ENHANCING STUDENTS PARTICIPATION IN SPEAKING LESSONS THROUGH ADAPTING SOME SPEAKING ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH 10 AT TINH GIA

When teaching English 10, 11, 12 at Tinh Gia 2 high school, I find that not all activities or tasks in the textbooks are suitable to the different teaching and learning contexts of diffe

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Although the English 10,11,12 textbooks to school curriculum have shown a great deal of improvement as compared with the old series of grammar-based, it seems that not all activities or tasks in the books are suitable to the different teaching and learning contexts of different localities within Vietnam

When teaching English 10, 11, 12 at Tinh Gia 2 high school, I find that not all activities or tasks in the textbooks are suitable to the different teaching and learning contexts of different localities within Vietnam, especially there are some problems with some activities in the textbook Some are too difficult for students, some are not real communicative, some are too long All these reasons greatly contribute to the de-motivation of students from participating in the lessons at Tinh Gia 2 high school In this case, it is necessary for teachers to adapt the content of the core books to make each activity and unit more suitable and interesting for learners The above mentioned reasons have inspired me to conduct a research titled

“ENHANCING STUDENTS' PARTICIPATION IN SPEAKING LESSONS THROUGH ADAPTING SOME SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

IN ENGLISH 10 AT TINH GIA 2 HIGH SCHOOL"

2 Aims of the research

• To investigate the reasons why teachers at Tinh Gia 2 high school should adapt some speaking activities in Tieng Anh 10 from both teachers and students’ viewpoints

• To determine the effect of the adapted activities in inducing students’ participation in speaking lessons Basing on the findings, some implications will finally be proposed by the writer

3 Scope of the research

Adapting some speaking activities in Tieng Anh 10 is focused on and tested in classes at Tinh Gia 2 high school As the result, the samples of the research were restricted 87 students at 10 form at Tinh Gia 2 high school

4 Methods of the research

This research adopts both quantitative and qualitative approaches to identify the reasons why teachers should adapt some activities in Tieng Anh

10 to increase students’ participation at Tinh Gia 2 high school

Data were collected by means of textbook analysis, experiment and observations

PART B : MAIN CONTENTS

1 An overview of adaptation

1.1 What is adaptation?

There are several definitions of adaptations by different scholars: Madsen

and Bowen (1978: ix) claimed adaptation is an action of employing “one or more of a number of techniques: supplementing, expanding, personalizing, simplifying, modernizing, localizing, or modifying cultural/ situational content” Tomlinson (1998b: xi) refers to “reducing, adding, omitting, modifying and supplementing”

1.2 The purpose of adaptation

1 to make the material more suitable for the circumstances or as Mc Donough and Shaw (1993:85) put it: “to maximize the appropriacy of teaching materials in context, by changing some of the internal characteristics of a coursebook to better suit our particular circumstances”

2 to compensate for any intrinsic deficiencies in the materials, such as linguistic inaccuracies, out-of-datedness, lack of authenticity (Madsen and Bowen 1978) or lack of variety

1.3 Techniques for adaptation

• Adding

• Deleting: subtracting and abridging

• Simplifying

• Reordering

• Replacing materials

1.4 Levels of adaptation

Textbook adaptation can be done at three levels: The first level is

macro adaptation The second level of adaptation is adapting a unit The third level is adaptation of specific activities in a unit

2 Research methodology

2.1 Research setting

2.1.1 The setting of the research

The research was conducted at Tinh Gia 2 high school The school has

36 classes with over 76 teachers of all subjects Currently there are 8 teachers

of English and 1458 students ranged from grade 10 to grade 12

Although most students are aware of the importance of learning, English is not paid much attention by most of the students in school Few students choose English as a subject to take Group A1, D exam Teaching English, especially teaching English speaking has met some difficulties The first is the large size classes There are about 44 students in each class It is difficult for teachers to set up communicative activities, monitor class and give feedback The second is that most students are not familiar with teaching

in English They cannot understand lessons if teachers speak English all the time

Normally, students have three or four periods of studying English every week It is a limited time for students to practice and develop skills as well as enrich their vocabulary and structure capacity Moreover, English is hardly used to talk outside the classroom All these factors have great effect on the students’ results in learning English especially in learning speaking

