác 

Có đính kèm:

Năm học 2012 - 2013

SƠ LƯỢC LÝ LỊCH KHOA HỌC

I THÔNG TIN CHUNG VỀ CÁ NHÂN:

1 Họ và tên: Trần Thanh Trúc

2 Ngày tháng năm sinh: 06 – 07 - 1985

3 Nam,nữ: Nữ

4 Địa chỉ: 14G, khu phố 6, phường Trung Dũng, Biên Hòa, Đồng Nai

5 Điện thoại: 0916772819

6 Chức vụ: Giáo viên

7 Đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT Trấn Biên – Biên Hòa – Đồng Nai.

II TRÌNH ĐỘ ĐÀO TẠO:

Học vị ( hoặc trình độ chuyên môn, nghiệp vụ ) cao nhất: Thạc sĩ

Năm nhận bằng: 2011 do Curtin University cấp

-Chuyên ngành đào tạo: Ngôn ngữ học ứng dụng & phương pháp giảng dạy tiếng Anh

III KINH NGHIỆM KHOA HỌC:

Lĩnh vực chuyên môn có kinh nghiệm: giảng dạy tiếng Anh

Số năm công tác: 6 năm

Các sáng kiến kinh nghiệm đã có trong 6 năm gần đây:

Using Games to teach English in Vietnamese High School (2011-2012)

SỞ GD & ĐT ĐỒNG NAI CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM

TRƯỜNG THPT TRẤN BIÊN Độc Lập - Tự Do - Hạnh Phúc

Biên hòa, ngày 27 tháng 05 năm 2013

PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT, ĐÁNH GIÁ SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

Năm học : 2012 – 2013

ĐỀ TÀI:

“DIFFICULTY IN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS IN VIETNAMESE

HIGH SCHOOLS AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS”

Họ và tên tác giả: Trần Thanh Trúc Đơn vị (tổ) Ngoại ngữ

Lĩnh vực:

Quản lý giáo dục  Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn: Tiếng Anh 

- Có giải Pháp cải tiến, đổi mới từ giải pháp đã có 

- Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao 

- Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng

- Hoàn toàn mới và có áp dụng tại đơn vị có hiệu quả cao 

- Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng

- Cung cấp được các luận cứ khoa học cho việc họach định dường lối chính sách:

- Đưa các giải pháp khuyến nghị có khả năng ứng dụng thực tiễn dễ thực hiện và dễ

đi vào cuộc sống:

- Đã được ứng dụng trong thực tế đạt hiệu quả hoặc có khả năng áp dụng đạt hiệu quả trong phạm vi rộng:

CHUYÊN MÔN

Nguyễn Thị Thanh Hồng

I Introduction 4

II Literature review 4

1 An overview on CLT 4

2 CLT in Asian schools 8

3 CLT in Vietnam & difficulties when using this approach in teaching speaking 9

III Objectives 13

IV Significance 13

V Methodology 13

VI Suggested solutions 13

VII Conclusion 14

REFERENCES 15

DIFFICULTY IN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS IN

VIETNAMESE HIGH SCHOOLS AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

I Introduction

In the late 1980s, Vietnamese government decided to carry out economic reforms, commonly known as ‘Doi Moi’ (Renovation) The aims of Doi Moi were to restructure the economy of Vietnam and to raise the living standards of the people From then on, people rushed to English language centers to get a certificate to the world workforce After a decade, in 1990s, English became a compulsory and standard subject in every high school’s curriculum in Vietnam A seven-year English program was widely applied in almost secondary schools to supply Vietnamese students with the knowledge of English to enter the global competitive workforce However at that time, English learning was emphasized on learning vocabulary and grammar Students become ‘dumb and deaf’ in English after graduating from High Schools It was not until 2003 that The Ministry of Education and Training introduced the new series of textbooks with the first publication for grade 6 Until now, a new seven-year English program has been applied with four skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing This new program aims to help students become perfect learners with the ability to listen and speak English Unluckily, when applying this new series, teachers have faced a lot of difficulties, especially with speaking skills What are their difficulties in teaching English?

