SKKN AN INNOVATION IN APPLYING TASK – BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING APROACHES IN DEVELOPING SPEAKING COMPETENCE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

SKKN AN INNOVATION IN APPLYING TASK – BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING APROACHES IN DEVELOPING SPEAKING COMPETENCE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTSSKKN AN INNOVATION IN APPLYING TASK – BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING APROACHES IN DEVELOPING SPEAKING COMPETENCE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTSSKKN AN INNOVATION IN APPLYING TASK – BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING APROACHES IN DEVELOPING SPEAKING COMPETENCE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTSSKKN AN INNOVATION IN APPLYING TASK – BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING APROACHES IN DEVELOPING SPEAKING COMPETENCE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTSSKKN AN INNOVATION IN APPLYING TASK – BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING APROACHES IN DEVELOPING SPEAKING COMPETENCE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTSSKKN AN INNOVATION IN APPLYING TASK – BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING APROACHES IN DEVELOPING SPEAKING COMPETENCE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTSSKKN AN INNOVATION IN APPLYING TASK – BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING APROACHES IN DEVELOPING SPEAKING COMPETENCE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTSSKKN AN INNOVATION IN APPLYING TASK – BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING APROACHES IN DEVELOPING SPEAKING COMPETENCE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

S GIÁO D C VÀ O T O NG NAI

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AN INNOVATION IN APPLYING TASK BASED LANGUAGE

TEACHING APROACHES IN DEVELOPING SPEAKING COMPETENCE

FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Ng i th c hi n:

-BM 01-Bia SKKN

master of Le Hong Phong high school, the school managing board and all of the teachers in English group as well for their meaningful supports of spirit for the implement of the research and innovation

I am grateful to my two helpful colleagues who helped me with guiding

I am grateful to the teachers and students in

Last but not least, I am grateful my dearest students in two classes 11B2 and 11B5, who took part in the research enthusiastically

AN INNOVATION IN APPLYING TASK BASED LANGUAGE

COMPETENCE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

ABSTRACT

This eight week bottom up process innovation was to find out the effect

of using Task based language teaching (TBLT) in improving speaking competence of Le Hong Phong high school students, in Bien Hoa, Dong Nai province The innovation was implemented from October 3rd to November

26th , 2016 (see the appendix A) It was based on the problem solving model (Markee, 1997 p.66), in which the researcher working as an implementer and

an inside change agent used the comparisons of pre test and final test results between two classes 11B2 and 11B5, class room observation records, interviews and feedback questionnaires Two of the

acted as insides change agents and implementers And ninety two students

in two classes participated in the innovation (potential adopters or resisters)

I INTRODUCTION

English has been one of the compulsory subjects to secondary and high school students in Vietnam in the last fifteen years Students have to spend at least three classes a week to study English It is one of six subjects included in the GCSE examination which high school students have to pass to finish their

graduating from high school admit that they are not be able to communicate

in English even if using simple sentences Even the students who passed university entrance examination of English branch feel it difficult to contact

parents and teachers a lot, so there have been many attempts to enhance

he adoption of

skills However, teaching speaking and listening at high schools still does not meet the required aim This fact arouses us the view of applying Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT), an approach of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), in redesigning the tasks in the official textbooks with the hope to help students in Vietnamese context in general and in LE HONG PHONG high school in Dong Nai province in particular study English in communicative ways.

So as to get any accomplishment, the researcher, however, has to encounter many problems Firstly, The Grammar Translation Method (GTM), known as traditional method, has been applied in Vietnam for ages They have paid more attention to teaching grammar than teaching speaking or listening As the result of that, students may find it very difficult to talk with other people in the target language Moreover, Vietnamese educational system is deeply influenced by Confucianism (teacher centered) Students become more and more passive in class and dare not to ask teachers what they

new English series textbooks arewritten for teaching 4 skills: Reading, Speaking, Listening, and Writing, bothteachers and students feel hard to teach and study speaking and listening because of time limitation Thus, teachers sometimes neglect the speaking and listening sections to concentrate on grammar, reading so that their students can pass the examinations which only test their writing, grammar points and vocabulary memorable competences Thirdly, there are often over forty students in one class, it is also a problem in teaching by using communicative skills In addition, despite the comparatively high-level understanding of TBLT concepts, many teachers actually hesitate to adopt TBLT as an instructional method in classroom practice This may result from the fact that most of the teachers still use the traditional lecture-oriented methods, which they are accustomed to, and more than that, they have the psychological

pressure of facing some new disciplinary problems in using TBLT Then the main research questions arise:

1

speaking skill?

2 What

English?

