How to enhance speaking skills to students in grade 10th at thai phien high school in hai phong

thạc sỹ, luận văn, ngoại ngữ, tiếng anh, khóa luận, chuyên đề

1 Rationale of the study

As a consequence of the “open door” policy, which have been in effect since 1987, inVietnam, the study of English has been booming English is seen as a means of access toscientific and technological development, as the language for international communication,and as an instrument for receiving grants and aid For young people, English is an effectivetool for further study as well as better job opportunities English has therefore, been mostwidely taught from primary schools to universities in both private enterprises and stateoffices It is offered as a compulsory subject in the curriculum as well as the nationalsecondary and high school examinations

Nowadays, of all the language teaching approaches, it has been proved that thecommunicative language teaching has its predominant role This predominance over otherapproaches to language teaching has led to the increasingly important role of teachingspeaking skills Moreover, since Vietnam entered WTO, there has been a growingawareness of the importance of and need for spoken English However, teaching andlearning speaking skills to students in Vietnamese classrooms is at present still a matter ofmuch concern by language teachers due to current teaching materials, characteristics oflearners as well as teachers’ proficiency and classroom methodology

The first introduction of the new textbook “English 10” into teaching at TP High schoolhas marked real renovation in language teaching and learning from the traditional approach

- grammar translation method, which only concentrates on the ability of using grammarrules precisely, to communicative approach, which focuses on communication ability.Nonetheless, the teachers of English at Thai Phien High school find it difficult to teachspeaking successfully because of the class size, the students’ language level, andadditionally, students are not acquainted with CLT Moreover, a majority of the teacherswere trained under the strong influence of the Grammar-Translation method whichimpedes them from teaching speaking successfully even the new textbook follows thecommunicative approach

As a teacher of English at Thai Phien high school in Hai Phong I often receive similarquestions from many students For example, “I can understand grammar and sentencestructures well, but I feel embarrassed to talk in English” or “What should I do to speakEnglish well?” In my reality of teaching, there are many students who have perfect

knowledge of grammar which works wonderfully for reading and writing but can’t express

themselves to the teacher On the other hand, I often hear a lot of complaints from the

colleagues: “Students seem so quiet and lazy during speaking lessons It is very difficult tomake them participate in speaking activities”

Therefore, the idea of doing something useful for my colleagues and students has urged me

to conduct the research

Another reason why the study was carried out lies in my love for teaching speaking Bydoing the study, I can know more about the challenges in teaching and learning speakingskills so that I can find relevant techniques a long with activities to improve my teachingspeaking at Thai Phien High school

All of the above reasons and factors have inspired me to do the research on “How toenhance speaking skills to the students in Grade 10th at Thai Phien High school in HaiPhong” with the hope to make a little contribution to the quality of teaching and learningspeaking skills in Grade 10th at Thai Phien High school

2 Aims of the study

The major aims of the study are as follows:

 To investigate the situation of teaching and learning speaking in Grade 10th at ThaiPhien High school

 To identify the factors that have impact on the teaching and learning speakingskills in Grade 10th at Thai Phien High school

 To give some implications and as well as some appropriate activities for theimprovement of speaking skills to the students in Grade 10th at Thai Phien Highschool

3 Research questions

The research is carried out with an attempt to find out the answers to the followingresearch questions:

 What techniques have been used frequently to teach speaking skills to the students

in grade 10th at Thai Phien High school in Hai Phong?

 What are the obstacles the teachers and students in grade 10th have faced inteaching and learning speaking skills?