II Literature review

1 An overview on CLT.

As Nunan (1991) wrote,” success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in a target language” Supporting this belief, Yu (2001:195)

quoted Li’s idea in 1984 in “In Defense of the Communicative Approach” Li stated that “language is communication & learning a language is learning how to communicate” Having the same idea with Li, Applegate (1975:271) says

“Knowledge of a second language should include more than just grammatical competence” If one says he knows a language, he has to know how to communicate with others in that language Knowing grammar & vocabulary is not enough Grammar & vocabulary are only means of communicating The most importance here is that students have to know how & when to say what to whom Or as Applegate (1975:271) says communication can only be effective when the student is also sensitive to the social & cultural aspects of language use & how these differ between his first & second language” Accordingly, in an article Canale & Swain (1980) gave the notion of communicative competence In their points of view, communicative competence is understood as “the underlying system of knowledge & skills required for communication” Canale (1983) states that a learner who is competent in communication has to obtain four competences: grammatical (linguistic) competence, sociolinguistics competence, discourse competence & strategic competence

Grammatical (linguistic) competence can be understood as the mastery of language codes, which is the features & rules of the language such as word formation, pronunciation, spelling & linguistic semantics Canale (1983) states that it

is related to the knowledge & skills that are used to express accurately the literal meaning of utterances

Acquiring grammatical competences does not make a learner be able to communicate He has to possess sociolinguistic competences Sociolinguistic competence is they way utterances are produced & understand appropriately is

different contexts under the influence of factors such as the states of participants, purposes of the interaction & the norms or conventions of interaction (Canale, 1983) In short, it is the ability “to choose appropriate speech varieties to use in a particular social situation” (Black, 38) Learners “must know when to talk & when to keep silent, how loud to talk & with what intonation, what constitutes a polite request

& what a refusal”, and so on (Applegate, 1975:271)

Another competence that learners have to obtain is discourse competence It

“concerns the mastery of how to combine grammatical forms & meanings to achieve

a unified spoken & written text in different genies” (Canale, 1983)

The last competence but not the least important one is strategic competence It

is “a more general ability to manage communication effectively, overcoming any mistakes or other difficulties in order to maintain a conversation, how to make a conversation interesting & attracting Being able to obtain these competences, learners can feel confident in communicating

In order to attain those competences, learners have to learn from schools & daily life That’s the reason why CLT approach (Communicative Language Teaching) was introduced Although this approach appeared 30 years ago, it wasn’t applied in language teaching until recently As first, there had been some suspicions about whether this method was better than traditional ones With the curriculum innovation teachers were required to apply CLT approach when teaching According

to Richards & Rogers (2001), the aim of CLT in the acquisition of communicative competence vice student engagement is meaningful use of language at discourse level To achieve this, the teacher facilitates communicative activities by managing the classroom environment, providing resources & acting as a communicator Richards & Rogers (2001:165) added “classroom activities are often designed to

focus on completing tasks that are mediated though language or involve negotiation

of information & information sharing” One of the methods in CLT in recent years is task-based language teaching, a necessary feature of which is learner-centeredness Mickan (179) in “ Teaching English language in Australia” edited by Colan also said,

“CLT is based on the view that we learn language by using it : we learn to speak by speaking & to write by writing” Compared with traditional methods, CLT outweigh good features

Fluency, appropriateness, spontaneity accuracy

Interaction, informality formality

(Hird, 1995)

If in traditional methods teacher is the center of the process of teaching, in CLT students are the center Teachers only play as facilitators, prompters, or providers Students are considered as “communicators” (Freeman,129) In other words, they are subjects of their learning “Learners are given opportunities to use language, to create & express their own meaning rather than simply repeating language models provided by others” (Klapper, 2006)

When applying CLT in teaching, there are a lot of requirements from teachers

& learners However, teachers play the key role in the success or failure of a planned innovation (here, using CLT in teaching) because they are the decision makers in the actual setting- the classroom (Nunan, 1989) What qualities that a teacher needs to make a lesson successful? When asking the question “What makes a good teacher?”, Harmer(1998,1) found out various answers: “ They should make their lesson

interesting so you don’t fall asleep in them”, “ A teacher must love their job” “ I like the teacher who has a lot of knowledge, not only of his knowledge”, so on Harmer (1998,3) drew the conclusion based on idea of Sally Brown & Donald McIntyre in a book of research called “ Making sense of Teaching “ that good teachers are ones that “care more about their students” learning than they do about their own teaching”