II DEFINITIONS OF TERMS

Definitions of task: According to Nunan (1989),communicative task is

manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their

-based curriculum, then, specifies what a learner needs to do with the English language in terms of target tasks and organizes

Prabhu (1987,

outcome from given information through some process of thought, and

these definitions are somewhat different; they all emphasize the fact that

attention is focused on meaning rather than grammatical form

Task - based language Teaching framework: Jane Willis (1996)

designed TBLT framework consists three main phases: pre-task, task-cycle, and language focus At pre-task phase, teacher introduces topic and task, and students get exposures of linguistic chunks The task cycle phase can be subdivided into three task stages, including task stage, planning stage, and report stage This is considered the main task phase in which students use the target language the most to finish task requirements The last phase is language focus In this phase, teacher helps learners to improve linguistic

The Researcher: the researcher is the main person who conducted the

innovation of applying TBLT in teaching English in Le Hong Phong high school in Dong Nai province

: There were two colleagues of the researcher participating in the innovation One offered himself as an interviewer who interviewed the experimental group The other was an interviewer who interviewed the control one These two colleagues also

observers in classroom observation of this research

The Students: The students in the innovation are in grade 11 Most of

them have studied English, at least, for 6 years from grade 6 to grade 11

As can be seen, schools in Vietnamese educational system are divided into three groups: elementary school (from grade 1 to grade 5), secondary school (from grade 6 to grade 9) and high school (from grade 10 to grade 12)

To students at high school, English is a compulsory subject and it is taught three periods or more a week

III LITERATURE REVIEW

1 The literature review of Task based Language Teaching:

Task-based language teaching can be considered one particular

2004, p.1) In other words, it is a communicative approach to language teaching, using the successfu

primary organizing principle With the approach of the communicative language teaching approach in the early 1980s and much emphasis on

commonly use in the field of second language acquisition in terms of

developing process-oriented syllabi and designing communicative tasks to

-based view of language teaching, based on the constructivist theory of learning and communicative language teaching methodology, has evolved in response to some limitations

of the traditional PPP approach, represented by the procedure of presentation, practice and performance (Ellis, 2003, Long & Crookes, 1992) The P-P-P approach has a communicative focus; however, error correction is

an important part of this method Early models of Communicative Language Teaching often used functional units of organization and practiced to swap grammatical features Today, emphasis is on the unit of task rather than on the unit of function or practice (Richards & Renandya, 2002, p 94) A unit

of task refers to an activity where students use their own available language resources which in the end lead to a real outcome Examples of a unit of task can involve playing games or sharing and comparing experiences In a unit

of task the students are to take part in different processes within the task such as negation of meaning, paraphrasing and experimentation If students take part in these units of task the results lead to successful language development (p 94) Thus, it has the substantial implication that language learning is a developmental process promoting communication and social interaction rather than a product acquired by practicing language items and that learners learn the target language more effectively when they are naturally exposed to meaningful task-based activities Such a view of language teaching led to the development of various task-based approaches

in the eighties (Breen, 1987; Candlin & Murphy, 1987; Nunan, 1989 & Prabhu, 1987), and during the nineties has developed into a detailed practical framework for the communicative classroom in which learners perform task-based activities through cycles of pre-task preparation, task performance and post-task feedback through language focus (Skehan, 1996

& Willis, 1996) TBI views the learning process as a set of communicative

tasks that are directly linked to the curricular goals they serve (Brown, 1994).

2 The literature review of Innovation:

According to Markee (1997), Innovation and change were variously treated by writers Some considered them different processes, others thought these were synonymous He added that:

innovation is

a species of the genus change, in which change is an ongoing, almost unconscious process that involves reworking familiar elements into new relationships; innovation on the other hand, is a willed intervention, which results in the development of ideas, practices, or beliefs that are fundamentally new (Miles 1964; A Nicholls 1983) I accept that innovation in education should be a

is an orientating attempt to treat the problems in a particular context so that some better success could be made by applying a new method of teaching Although the innovation expects to be succeeded, it sometimes fails in applying In this case, the implementer needs to investigate why it does not work and what is needed to make

it success

3 Cultures and innovation:

Cultures play a very important role in innovation As Tudor (2001) noted that:

erful role in guiding their behaviours in the classroom as well as their evaluation of the actions and behaviours of other participants The second is that participants may not be explicitly aware of the principles on which they are operating Their culture of learning may thus constitute a powerful but potentially - hidden agenda, one

(Tudor, I., 2001 p 158)

Basing on this, the implementer needs to know about his students in the classroom and what is happening among them so that he can treat them with a

deeply influenced by Confucian culture, it means that teacher centered Students study in a quiet and passive environment, keeping silent and listening to their teacher This is, of course, not fit for a communicative language class Therefore, the implementer should do something to deal with the difference In short, In order

to get innovation, the implementer should both teach and find out the classroom at the same time