4 Scope of the study

This study is concerned with development of speaking skills to the students in Grade 10th atThai Phien High school The researcher is not planning on studying a larger population ofthe whole students at Thai Phien high school, just on the students in Grade 10th in order tofind out the problems experienced by these students and the teachers of English and thenoffer some implications and activities with the hope that teaching and learning speakingskills will be improved

5 Design of the study

Apart from acknowledgement, table of contents and appendices, this paper is structured inthree main parts namely, Introduction, Development and Conclusion

The first part “Introduction” presents the rationale, aims, research questions, scope of thestudy and also its design

The second part “Development” includes four chapters

Chapter 1 reviews the related literature which involves the general concepts as well as

characteristics of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), the description ofcommunicative activities and some discussions on nature of speaking in oralcommunication, its roles in language teaching and learning and characteristics of asuccessful speaking lesson

Chapter 2 is composed of two sections The first section presents the local situation in Thai

Phien High school with a brief description of the speaking learning conditions, students,teachers and textbook used for teaching English The second section- provides the research

methods that involve information about the subjects, data collection instruments and

procedures Also, the methods of data analysis are mentioned

Chapter 3 is devoted to a detailed description of data analysis and discussion of the

findings of the study

Chapter 4 offers the implications and suggestions of some activities for teaching and

learning speaking skills

The third part “Conclusion” presents the summary of the major findings of the study andrecommendations for further research

Chapter 1Literature review

In order to design useful techniques and activities for developing speaking skills tolearners, we, as teachers,e need insights about the relevant theoretical concepts In thischapter, first comes an overview of Communicative Language Teaching and then a briefpresentation of communicative activities as the foundation of the study In the last part

there will be some discussion on the nature of speaking and the role of speaking as well.

The characteristics of a successful speaking lesson are also manifested

1.1 An overview of Communicative Language Teaching

1.1.1 Definition of Communicative Language Teaching.

Having been shaped in the changes in the British language teaching tradition dating fromthe late 1960s, Communicative Language Teaching (CTL) marks the beginning of a majorinnovation within language teaching because of its superior principles which are widelyaccepted nowadays So far, several researchers have done work on CLT and each of themdeveloped his own ideas regarding CLT

As for Richards and Rodgers (1986) CLT means little more than an integration ofgrammatical and functional teaching Sharing the same view with Richards & Rodgers,Littlewood (1981:1) affirms that CLT “pays systematic attention to functional as well asstructural aspects of language”

For others, CLT means using procedures where learners work in pairs or groups employingavailable language resources in problem-solving tasks (Richards and Rodgers, 1986)Das (1984) goes further when he talks about the ‘What’ and the ‘How’ of CLT The

‘What’ refers to contents to be taught to learners The emphasis is more on the use oflanguage for communication of meaning than learning language structures, forms andvocabulary (Wilkins, 1976 and Widdowson, 1978) The ‘how’ of language teaching andlearning deal with the specific techniques and activities used to unconsciously ‘acquire’and consciously ‘learn’ a language through communication

To define CLT Nunan (1984:194) states:

CLT views language as a system for the expression of meaning Activities involve oral communication, carrying out meaning tasks and using language, which is meaningful to the learners Objectives reflect the needs of the learners including

functional skills as well as linguistics objectives The learner’s role is a negotiator and integrator The teacher’s role as a facilitator of the communication process

It is thought that the definition contains aspects that are common to many other definitions

In brief, from the opinions above about CLT we can find that most of the researchers havethe general idea that CLT emphasizes communication in a foreign language and improvesthe learners’ competence through communicative activities To make further sense of CLT,characteristics of CLT should also be referred to

1.1.2 Characteristics of Communicative Language Teaching

The theory of language in CLT shows that language is used for communication At thelevel of language theory, CLT has characteristics defined by Richards & Rodgers (2001) asfollows:

 Language is a system for the expression of meaning

 The primary function of language is to allow interaction and communication

 The structure of language reflects its functional and communicative uses

 The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and structuralfeatures, but categories of functional and communicative meaning as exemplified indiscourse

Therefore, the objective of language teaching is to develop “communicative competence”.Richards and Rodgers show that CLT aims to “make communicative competence the goal

of language teaching” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001: 155) Hymes (1972) defines

‘Communicative competence’ as “what a speaker needs to know to communicateeffectively in culturally significant settings” [Das, 1985 (Gumperz and Hymes, 1972:vii)]

In Hymes’ sense communicative competence includes not merely the linguistic forms ofthe language but also its social rules, the knowledge of when, how, and to whom it isappropriate to use these forms