2.1.2 Speaking materials

For speaking skill, its aim is to develop students’ speaking competence beginning with a range of the specific information to a complete theme A speaking lesson often consists of 3-4 tasks The first task provide learners with language input and help learners develop language specific functions such as expressing opinions, agreements and disagreements, soon The next tasks (task 3 or task 4) require students to connect the first two tasks, add

some more information and change it into a complete topic, then talk out with

or without the guide of the teacher

The textbook also provides students with the language background relating to habit, custom, culture etc that is easy and helpful for students to practise The book has shown a great deal of improvement as compared with the old book of grammar-based textbook; however, it also bears several limitations For example, many of their speaking activities are found non-communicative

2.1.3 Research design

This research was a quasi-experimental study, using observations

“before” and “at the end” of the experiment, questionnaires for students

For this study, two classes of 87 10th grade students at Tinh Gia 2 high school were asked to participate in this experiment One class was employed

as an experimental group The other was employed as a control group Each class consisted of 43 students The researcher taught each group 3 lessons using the current textbook Tieng Anh 10 The teacher instructed the control group in the usual fashion The same lessons were taught to the experimental group with adapted activities

After the experiment, the degrees of participation of the two groups were compared and then some conclusions were drawn out about the relationship between the use of the adapted speaking activities and the level of the students’ participation in the speaking lessons

2.1.4 Participants

The participants in this research were 87 10th grade students from two classes: 10A5 and 10A9 at Tinh Gia2 high school All students must attend 3 English classes a week The control group, group 10A9 included 44 students with 37 student girls and 7 student boys while the experimental group, group 10A5 had 43 students with 29 females and 14 males The two groups seemed

to have a relatively similar level of proficiency in English as determined by

their previous term exam on English grammar, reading and writing In the researcher’ observation, the levels of participation of the two group in learning English in general and in learning speaking in particular were relatively equal This initial assumption was later justified by the pre-activity observation

2.1.5 Data collection instruments

Classroom observations

Before the experiment

The three other English teachers observed the two classes in 3 speaking periods to be aware of the degrees of the students’ participation before the experiment The degrees of participation were measured in term of their talking time The before experiment classroom observations are vitally important The result decided whether we would have the following research

If the present level of participation was unsatisfactory, we would have to find out the way to improve their involvement The data collected from the before experiment classroom observations would be used to compare with the degrees of participation of the control group and experimental group before the interventions

2.1.6 Data collection procedure

First, the three other English teachers observed the two classes in three lessons to know the degrees of students’ participation before the experiment

After collecting information from the observations, the researcher taught two groups the three same lessons For the control group the three lessons were conducted using intact activities in the textbook For the experimental group, adapted activities were applied During the treatment, the three other English teachers observed and measured the talking time in both groups to get the data for the research

3 Results

3.1 Results from before-experiment-observations

Table 1: STT and TTT in control and experimental group before the

experiment.

Control group (10A9) Experimental group (10A5)

TTT: Teacher talking time; STT: Student talking time

From the all four lessons, it can be seen clearly that the level of participation in classroom speaking activities of two classes was almost the same and quite low Students talking time made up approximately nearly one third of the total time in each class

In conclusion, the students’ participation in classroom speaking activities was very poor So it is urgent that teachers find out teaching techniques to increase students’ participation However, in order to have suitable teaching techniques we must understand the reasons of the students’ low involvement

3.2 Results from the end of experiment observations

3.2.1 Observations in control group

There was no change in the teacher’ teaching, all original activities in Tieng Anh 10 were applied as usual As a result, the amount of students talking time and teacher talking time was almost the same as that of the observations before the experiment

3.2.2 Observations in experimental group

Adaptation

• Adapted lesson: Unit 14: THE WORLD CUP: Part B-Speaking:

• Adapted activity: Task 2 (Tieng Anh 10, page 145: 146)