For years, methodologists have been arguing about the usefulness of coursebooks ( Harmer, 2007:181) Coursebooks have some real benefits Good coursebooks are carefully prepared to offer a coherent syllabus, satisfactory language control, motivating texts … They provide teachers under pressure with the assurance that even when they are forced to plan at the last moment, they will be using material that they can have confidence in Students like coursebooks because they can have the notion of what they are going to learn & they can look back for revision Coursebooks are useful equipment for inexperience teachers

2 CLT in Asian schools.

As Le & Barnard (2009:21) said that CLT approach has been introduced into school systems in many Asia countries in recent years but the results haven’t always been successful They give a lot of typical example Among those example, there are South Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong & Thailand which are very powerful nations They claimed that South Korea was one of the first Asia countries to apply CLT approach in its schools However, teachers had some misconceptions about this approach’s nature because of a lack of proper training opportunities A lot of reasons for the failure to apply CLT were given They are the low English proficiency of teachers & a lack of motivation on the part of the students, which lead to the difficulties for teachers

Having the same problem is Japan where CLT was also introduced This nation support for learning, the teachers went on avoiding implementing innovation (Sato, 2002:80) Another reality is that because in university entrance exams, there are no spoken tests but only written ones, is it a waste of time for students & teachers

to use communicative method in their teaching & learning? In other words, it is the testing system that forces teacher to apply “teach to test” principle, not “teach to communicative”

China is another nation that has some obstacles when introducing CLT as well Le & Barnard (2009:22), basing on ideas of some authors (Li, Liao, Rao), say that although CLT has been promoted by the government since 1992, there have been those who question its appropriacy for Chinese educational & cultural norms Le & Barnard ( 2009:22) also extracted Wang’s idea (2008) that “a wide gap between the principles of textbook designers, which emphasize the adoption of a learner-centered approach & the entire use of English in instruction, and the classroom reality, where teaching remains textbook-based, test-oriented & teacher-centred, with extensive use

of first language in instruction

Thailand is not a less typical example Nonkukhetkhong et al (2006:6-7) said although they are supposed using activities such as role play & information gap, brainstorming & problem-solving tasks, “grammar explanation, vocabulary explanation, translation & whole-class drills & repetition “were commonly observed

in their classes

All in all, in spite of knowing how to do with CLT, teachers still cannot find out the way to apply this approach on their teaching properly

3 CLT in Vietnam & difficulties when using this approach in teaching speaking.

According to Le & Barnard (2009:22) Vietnam introduced CLT into its school system rather later than its neighbours Before the curriculum innovation, the method applied in language teaching is traditional one, that is Grammar Translation method (GTM) The focus of this method is the mastery of written language, not spoken one

in CLT Two aspects of English are focus: grammar & vocabulary It is not wrong to say that Vietnam learners are the masters of English grammar However, recently, realizing the power of English, the government decided to reform the English-language curriculum in Vietnam which educates people who can communicate effectively in English

According to LE (2003:40), ‘English must be taught both as an integrative discourse and an empowering discourse through a curriculum that reflects the cultures, values & lives of students and provides them with knowledge of the cultural values & daily lives of the people with whom they are likely to interact”

Accordingly, the curriculum is renewed by the Ministry of Education & Training (MOET) & is applied for all grades & school types nation-wide from grade

6 to grade 12, with a weekly class time of 135 minutes, split into three lessons of 45 minutes each A set of textbooks was written by teachers & lectures nationwide Although a new textbook was introduced in 2002 for Grade 6, the new curriculum was not approved & institutionalized until 2006 (Le & Barnard, 2009:23) The textbook is theme-based & skill-based with the adoption of the “two currently popular teaching approach: the learner-centred approach & the communicative approach A focus is on task-based teaching as the leading methodology” (Hoang et

al, 2006:12) Hoang et al (2006) said “ learners are responsible for their learning & cooperatively”