Freeman claims that the most obvious characteristic of the CLT is that “almost everythingthat is done is done with a communicative intent” (1986:132) Students use the language agreat deal through communicative activities such as games, role-plays, and problem-solving tasks which are “often carried out …in small groups” (1986:132) The benefit of

pair and group work in teaching speaking is that the time allotted is maximized for eachstudent to learn to negotiate meaning

Another point to make about CLT is its use of authentic, from life materials Freeman, 1986), which is one of the good ways to create opportunities for the learners to

(Larsen-be exposed to the real language as this kind of materials contains the language used bynative speakers Examples of authentic materials in teaching speaking might includearticles from magazines or newspapers, stories, songs, video recordings

The most familiar feature of CLT is learner-centeredness Students in learner-centeredapproach are seen as being able to play more active and participatory role than intraditional approaches In other words, students are communicators; they actively interactwith each other in the classroom activities They are free to decide what and how they willsay and correction of errors may be absent or infrequent Furthermore, students are made tofeel secure and unthreatened This aims to encourage students to participate in the lesson.Accordingly, the teacher is a facilitator of the learner’s learning, a manager of classroomactivities and a co-communicator to engage in the activities with students

In short, CLT is identified with the following characteristics:

 It makes communicative competence the goal of teaching

 It develops procedures for the teaching of the four language skills thatacknowledge the interdependence of language and communication

 It considers learners and his communicative needs the centre of languageteaching process

These characteristics will be the principles for teachers to choose appropriate techniques aswell as activities in classroom to improve the student’s communicative competence Then,the concepts of communicative activities will be discussed in the next section

1.2 Communicative Activities

1.2.1 Definition of communicative activities

According to Hammer (1991), communicative activities are those that give students thedesire to communicate, involving them in a various use of the language Such activities arecrucially important in a language classroom since the students can do their best to use thelanguage individually, arriving at a degree of language autonomy In other words,communicative activities are those that can stimulate communicative competence in the

learners Therefore, it is the teacher’s responsibility to find out appropriate activities toencourage students to use the language In order to design these activities effectively, theteacher needs further understanding of them Accordingly, the following section willdiscuss the characteristics and types of communicative activities

1.2.2 Characteristics of communicative activities

Communicative activities are not limited to conversation They can be used in listening,speaking, reading, writing or an integration of two or more skills Communicativeactivities, according to Morrow (1981), must include three features: information gap,choice and feedback To be more specific Nolasco & Athur (1993) state thatcommunicative activities have following characteristics:

- They involve using language for a purpose

- They create a desire to communicate This means there must be some kinds of

“gap” which may be information, opinion, affect, or reason that students seek tobridge

- They encourage students to be creative and contribute their ideas

- They focus on the message and students concentrate on “what” they are sayingrather than “how” they are saying it

- The students work independently of the teacher

- The students determine what they want to write and say The activity is notdesigned to control what the student will

(Nolasco & Athur: 58)

In other words, communicative activities try to create authentic communication This isseen as contrary to monotonous drills which the traditional method heavily relied on andwhich carry little communicative functions Harmer (1991), who holds the same view,makes a distinction between non-communicative activities and communicative ones in thefollowing table:

Non-communicative activities Communicative activities

Also, he affirms that information gap is essential in communication activities because itprovides learners with a purpose and a desire to communicate A traditional classroomexchanges in which both the speaker and listener know the answer is not reallycommunicative

1.2.3 Types of communicative activities

In the light of the characteristics above different researchers suggests some types ofcommunicative activities

Littlewood (1981) distinguishes between functional communication activities and social interaction activities as major activity types in CLT

Functional communication activities include such tasks as learners comparing sets ofpictures and noting similarities and differences; working out a likely sequence of events in

a set of pictures; discovering missing features in a map or picture; following directions;and solving problems from shared clues The aim of these activities is that:

Learners should use the language they know in order to get meanings across as effectively as possible Success is measured primarily according to whether they cope with the communicative demands of the immediate situation.