4 Successful or unsuccessful Innovation:

An innovation may be successful or unsuccessful, which depends on many factors Shamin (1996) stated that a successful or unsuccessful innovation is up to various factors impacting it at different stages and levels While Markee (1997)

potential adopters, characteristics and strategies used for managing planned changes in certain contexts Lee (2001) argued that how teachers as the end users

of an innovation consider its feasibility is an important factor in evaluating the final success or failure of that innovation Meanwhile, Tinguo (2002) commented that there is no approach of management which could give a perfect explanation for successful management of change It varies from individual to individual, so

we should take different approaches to cope with different problems

IV INNOVATION IMPLEMENTATIION

1 Roles of stakeholders:

Stakeholders are those who are involved in an innovation that takes up in a certain social system (Miles 1964 p.13 18) Each of them has their own point of view on education As Roger (1983), innovation in schools occurs in a finished organization And in considering about stakeholders of an innovation, Lambright and Flynn (1980) remarked that stakeholders are regarded as adopters or resisters, clients, implementers, suppliers and change agents All of them relate to each other

in an innovation

a Adopters:

Markee (1997 p.58) outlined five different types of adopters of an innovation based on the diffusion curve They are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards In the light of this, the adopters of this innovation can be seen that the researcher, two teachers who were invited to join the innovation, students in two 11 grade classes in Le Hong Phong high school.

b Resisters:

Resisters are those who opposite to adopting the ideas from the change agents and unwilling to change In this innovation, there were some students in these two classes who resisted the innovation

c Implementers and suppliers:

Implementers are someone that implements the innovation; in this case, they are the researcher and his two colleagues They also play roles of suppliers because they supplied the relevant materials

2 Model of Innovation:

This innovation is a bottom up process It is problem solving model because the idea of action research innovation came from the teachers who were known as inside change agents They were those who were responsible for the change The researcher and his two colleagues recognized the problem in communicative skills of their students and they wished to solve it

V METHODOLOGY:

1 Background:

a The school and the English group:

This research was carried out to investigate whether TBLT could help students at Le Hong Phong (LHP) high school improve their English

approach It was executed at LHP high school, a small school located Bien Hoa town, Dong Nai Province, South Vietnam There are ten teachers of English in the language group of this high school Seven of them graduated from college Two of them including the researcher had a post-graduate diploma in TESOL The last one took Master in TESOL already

b The syllabus design and its cultural context:

Generally, the textbooks used to teach in grade 11 consisted of 16 units It was designed by The Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training The duration time for each unit is 5 periods (one period lasts forty _ five minutes) Each unit has five parts: reading, listening, speaking, writing, and language focus; which are corresponded to 5 periods There are 3 prescribed English studying periods per week Some high schools can hold some more extra periods per week if necessary

In order to implement TBLT, the researcher had to have extra curricular communicative activities in eight weeks (2 extra periods a week) from the 3th of October to the 26thof November, 2016

c The rationale behind the innovation:

As mentioned above, The Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) reformed new English textbooks for high school students six years ago In these textbooks, students are asked to do tasks to improve all of the language skills However, the tasks in the textbooks might be considered structure and grammar -focused tasks In speaking tasks, for instant, they mainly focus on the development

of reading the dialogues in the textbook, practicing the given conversations, doing some substitution chains, etc They are not interesting and real - life tasks For these reasons, it seems that an innovation of extra curricular speaking activities should be applied Therefore, the researcher explained to students about the curricular and most of them agreed to join it

d Participants of the research:

These two classes were not randomly chosen, in fact, the researcher was in charge of teaching them at school This might cause problem with the validity and the reliability of the results of the research

Teachers:

Two teachers were invited to teach these two classes One teacher (Teacher A), who had a Master in TESOL granted by Victoria University, Australia, was in charge of class 11B2 (experimental group) The other (Teacher B), who had a post-graduate diploma in TESOL, was in charge of class 11B5 (control group) Teacher

A is 43 years old He has been teaching English at LHP high school for 6 years (he had taught English in other high school for 6 years before he came to teach at LHP) He is also an expert in applying TBLT for teaching speaking Teacher B is

35 years old He has been teaching English at LHP high school for 10 years However, he seldom uses TBLT in teaching

2 Stages of the innovation, finding and analyses:

2.1 Pilot study:

* The questionnaire for feedback after learning of students:

The researcher sent the questionnaire (see the appendix G) to three experienced speaking teachers who did not participate in the study to check for its validity Two

of them have been teachers of English at

Dong Nai for 12 years Only the items which were accepted by two of three teachers or by three of them were left in the questionnaire After their approval of the items, the researcher sent the questionnaire to ten students including task based

reliability

* Pretest and posttest topics:

The pretest and posttest were sent to the three mentioned-above teachers to check for the validity The researcher asked ten students including task - based students and non task -

to check for the reliability

* The classroom observational checklist:

In the same vein, the classroom observation checklist was sent to the three teachers as mentioned above before to check for the validity After that, the researcher used this classroom observation checklist to observe two periods, one for task based class and one for non task based class at

check for the reliability

* The interview questions for students:

The interview questions for students which consists of five questions to find

TBLT were sent to these three teachers for valid check and then they were used to

2.2 Procedures:

Pretest: After talking to ninety- two students in class 11B1 and class 11B12 students about the research, the researcher let them do the pretest in order to find out the speaking competence among students in these two classes, the gap in their knowledge How well they performed on their speaking before treated TBLT The results of the pre-test were compared with the results of the posttest to discover the various improvements among task based and non task based

students during the time of the research The researcher collected twelve representative students from each class Those who had noticeably different marks, four of the students got under 3 marks from their test The other four got under 5 marks and the remains reached over 5 marks These two twelve student groups were regarded as representatives of two classes Therefore, they were paid much attention to during the research Their pretest results were compared with the results of the posttest at the end of the research.

The pretest was marked by two examiners at the same time (the researcher and the teacher who was in charge of these classes) The test consisted two parts

In the first part, students selected a sheet of paper with a topic written on it They had to speak for two minutes on this topic They could not ask for another topic They were given one minute to write down their ideas A sheet of paper and a pen are provided Once they finished their two minutes, the examiners stopped students and then asked them some questions on what they had talked about The second part lasts a total of 3-4 minutes The students were marked on fluency, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and ideas (see the topics in Appendix B)

Posttest: After eight weeks of the research, students of these two classes did the post test The post test was carried out in the same process with the pretest In fact, the topics in the two tests were absolutely same

Finding and Analyses:

Table 1:

CLASS 11B2

FOUR STUDENTS GOT FROM 1 TO 3 MARKS AT THEIR

PRETEST

Table 2:

IN CLASS 11B5

FOUR STUDENTS GOT FROM 1 TO 3 MARKS AT THEIR

As can be observed from the charts above, most of the students got some progresses, some got much and other got little However, the students in class 11B2 (treated with TBLT) seemed to be a bit better than students in class 11B5 (Non - TBLT treated

speaking competence in some way

* Classroom observation:

As mentioned above, two teachers were invited to teach these two classes Teacher A taught class 11B2 with task - based approaches He redesigned the speaking tasks in grade 11 textbook as three stages of TBLT and helped students apply it Teacher B taught class 11B5, using the tasks in grade 11 textbook, with grammar translation method, such as, repeat the model dialogs, practice reading available conversations, substitution change The teacher commonly focused on grammar, sentence structures that appeared in the tasks in textbook

Findings and analyses:

The researcher randomly observed four out of sixteen periods in each class The researcher used classroom observation checklist (Appendix C) to collect data and found out Below are two trial periods, one at each class in detail:

Class 11B2:

In this class, the TBLT framework was applied in teaching speaking (Appendix E) Teacher A has redesigned the tasks with

his own materials Instead of using tasks in the textbook In the

pre-task 1, teacher explores the topic language and then giving

students some input about how to start a conversation with

strangers In the while-task, teacher asked students to go around,

greet other people, and ask them about their hobbies While

students were doing the task, teacher A went around, gave his

students a hand and took note the mistakes made by students as

well In the post task, he called some pairs to perform the task in

comments and corrected some of their mistakes

After that, they went to task 2 In order to begin, teacher helped students recall and activate the process of opening by explaining the situation (let them work as researchers) In the while-task, students worked in group of four or five First, every of them had to go around and interview their classmates with suggested questions in the interview paper (handout in Appendix E) Then students worked in their group, comparing the results they got from the interview and decide which kind of shops they were going to open During the task, teacher went around and helped students to solve some of their difficult problems or suggested some ideas And in the post task, teacher randomly chose two groups to report the plan to the whole class After their reports, teacher gave feedback about their work.

In this class, it could be seen that students were very interested in doing the tasks They could practice their speaking skill freely based on tasks Moreover, the tasks used were real-

constitutes 75% of the speaking class This proved that TBLT could help to enable students in using the target language in both classroom and real life context

Although there were many advantages in applying TBLT in teaching, we did have to face some problems The first one might be the noise In this kind of teaching, students often make noise when they go around the classroom and discuss in groups The second one was the classroom management In spite of the

on in each group due to large size class And one more problem was that the students who were talkative seemed to dominate the group or the pair works, which makes some shy or low ability students keep being silent during the speaking period

Class 11B5:

In this class, teacher B used the tasks in the textbook (see the teaching plan

in appendix D) There was still communication in class, but it was too little As the structure of the tasks in the textbooks, there were also three phases for each task: the pre-speaking, while- speaking and post-speaking In task 1, teacher asked