• Time: This adaptation was delivered on March 13th, 2018 in class 10A5

at Tinh Gia 2 high school

• Reasons for adaptation:

 The writer of this paper finds that two activities in Unit 14- part B- speaking aren’t real communicative activities Task 2 was supposed to

be an information-gap activity but there is no gap in this activity at all Task 2 looked like a role-play activity, however, in fact, all students have the same information What they have to do is to make sentences using the provided information None of them provide a chance for genuine exchange of information or opinions In these two activities, students listen to one another talking about things they already know Students possess the same information Thus there is no reason for asking the questions

• Technique of adaptation: modifying

 Activity (Task 2- page 146):

This activity was redesigned to be an information-gap one The teacher prepared some pairs of cards and asked students to work in pairs to find out the missing information about the World Cup:

Set 1:

Card 1A:

Runner-up Czechoslovakia Hungary Brazil Hungary

Card 1B:

Host country

Winner

Score

Runner-up

Set 2:

Card 2A:

Host

country

Germany

Italy

Card 2B:

Host

country

Winner

Score

Runner-up

Set 3:

Card 3A:

Host

country

West Germany

Argentina Spain Mexico

Germany

Argentina Italy Argentina

Runner-up Netherlands Netherlands West

Germany

West Germany

Card 3B:

Host

country

Score

Runner-up

Set 4:

Card 4A:

Host country Italy The USA France South Korea &

Japan

Germany

Brazil France Brazil

Card 4B:

Host country

Winner

Score

Runner-up

Set 5:

Card 5A:

Host country Germany South

Africa

Brazil Russia

Runner-up France Netherlands Argentina Croatia

In 2006 Italy won the game 5 - 3 in a penalty shoot-out

Card 5B:

Host country

Winner

Score

Runner-up

• Observation of adaptation: Class description:

Class Number of students Time Unit

 Lesson objective: By the end of the lesson, students will be able

to use the required language to ask and answer about the World Cup

Warm-up:

The teacher put students in groups of 3-4, gave each group a paper in which there were ten pictures of ten different sports In 5 minute time, students had to put right names of sports in pictures The group had the right answers in the shortest time would be the winners The students in the class participated excitedly in this competitive game Teacher right after introduced the new lesson: Unit 14- Speaking

Task 2: Students were asked to work in pairs, the teacher gave each member

of one pair a card she had prepared at home Students were told to find out their missing information about the Asian Games in their card Teacher made model interactions with two good students in the class then students worked

in pairs They were asked to practise speaking and write down all their missing information Students seemed to be eager to take part in this task They asked their partner and listened carefully to the answers to write down the information they needed After 5 minutes of pair work, teacher called some volunteers to practice their speaking in front of the class At first about ten students raised their hands The teacher gave them another pair of cards to make sure that they did not read again what they had done She created a competitive atmosphere in the pair by promising to give two more marks to the person who could found out his or her all missing information in the

shorter time Students became more excited with the task More students raised hands to practice speaking in front of the class Teacher called four pairs to speak and then she got other students to comment on their friends’ speaking He corrected some wrong pronunciation and gave them marks

At the end of the lesson, the teacher played the CD/ video for students

to listen to a very popular song He asked students the name of the song All students knew it was “The cup of life” by Luis Gómez Escolar, Desmond Child, Draco Rosa It was the official song of the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France The lesson finished in a very warm and exciting atmosphere The experiment result can be illustrated as follow:

Table 2

Experimental group (minutes)

Silence 9 20%

3.3 Students’ participation in experimental and control group in the lesson at the end of the intervention.

Table 3: Results of experimental group’s participation:

Control group

(minutes)

Experimental group

(minutes)

The data from the table shows that students’ talking time in experimental class considerably increased compared to that figure of control group Students in experimental group spoke 8, 7 and 7 more minutes than students in control class during adaptation 1, 2 and 3 respectively In contrast, teacher’s talking time in trial group was significantly reduced in comparison with that number of the control group We can see that in the adapted lesson 1,