(Littlewood, 1981:20)Social interaction activities include conversation and discussion sessions, dialogues androle plays, simulations, skits, improvisations, and debates These activities offer a variety

of social situations and relationships Success is measured not only in terms of thefunctional effectiveness of the language but also in terms of the social acceptability of theforms that are used (Littlewood, 1981)

Harmer (1991) sorts communicative activities into oral and written ones Oralcommunicative activities include seven categories: reaching a consensus, discussion,

No communicative desire

No communicative purpose

Form not content

One language item only

Teacher intervention

Materials control

A communicative desire

A communicative purposeContent not form

Variety of language

No teacher intervention

No materials control

relaying instructions, communication games, problem solving, talking about you,simulation and role-play Written communicative activities also comprise relayinginstructions, writing reports and advertisement, co-operative writing, exchanging lettersand writing journals

By taking part in communicative activities students can actually do things with languageand make language their own

1.2.4 Roles of communicative activities in language teaching and learning

Communicative activities really play an important part in language teaching and learning.Their role in language teaching and learning has been confirmed by many researchers.Richard & Rodgers (2001) hold that “communicative activities enable learners to attaincommunicative objectives of the curriculum and engage them in communication” Inaddition, Krashen (1982) assumes that language is best taught when it is being used totransmit messages, not when it is taught explicitly So using communicative activitiesprovides students with opportunities to convey messages in authentic communication.Actually, communicative activities are a vital part in language teaching and learningbecause they have a lot of advantages

Firstly, Communicative activities encourage motivation because they ensure thatcommunication is purposeful rather than artificial A variety of communicative activitiesarouses interest and provides learners with something meaningful to do and give themfreedom to choose the meaning they want to express They bring their backgrounds andexperiences to class and make their own decisions, creating more interest and excitementand thus facilitate and stimulate learning process

Secondly, Communicative activities offer opportunities to develop the practical skills oflistening, speaking, reading and writing as well as to acquire intercultural and interactionalcompetence in English It is believed that successful communication is an integratedaccomplishment Communicative activities can also help develop cognitive ability such asanalyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing information

In addition, through communicative activities the students are stimulated to respondactively and participate with their classmates Communicative activities are oftenconducted with pair work and group work in which students talk to many partners andinteract with them This brings learners a feeling of security because they feel easier to

discuss with their classmates than to speak in public or in front of their teacher Moreover,when working in group each student must be responsible for the common progress of thegroup All of these promote their cooperation as well as participation in learning process.Finally, Communicative activities such as working in groups, in pairs or singing etc create

a relatively safe environment for making mistakes a long with relaxed atmosphere, forthere is little error correction or distract attention Students are not judged or corrected.Moreover, students have a lot of fun when they learn with communicative activities Thisreduces their stress and anxiety about their performance

All in all, communication activities can boost proficiency and greatly improvecommunicative competence

1.3 An overview of speaking in language teaching and learning

1.3.1.The nature of speaking in oral communication

Pattison (1987) states that oral communication must include speaking and listening Itmeans that there exist at least two participants: speaker(s) and listener(s) in a conversation.When the speaker starts the massage, the listener decodes and responds to the message inturns Nunan (1999) suggests that in functional terms, most interactions can be divided into

interpersonal dialogues that promote social relationships and the second aims to convey factual information called transactional dialogues Nevertheless, Brown (1994: 237)

asserts that all these categories are really not separated or mutually exclusive Everydayconversations can contain elements of transactional dialogues, and vice versa

To be more specific, Bygate (1987) assumes that those conversations can be analyzed interms of routines which are conventional (and therefore predictable) ways of presenting

information He provides two kinds of routines: information routines and interactional ones (1987:23) Information routines may be described to involve two sub-routines: expository and evaluation The former includes description, narration, comparison,

instruction The latter consists of explanation, prediction, justification, preference and

decision Interactional routines are telephone conversations, interview conversations,

casual encounters, conversations at parties, lessons, radio or television interviews, whichare structured in characteristic ways For second language speakers, routines can be ofessential importance to facilitate comprehension “…by learning prefabricated set

conversational patterns, learners can ‘outperform’ their competence.” (Nunan ,1999:229).

Consequently, in learning speaking skills, students should be provided with opportunities

to explore the language use in both types of oral communication For example, they canstudy speech acts in a service encounter, turn-taking patterns in a conversation betweenfriends, opening and closing sequences in telephone conversation

In most conversations there is the content of discourse (Nunan, 1999) That means thatwith exactly the same utterance we can interpret it in different ways with differentaudience in different situations This leads to the fact that interlocutors should have a gooddeal of shared knowledge such as background information to support their understandings

of utterances Thus, the conversations between participants who are familiar with eachother are produced with more assumptions and implications By contrast, if the addressorand addressee don’t know each other well, references and meanings have to be made moreexplicit in order to get comprehension Therefore, we as teachers should expose learners todifferent kinds of discourse in different interactions This can be obtained throughauthentic materials for teaching speaking a long with numerous classroom activities tomaximize opportunities for students to participate in

1.3.2 The role of speaking in language teaching and learning

From the teaching point of view, language skills consist of four macro skills: listening,speaking, reading and writing Those four skills have a supportive relationship

Of all the four skills, speaking is of paramount importance, (Ur, 1996) It is fundamental tohuman communication Just think of all the different conversations we have in one day andcompare that with how much written communication we do in one day It can not bedenied that in our daily lives most of us speak more than we write Speaking whencompared with writing according to Wilkin (1979; cited in Nambiar 1985), is the essentialform of language and writing is ranked second after it and derived from it About the role

of speaking, Bygate (1987: vii) points out that “It is the vehicle of social solidarity, ofsocial ranking, of professional advancement and of business”

In language teaching and learning, speaking has an important part to play It is a mediumthrough which much language is learnt, and which is particularly useful for learning Theability to communicate in a second language clearly and efficiently contributes to thesuccess of the learner in school and success later in every phase of life (Kayi, 2006).Bygate (1987), who holds the same view, claims that our learners need to have ability to

speak confidently to carry their most basic transactions More than this, speaking isregarded as the first step to confirm who knows or does not know a language Ur (1996)indicated that people who know a language are referred to as “speakers” of that language

as if speaking included all other kinds of knowing Consequently, a lot of foreign languagelearners are primarily interested in learning to speak

Therefore, having dealt with the importance of oral skills in language teaching and learning

it is essential that language teachers should pay great attention to teaching speaking skills.Rather than leading students to pure memorization, the teacher should provide a richenvironment where students have real-life communication, authentic activities, andmeaningful tasks that promote oral language

1.3.3 Characteristics of a successful speaking lesson

As it has been seen, spoken language is the primary objective in language teaching Giving

a speaking lesson which promotes learners’ ability to express themselves through speech isimportant Therefore, the criteria that can be applied to design a successful Englishspeaking lesson should be taken into consideration

1.3.3.1 High learner’s talking time

Talking time is the first factor that can make a speaking lesson successfully It is obviousthat the amount of learning in a speaking lesson is correlated with the amount of talking bythe learner Therefore, the more time students engage with in the course of a lesson, themore language they can obtain Ur (1996) also considers the lesson time as a containerwhich should be filled with as much volume of language as possible So an effectivespeaking lesson is very likely to correlate highly with the learner’s talking time Learners

in class time should get as many speaking opportunities as possible in order that theirspeaking time should be maximined

1.3.3.2 High motivation

Various studies have found that motivation is strongly related to achievement in languagelearning in the way it decides learners’ success or failure As for Lightbrown & Spanda(1999), motivation can be defined in term of two factors: learners’ communicative needsand their attitudes towards the foreign language community If learners need to speak theforeign language, they will, therefore, be motivated to acquire proficiency in it Similarly,

if learners have favorable attitudes towards the speakers of the language, they will have the

desire to communicate or contact with them If learners are highly motivated, they will

willingly participate in classroom activities and volunteer to perform them They havedesire to share personal experience in relation to the topics as well as a need to achievetask objectives Hence, they invest a high level of effort to overcome difficulties so as tosucceed in what they set out to do They then, therefore, are eager to speak

1.3.3.3 Even participation

A good speaking lesson must also provide opportunities of speaking evenly to all studentswith different levels Both weaker students and more advanced ones should be providedwith opportunities for communicating The teacher needs give every learner the chance totalk at a level adequate to them from the simple to the relatively difficult The lesson is noteffective if classroom discussion only focuses on some participants who are talkative whileothers speak very little or not at all That means that every student should have a chance tospeak during the class time

1.3.3.4 An acceptable level of language

In order to help students gain success in speaking the topic chosen should be appropriatefor students so that they can use ideas from their own experience and knowledge to presentthe topic If the topic is completely unfamiliar to the student they will find it difficult toengage with the task the teacher gives them as they have little knowledge to speak about it.Besides, the level of the language needed for discussion (whether grammar or vocabulary)should be lower than that used in intensive language –learning activities in the same class

It should be easily recalled and produced by the learners, so that they can speak fluentlywith the minimum of hesitation It is a good idea to teach or review essential vocabularybefore the activity starts

In summary, in this chapter the theoretical basis for the study of the ways for developingspeaking skills has been reviewed The researcher has stressed the main points in CLT.Also, major points of communicative activities namely, definitions, characteristics as well

as types of communicative activities are provided The discussion of nature of speaking,the role of speaking in language teaching and learning and characteristics of a successfulspeaking lesson has set the background for the implications and recommendations of thestudy The detailed description of the methodology, the procedures and the results will bepresented in the next chapters

Chapter 2Methodology

This chapter is devoted to the discussion of two parts: research setting and researchmethodology In the first part, an overview of Thai Phien high school, the teachers ofEnglish, the students, the textbook, the current teaching and learning situations arementioned In the second part, there will be a description of the subjects and procedures forcarrying out the research as well as the method of data analysis

2.1 Research setting

2.1.1 An overview of Thai phien High school

Thai Phien High school is located in the center of Hai Phong seaport city Founded in

1960, Thai Phien is one of the oldest as well as biggest schools in Hai Phong At present,there are 48 classes with over 2000 students placed into three different grades: grade 10th,

11th and 12th The teaching staff composes of 120 teachers of 14 compulsory subjects, ofwhom one-third is young, creative and well trained whereas the others are experienced andenthusiastic In 2007, with the innovation in educational policy, Thai Phien is the onlyschool in Hai Phong city which has 100 percentages of High school graduated students

2.1.2 The teachers of English in Thai phien High school

There are thirteen teachers of English currently working in Thai Phien High school All ofthem are female ranking from 35 to 52 Among them, one third studied at Hanoi ForeignLanguage Teacher Training College Another one-third was former teachers of Russianwho graduated from the same college Over other third who were trained from in-servicetraining courses has experienced teaching for many years However, their communicationability as well as new teaching methods should be improved

Obviously, the age of the English teacher staff reveals the fact that all of them were trained

in the traditional method- the Grammar-translation one Few of them have taken retrainingcourses to improve their English and their teaching methods This constrains them fromteaching speaking effectively Nevertheless, most of them are severe, enthusiastic inworking Of the 13 teachers, there are two teachers who got M.A degree At the presenttime, each teacher has to teach fifteen periods divided into 5 classes per week excludingthe burden of marking examinations and time for a lot of different school work More thanthis, the teachers often have to cope with over 50 students in each class Apparently, the

teachers in Thai Phien High school have to deal with a heavy workload in order to fulfilltheir task

2.1.3 The students in Thai Phien High school

The majority of students in the study at Thai Phien high school are aged from 15 to 18.Most of them come from urban areas and they have learnt English since they were atprimary schools Therefore, their English proficiency is some how better than studentsfrom rural parts due to the availability of opportunities to attend part-time English coursesand chances to contact with English speaking people Among them, there are a largenumber of students who are really interested in learning English and want to develop theirability in using English By contrast, the other part of students is lowly motivated Theytend to regard English as less important than other subjects and they study English in order

to pass the examinations

2.1.4 The current situation of English teaching and learning in Thai Phien High school 2.1.4.1 The syllabus of teaching and learning

At Thai Phien High school, English is one of the compulsory subjects in the curriculumand it is the subject students have to pass at the national examination by the end of grade

12th to be qualified for the secondary school diploma The syllabus and the textbooks forEnglish including “English 10” “English 11”, “English 12” are prescribed by the Ministry

of Education and Training The syllabus is designed to bring students the followingobjectives:

After finishing high school, students are able to

 Acquire listening comprehension skill at a simple level of the topics they havelearnt

 Exchange information of English at a simple level about the situations relating tothe topics they have learnt

 Understand the main ideas of reading texts in the area of personal interests, socialissues, cultural issues, scientific and technical issues on the basis of the knowledgethey have learnt (accompanying with meaning deducing and dictionary consulting)

 Write a series of sentences about personal details, things and topics they arefamiliar with

 Write paragraphs (of about 100-150 words) of the topics they have learnt

English curriculum for grade 10th students is divided into two semesters with a total of 105periods, 3 periods per week Each period is 45 minutes long.

The textbook which is currently used for teaching and learning English for grade 10th atThai Phien high school is “English10”-“Tieng Anh 10” which was designed followingcommunicative approach The textbook consists of 12 topics corresponding with 12 units.There are 5 parts in each unit arranging as follows: reading, speaking, listening, writing

and language focus in which a variety of exercises and tasks was compiled for practice.

Also, there exist a consolidate unit after every 3 units The objective of these units is toexamine how well the students have achieved in the previous units

2.1.4.2 The teaching and learning English speaking skills

It has been accepted that students’ communicative ability is the proper aim for languageteaching This makes teaching and learning speaking skills seem to be an important part inany English course Like many other high schools in Vietnam, teaching and learningspeaking skills at Thai Phien High school is affected by some constraints such as largeclass size, students’ unfamiliarity with CLT, students’ low English proficiency, students’low participation in class time Normally, in a class at Thai Phien High school, there is anumber of students who have a good knowledge of English are eager and active during theclass while the majority of those with low English proficiency are very passive Manyteachers often complain that students are lazy, they rarely try to speak the target language

in class They only speak when being forced Most of the teachers have found group workand discussion difficult to carry out Besides, lack of training in teaching methods,especially CLT makes it difficult for the teachers to access to new approach, which makesthe teaching and learning speaking skills more challenging

proficiency They are studying in the second term The reason for the choice of grade 10th

is that they have just left primary school so they are not accustomed to new environment,new teachers and friends, new methods of teaching and learning at High school.Consequently, they might be shier, more anxious during English class periods than those ingrade 11th and 12th More over, the textbook that is currently used for them is “English 10”which has just been in use for the first time

The students were chosen randomly without any previous fixed criteria They wereexplained that their responses to the questionnaires were anonymous This encouraged thesubjects to answer the questions straightforwardly and genuinely

2.2.2 Data collection instrument

The instrument used to collect data was two questionnaires Questionnaires were chosenbecause they are one of the most popular instruments in collecting data It is quite easy toprepare and it can be given to large groups of subjects at the same time Hence, the datawill be more accurate In addition, the information collected is not so difficult to tabulateand analyze

Questionnaire No1 (see appendix 1) was designed for the teachers It consisted of 11questions that were classified into 4 categories Following is the frame of questionnaireNo1:

Table 1 Frame of questionnaire No 1

Teachers’ attitude towards teaching English speaking skills in the

textbook “10”

Q3; Q4Teachers’ difficulties in teaching English speaking skills Q5; Q6

Teachers’ techniques to encourage students to speak English Q7; Q8; Q9; Q10;

Q11

Questionnaire No 2 (see appendix 2) was designed for the students to get their opinionsabout learning speaking skills, to investigate the techniques and activities used in Englishlessons and identify the difficulties in learning speaking skills as well It was composed of

11 questions related to 4 categories as follows:

Table 2 Frame of questionnaire No 2

Students’ opinions about English speaking skills in the textbook

Factors discouraging students from speaking English in class Q5

Students’ ideas about their teachers’current techniques used for

teaching English speaking skills

Q6; Q7; Q8; Q9;Q10; Q11

2.2.3 Procedures

To gather data for the research two questionnaires were designed (one for teachers andone for students) The questionnaires were conducted to find out what techniques havebeen frequently used in teaching speaking skills at Thai Phien High school and identify theobstacles the teachers and students in grade 10th have dealt with in teaching and learning

speaking skills As the questionnaires were delivered to the subjects, the researcher askedthem to give the feedback if they met any troubles For example, if they did not understandany questions, they could ask the researcher The questionnaires were distributed to all thesubjects at the beginning of the first week of July 2007

2.2.4 Methods of data analysis

In the study, the way to gain data was in form of questionnaires The answers given by theteachers and students in response to the questionnaires were categorized by the researcher.Each of the categories was then computed and the data was selected statistically in theform of frequencies and percentages After this is the discussion on the results collectedfrom the data

Chapter 3Findings and discussion

The instrument and procedures, which were described in chapter 2 helped the researchergather the data In this chapter, the results derived from the analysis of the data collectedfrom the two questionnaires are displayed They are used to answer the two researchquestions:

1 What techniques have been used frequently to teach speaking skills to the students

in grade 10th at Thai Phien high school in Hai Phong?

2 What are the obstacles the teachers and students in grade 10th have faced inteaching and learning speaking skills?

3.1 Data analysis

3.1.1 Results from teachers’ survey questionnaire

The findings from the teacher questionnaire are categorized into 4 sub-sections as teachers’ideas about CLT, teachers’ attitude towards teaching English speaking skills in thetextbook “English 10”, teachers’ difficulties in teaching English speaking skills, andteachers’ techniques to encourage students to speak English, will be summarized in table

b doesn’t teach grammar 20%

d focuses on meaningful tasks rather than on language itself 40%

e creates a secure, non-threatening atmosphere in a classroom 60%

f is only used for teaching speaking skill, not for other skills 10%

As indicated in table 3, only 60 % of the teachers said that they were trained in CLT intraining courses and in English teaching work shops 20% admitted that they had neverreceived formal CLT training and the same number improved the knowledge of CLT byself-studying From these figures, it could be concluded that opportunities for the teachers

to be trained in CLT were insufficient This could be one of the factors which influencedtheir understanding of CLT and its application to teaching speaking skills

As regards the response to question 2 most of the teachers (80%) agreed that CLT was

“learner-centered” Some of the respondents (20%) assumed that CLT did not covergrammar A majority of the teachers (80%) believed that CLT focused on fluency ratherthan on accuracy More than half of them (60%) affirmed that CLT created a secure, non-threatening atmosphere in a classroom There was still a minority of the subjects to put itthat CLT only concentrates on speaking skill, not on other skills Only some of themthought that in CLT the role of the teacher was to facilitate students’ learning process.According to what the teachers thought of CLT it is drawn out that the teachers at ThaiPhien High school have basic knowledge of CLT However, their understanding of thisapproach is not sufficient, which is a hindrance to their adopting CLT in teaching speakingskills

3.1.1.2 Teachers’ attitude towards teaching English speaking skills in the textbook

“English 10”

Table 4

3 What are your opinions on the new English textbook for grade 10 th ?

a Good book (various topics, real situations, various activities,

b Normal book (various topics, but some of them aren’t appropriate,

Regarding the time location for speaking practice, more than half of the respondents (60%)claimed that the time for practicing speaking was enough while not a small number ofthem (40%) affirmed that the time was not enough The reason for the difference is thatmany teachers might not use class time reasonably They spent too much time explainingnew words or new structures or writing on the board Accordingly, they lacked time toorganize classroom activities

3.1.1.3 Teachers’ difficulties in teaching English speaking skills.

Table 5

5 The average number of students in your English class is: