Students’ engagement in English speaking activities plays a crucial role in developing students’ English language proficiency in general and speaking skills in particular. On the bases of a thorough investigation into the situation of teaching and learning English at Political Academy, the researcher focuses on investigating the level of students’ engagement in English speaking activities, and determining the factors affecting students’ engagement in English speaking activities at Political Academy.
Trang 1NGUYEN VAN TIEP *
* Political Academy, nguyentiep13@gmail.com
Received: 05/4/2019; Revised: 10/5/2019; Accepted: 13/5/2019
1 INTRODUCTION
Hadfield (1999, p.7) says that “speaking is a bridge
for learners between classroom and the world
outside” Speaking is the main channel of verbal
communication as learners need this skill to express
their thoughts, ideas and feelings successfully
Nonetheless, in many foreign language or second
language environments, speaking is not considered
as important as writing due to the fact that students
whose grades are often assessed on the basis of
writing performances
At Political Academy, most students are at
beginner and elementary English levels There
exists a fact that speaking activities have not been
truly carried out as most students keep silent or
find it difficult to express their own opinions It can
be seen from the class video recordings that the
AN INVESTIGATION INTO STUDENTS’ ENGAGEMENT IN ENGLISH SPEAKING ACTIVITIES AT POLITICAL ACADEMY
ABSTRACT
Students’ engagement in English speaking activities plays a crucial role in developing students’ English language proficiency in general and speaking skills in particular On the bases of a thorough investigation into the situation of teaching and learning English at Political Academy, the researcher focuses on investigating the level of students’ engagement in English speaking activities, and determining the factors affecting students’ engagement in English speaking activities at Political Academy.
Keywords: students, engagement, English speaking activities
students did their activities passively Furthermore, the students seemed to be demotivated in joining speaking activities Just a few students showed their eagerness to speak out in front of their classmates When other students worked in pairs or in groups, they frequently expressed their opinions in their mother tongue In addition, after breaking time, they looked tired and showed little motivation during their lessons Therefore, it is necessary to portray this situation as well as identify what the causes are The research was conducted to address two questions as follows:
• To what extent do students engage in speaking English in classroom?
• What are the factors influencing students’ engagement in English speaking activities?
Trang 22 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Definition of students’ engagement in
learning
Students’ engagement has become a major concern
in language teaching and learning since 1960s It
has been defined as “the extent to which students
are engaging in activities that higher education
research has shown to be linked with high-quality
learning outcomes” (Krause and Coates, 2008,
p 493) According to Erickson (1992), students’
engagement is a kind of active and individual
classroom experience Additionally, Newmman
(1992) indicated that students’ engagement is their
psychological investment in and effort directed
toward learning
Moreover, Astin (1984) proposed a theory
about students’ engagement - the involvement
theory In which, he argued that student’s
involvement refers to the amount of physical and
psychological energy devoted by students to the
academic experience
Conceptually, Fredericks at al (2004, p.61)
introduced a definition of engagement including
three dimensions of behavioral, emotional, and
cognitive Their work recapitulated a number of
ideas and definitions related to engagement and
compresses the term into three main categories;
namely, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive
engagements
Behavioral engagement: Behavioral
engagement is the students’ participation in
academic, social and extracurricular activities
Three main categories of behavioral engagement
include positive conduct, involvement in learning,
and participation in school-related activities
Emotional engagement: Emotional
engagement comprises of students’ attitudes,
interests, and values related to positive or
negative interactions with faculty, staff, students,
academics, or institution This has also been called
“identification” with school and learning practices Emotional engagement creates connections with schools and promotes students’ motivation to learn For emotional engagement, there are three main components, including students’ affective reactions, emotional reactions, and school identification
Cognitive engagement: Fredericks et al
(2004) divides cognitive engagement into two components: psychological and cognitive Accordingly, psychological component comprises
of motivational goals and self-regulated The latter focuses on the investment of students in learning
as well as their motivation to learn
In this study, the author employed all the three components: emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engagements by Fredericks et al
2.2 Importance of students’ engagement in speaking activities
Students’ engagement has attracted attention of researchers and educators worldwide “Students who are bored, restless, disruptive, and disengaged
in the short term have clearly documented negative impacts on students, teachers, schools, and communities” (Gilbert, 2007, pp.4-8) The students who engage in learning could enhance huge gains in their academic, emotional, social, and behavioral achievements (Klem & Connell, 2004) Besides, students would be inspired if they were engaged into their learning in school They would enjoy classroom activities and highly appreciate the lessons During classroom activities, they would be motivated and become active in acquiring knowledge Furthermore, engagement
in learning could build up their confidence in their study, get higher grades in exams, and comply with regulations (Dev, 1997) Students’ engagement
in learning improved their performance and attendance, which in turn could produce good results in exam grades, league tables, thereby
Trang 3heightening school’s status (Kushman, Sieber, &
Kinney, 2000)
Students’ engagement, according to Kenny and
Dumont (1995), is increasingly considered as a sign
of successful classroom instructions Engagement
would reduce the rates of problems related to
discipline and absence When students are on-task
and engaged, it seemed that teachers would face
fewer classroom management problems
3 METHODOLOGY
3.1 Research methods
This study was conducted by employing both
qualitative and quantitative research methods
This helps to improve the evaluation by ensuring
that the limitations of one type of data are balanced
by the strengths of the other
3.2 Data collection instruments
The data was gained through the employment
of three research instruments, namely, a survey
questionnaire, classroom observations, and a
semi-structured interview, which were discussed
in details as follows:
The first data collection instrument is a
self-report questionnaire which serves the main
purpose of the study, that is, to measure the selected
students’ self-reported engagement Students were
provided with items reflecting various aspects of
engagement and they would select the response that
best describes them The questionnaire consists of
15 items related to three dimensions of students’
engagement in English speaking lessons As its
name suggests, surveyed students completed the
questionnaire by themselves without the author’s
assistance The researcher used mean of every single
option to analyze results to examine the level of
engagement of selected students (see Appendix 1)
Apart from the survey questionnaire,
classroom observation was also conducted in
order to double-check the data collected from the questionnaire with more focus on students’ behavioral engagement Observation was carried out by the researcher with the assistance of a checklist of a number of selected variables relevant
to students’ engagement Students’ engagement in this study was coded by a classroom observation scheme Based on interactions between teachers and students in classroom, the information about students’ engagement was collected Classroom observations provided the researcher with the information including work arrangement, opportunity for students, and the number of speaking activities in the lessons Classroom observations help the researcher survey the real situation and compare with the information collected from the questionnaire
In order to identify the factors affecting students’ engagement in English speaking activities
at Political Academy, the results of questionnaire and observations were extended and elaborated by the use of qualitative interviews with both students and teachers The researcher designed a number of questions to ask the chosen teachers and students about factors influencing their engagement related
to the three afore-mentioned dimensions of engagement in the literature review The questions are open enough to allow interviewees to express their thoughts, feelings or opinions freely During the interviews, the author flexibly used prepared questions depending on the circumstances (see Appendices 2, 3)
3.3 Participants
In order to get information to fulfill the aim of the study, the researcher selected teachers as part of participants with a view to getting an insight into their opinions of possible factors affecting their students’ engagement in learning English speaking
skills 45 first-year students of elementary English
level were the key participants in this study
Trang 44 DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS
4.1 The extent students engage in English
speaking activities
This part identifies the extent to which students
at Political Academy engage in English speaking
activities The responses generated through the
student self-report items were manually coded
and analyzed using SPSS version 16.0 The
researcher used mean of every single option
to analyze the results to examine the level of
engagement of selected students The student
self-report questionnaire consists of 15 items, which
were analyzed to examine three dimensions of
students’ engagement: emotional, cognitive and
behavioral engagements As a result, the higher
the means of responses were, the higher level of
students’ engagement in speaking activities was
assumed to be
Behavioral, emotional, and cognitive
engagement survey items were drawn from
a variety of measures (Wellborn & Connell,
1987; Finn et al., 1995; Pintrich, Smith, Garcia,
& McKeachie, 1993) and included new items
developed for this study In Table 4.1, the
descriptive statistics of student’s emotional
engagement are presented With a possible range
of mean values from 0 to 5, the mean value ranges
from 0.55 to 1.84 The number of students who
circled Option B (Sometimes) was the largest In
other words, mean value of Option B was also the
highest (1.84) Meanwhile, the figure for Option
C (Often) was slightly lower, at the mean value
of 1.26 The mean values for Option A (Never), D
(Usually), and E (Always) stayed quite low, at 0.55,
073, and 0.71 respectively These statistical results
reveal that the majority of students were at the
levels of “sometimes” and “often” (see Table 4.1)
Thanks to classroom observations, the author
got some insights into what was actually occurring
inside the classroom and students’ emotions to
teaching and learning English activities at Political
Academy In the classes observed, the teachers did their best to engage students into the activities and arouse their interest In response, most of the students followed the sequence of activities, tried
to liven themselves up, and strived to fulfill their roles in the assigned activities However, they all did their job as if they had been forced to do during the activities
Overall, the results presented in Table 4.2 showed that a majority of the students were on the important threshold of moving from “sometimes engage” to “usually engage” in terms of cognitive engagement More specifically, the mean of
students choosing option B (Sometimes) was
1.53 This was about 0.2 higher than the mean of
respondents opting for option C (Often) On the
other hand, the means of students who circled
options A (Never), D (Usually), and E (Always)
were quite low, at 0.71, 0.84, and 0.60 respectively During the class observation, it seemed that just a few students were immersed in the tasks
Table 4.1 Responses by 45 students related to emotional engagement
Items of emotional engagement
by 45 students
Total number of student’s responses to each option within Likert’s five-scale
items
A B C D E
1 I feel motivated
to participate in English speaking activities.
6/45 13% 19/4542% 9/4520% 6/4513% 5/4511%
2 I feel comfortable talking with my classmates in English.
5/45 11% 16/4536% 12/4526% 6/4513% 6/4513%
3 I feel focused during English speaking activities
5/45 11% 17/4538% 12/4527% 7/4515% 4/459%
4 I feel excited
by the work in English speaking activities.
4/45 9% 17/4538% 13/4529% 6/4513% 5/4511%
5 I look forward to the next lesson when the lesson
is over.
5/45 11% 14/4531% 11/4524% 8/4518% 7/4516%
Mean Value 0.55 1.84 1.26 0.73 0.71
Trang 5Many students wanted the lesson to be over as
soon as possible In addition, a few students made
efforts to talk in English while others did personal
things after finishing their tasks Without teacher’s
presence, the students stopped their discussion in
English immediately There were a few students
who were self-aware of their study
In Table 4 3, the means of option B, C,
and D were quite equal (1.24, 1.29, and 1.26
respectively It is noticeable that the means of
option D in Table 4.3 was significantly higher
than those of Tables 4.1 and 4.2 (1.26 compared
to 0.73, 0.84) This suggests that students’ level of
behavioral engagement was higher than the levels
of emotional and cognitive engagement
There is a remarkable difference in the findings
between student self-report and class observation
regarding behavioral engagement For some
participants, self-report results were consistent with their behavioral engagement in English speaking activities, whereas for some others, self-report results contradicted their performance in class In fact, it was found that two students, who reported to have had high behavioral engagement in the survey questionnaire, appeared to demonstrate low engagement in class The inconsistency could be resulted from wrong self-assessment of students Another possible explanation could be that they had the desire to communicate, but for some reasons, such as personality and English competence, they withdrew from participation
In order to reveal general tendency and characteristics of engagement among students at Political Academy, descriptive statistical analyses were collected from all items in self-report questionnaire Descriptive statistics of the overall students’ engagement are computed and presented
in Table 4.4 below
Table 4.2 Responses by 45 students related to
cognitive engagement
Items of cognitive
engagement
by 45 students
Total number of student’s responses
to each option within Likert’s five-scale items
A B C D E
1 I practice
s p e a k i n g
English at home
and in class
even when I do
not have a test.
5/45 11% 15/4533% 12/4527% 8/4517% 5/4511%
2 If I do not
know how to
pronounce a
word, I actively
look it up in the
dictionary or
ask someone.
6/45 13% 13/4529% 13/4529% 7/4515% 6/4513%
3 When teacher
gives out a
speaking activity,
I get ready to
participate in.
5/45 11% 16/4535% 12/4527% 7/5415% 5/4511%
4 I positively get
feedback from
teacher
9/45 20% 16/4535% 10/4522% 7/4515% 4/458%
5 I want to talk
to my teacher/
friends in
English in class.
7/45 15% 9/4520% 13/4529% 9/4520% 7/4515%
Mean Value 0.71 1.53 1.33 0.84 0.60
Table 4.3 Responses by 45 students related to behavioral engagement
Items of behavioral engagement
by 45 students
Total number of student’s responses
to each option within Likert’s five-scale
items
A B C D E
1 I always pay attention in speaking activities.
2/45 4% 9/4520% 12/4527% 14/4531% 8/4518%
2 I raise my hand to answer in English when the teacher asks a question.
4/45 9% 14/4531% 13/4529% 9/4520% 5/4511%
3 I actively participate in all English speaking activities.
4/45 9% 10/4522% 11/4524% 12/4527% 8/4518%
4 I strictly follow the teacher’s
i n s t r u c t i o n s and lesson’s regulations.
5/45 11% 9/4520% 12/4527% 12/4527% 7/4515%
5 When I am in class,
I always present
my opinions in English
5/45 11% 14/4531% 10/4522% 10/4522% 6/4513%
Mean Value 0.44 1.24 1.29 1.26 0.76
Trang 6As indicated in Table 4.4, the mean value of 15
items ranged from 1.62 (Option A) to 4.62 (Option
B) That is to say, the number of students who
sometimes engaged in English speaking activities
was the highest (208), while the number of students
never engaging in such activities was the lowest
(73) All in all, the level of students’ engagement
in English speaking activities at Political Academy
moved from “sometimes” to “usually” In other
words, the level of students’ engagement in
English speaking activities at Political Academy
was not particularly high
4.2 Factors influencing students’
engagement in English speaking activities
Semi-structured interviews with individual
students and teachers were conducted during the
last week of the investigation Eight students: five
students (group 1) with low level of engagement;
three students (group 2) with high level of
engagement in class, were selected among the
participants for a semi-structured interview They
were asked and answered in Vietnamese language
This was to guarantee the truthfulness of the
information in case the students were not confident
enough to answer the questions in English or they
might have got confused in understanding the
questions In order to obtain more in depth-data,
two teachers who participated in the classroom
observation phase were also invited to attend
interviews The interviews were summarized and
analyzed as follows
4.2.1 Factors from individual student
a Motivation
This study found that motivation could be a major factor influencing students’ engagement in English speaking activities When being asked about the motivation in learning English speaking activities, all five students with low level of engagement shared that they had very little motivation More specifically, four of them admitted that English was
a compulsory subject Therefore, they did not have
time to invest much time in learning it Moreover,
they added that English would be unnecessary for their career after graduation Another one said that he learnt Russian at high school, thus he could not catch up with his classmates in learning English As a result, he felt frustrated and bored with English Three students with high level of engagement thought that they felt motivated when learning English For the teachers, as far as motivation is concerned, they agreed that many students had little motivation to learn English Accordingly, the students mainly focused on using English for class assignments and exams Hence,
it can be interpreted that motivation played as a crucial role in affecting students’ engagement in English speaking activities
b Language anxiety
As to the question concerning whether students felt confident when they were practicing speaking English in class, all students in group 1 stated that they lacked confidence in speaking in English Different from students in group 1, all of the three students in group 2 responded that they were quite confident when speaking English in class For the two teachers, they revealed that the majority of their students did not dare to raise hands to play roles in their speaking activity, very few of them were at ease and confident when speaking English From the responses in the interviews, it can be interpreted that the students with low level of engagement were much concerned about causing mistakes when practicing speaking English
Table 4.4 Total responses by 45 students related to
students’ engagement
Items of
engagement
by 45 students
Total number of student’s responses
to each option within Likert’s five-scale items
A B C D E
Item 1 - 15 73 208 175 128 88
Mean Value 1.62 4.62 3.88 2.84 1.95
Trang 7c English proficiency
When participants of two groups were asked to
rate their English proficiency in general, students
from group 1 placed themselves at low level of
English proficiency On the other hand, the three
students in group 2 viewed themselves as being at
the above average English proficiency level They
indicated that they had learnt English since they
were at primary school, so they had a firm basis of
English; therefore, they felt comfortable to perform
their English ability in class When interviewing the
two teachers, the author found that most students
were at considerably average and low English
levels It can be inferred that English proficiency
was also a factor influencing students’ engagement
in English speaking activities The students with
high level of English language proficiency tend to
highly engage in speaking and vice versa
4.2.2 Factors from teacher’s teaching methods
a Unauthentic and unfamiliar activity
Being asked about the attitude towards teacher’s
methods, all students in two groups had a common
answer that their teacher’s methods were adequate
and helpful Hence, it can be referred that teachers’
pedagogy did not significantly hinder the students
from engaging in English speaking activities
However, when taking a closer look at the teacher’s
activity arrangement, all students in the two groups
shared that speaking activities were merely based
on their textbook Responding to this issue, one
teacher expressed her view that she had to do so
due to the limited time The interview responses
clarified that students did not think that teachers
had given them appropriate speaking activities as
those activities were unauthentic and culturally
unfamiliar to them Meanwhile, the teachers
thought that this was out of their desire, stemming
from the objective element In short, the findings
of in-depth interviews indicated that teachers
did put forth efforts to accommodate students in
speaking activities However, to a certain extent,
speaking activities which heavily relied on their
course book hindered them from engaging in English speaking activities
b Uneven participation
When the students were asked whether the teacher gave them even chance for participation in English speaking activities, all of them had the same answer
“No” The students from group 1 shared that their participation rate was at low level The teachers admitted that they usually gave more priorities to the active students and the ones sitting at the front row In class, if a few strong students dominated, the rest would either listen or lose interests in their lesson As a consequence, the strong ones were more and more confident and active while the weaker ones became more and more passive
4.2.3 Factors from class arrangement
Concerning the language teaching and learning environment at Political Academy, there were two emerging issues; namely, seating arrangement and class size These two factors were out of teacher’s control, stemming from Political Academy’s facilities and administrators
a Seating arrangement
The students shared that the traditional way
of seating arrangement prevented them from fulfilling their speaking activities All the interviewed teachers expressed their discontent
in the arrangement of tables and chairs in class Whenever a group work was organized, students had to change their seats This was considerably uncomfortable and time-consuming
b Class size
Along with the seating arrangement, the large number of students in English class could be also
a factor influencing students’ engagement All the teachers expressed their view that they could not find a sound solution to the over-sized class In the English class observed, there were 45 students Within two 40-minute speaking activities, the
Trang 8NGHIÊN CỨU MỨC ĐỘ THAM GIA CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NÓI TIẾNG ANH
CỦA SINH VIÊN TẠI HỌC VIỆN CHÍNH TRỊ
NGUYỄN VĂN TIỆP Tóm tắt: Mức độ tham gia các hoạt động nói tiếng Anh có vai trò quan trọng trong sự phát triển năng
lực tiếng Anh, nói chung và kỹ năng nói nói riêng của sinh viên Trên cơ sở đánh giá thực trạng dạy
và học tiếng Anh tại Học viện Chính trị, bài báo tập trung điều tra mức độ tham gia các hoạt động nói tiếng Anh, xác định các yếu tố ảnh hưởng mức độ tham gia các hoạt động nói tiếng Anh tại Học viện Chính trị
Từ khóa: sinh viên, mức độ tham gia, hoạt động nói tiếng Anh
Ngày nhận bài: 05/4/2019; ngày sửa chữa:10/5/2019; ngày duyệt đăng: 13/5/2019
teacher only managed to organize three speaking
activities and she only had enough time to call 22
students to present their opinions in English That
means a half of the students did not have chance to
speak English in class
5 CONCLUSION
After analyzing the collected data, some major
findings were revealed First, in terms of students’
engagement level, the findings demonstrated
that the level of their engagement in English
speaking activities at Political Academy was
generally not particularly high In other words,
the number of students who engaged in English
speaking activities was more than those who
disengaged in such activities Second, the factors
mainly affecting students’ engagement in English
speaking activities included students’ motivation,
language anxiety, and English proficiency, the
teacher’s teaching methods, and the classroom
arrangement Hopefully, the results of this study
could help English lectures and administrators to
come up with some solutions to improving the
level of students’ engagement in English speaking
activities, contributing to enhancing the quality of
teaching and learning English speaking skills at
Political Academy./
References:
Astin, A W (1984) Student involvement: A developmental
theory for higher education Journal of College Student
Personnel, (25), 297 - 308.
Dev, P C (1997) Intrinsic motivation and academic achievement: What does their relationship imply for the
classroom teacher? Remedial and Special Education,
18(1), 12 - 19.
Erickson, F (1992) Students’ experience of the curriculum, In:
Jackson, P (Ed.) Handbook of research on curriculum
New York: Macmillan.
Erickson, F (1992) Students’ experience of the curriculum In:
Jackson, P (Ed.) Handbook of research on curriculum
New York: Macmillan.
Fredericks, J A., Blumenfeld, P C., & Paris, A H (2004) School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the
evidence Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 59 -
109.
Gilbert, J (2007) Catching the Knowledge Wave: Redefining
knowledge for the postindustrial age Education Canada,
47(3), 4 - 8.
Hadfield, J (1999) Simple Speaking Activities Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Kenny D and Dumont, R (1995) Mission and Place:
Strengthening Learning and Community Through Campus Design Oryx/Greenwood.
Klem, A M., & Connell, J P (2004) Relationships matter: Linking teacher support to students’ engagement and
achievement Journal of School Health, 74(7), 262-273.
Krause, K and Coates, H (2008) Students’ Engagement in
First-Year University Assessment and Evaluation in Higher
Education, 33 (5), 493 - 505.
Kushman, J.W., Sieber, C., & Heariold-Kinney, P (2000) This
isn’t the place for me: School dropout Alexandria, VA:
American Counseling Association.
Newmann, F M (1992) Student engagement and
achievement in American secondary school New York:
Teachers College Press.
Trang 9APPENDICES Appendix 1: SELF-REPORT QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS
This survey is designed to collect information for the study on “An investigation into students’ engagement in speaking activities
at Political Academy” Your assistance in completing the following items is highly appreciated You can be certain that this is for research purpose only and that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data.
Before answering the questions, please fill in some information:
* Gender: Male/Female
* Your age: ………
* How long have you been learning English?
………
Please tick the appropriate answers for the following questions
A Never B Sometimes C Often D Usually E Always
Emotional
engagement
1 I feel motivated to participate in English speaking lessons.
2 I feel comfortable talking with my classmates in English.
3 I feel focused during English speaking activities.
4 I feel excited by the work in English speaking lessons.
5 I look forward to the next lesson when the lesson is over.
Cognitive
engagement
6 I practice speaking English at home and in class even when I do not have
a test.
7 If I do not know how to pronounce a word, I actively look it up in the dictionary or ask someone.
8 When teacher gives out a speaking activity, I get ready to participate in.
9 I positively get feedback from teacher.
10 I want to talk to my teacher/friends in English in class.
Behavioral
engagement
11 I always pay attention in speaking activities.
12 I raise my hand to answer in English when the teacher asks a question.
13 I actively participate in all English speaking activities.
14 I strictly follow the teacher’s instructions and lesson’s regulations.
15 When I am in class, I am ready to present my opinions in English.
Thank you for the cooperation.
Trang 10Appendix 2: TENTATIVE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TEACHERS
1 Are your students motivated enough to learn English speaking activities?
2 Are your students confident when practicing speaking English in class? If not, what are the reasons?
3 Do you feel that your students were shy, anxious or awkward when they spoke English?
4 Do you think that the speaking activities that you have taught are interesting and motivating enough for your students to speak? Why (not)?
5 What is your opinion of the language teaching and learning environment at Political Academy? Does it accommodate you
to teach speaking activities?
6 How do you judge your English language teaching methodology and your classroom techniques, especially your methodology on speaking skills?
7 Do you give even participation for all students to speak during your lessons?
8 Are the textbooks used suitable for you to teach speaking activities?
9 What is your opinion of your students’ English proficiency? Are your students’ vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation proficient enough to complete assigned speaking tasks in the classroom?
Appendix 3: TENTATIVE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS
1 Do you feel motivated enough in learning English speaking activities? Why (not)?
2 How often do you volunteer to speak during your speaking lesson?
3 Are you confident when practicing speaking English in class? If not, what are the reasons?
4 Do you often feel shy, anxious or awkward when speaking English?
5 How do you assess the speaking topics and activities in the speaking textbook? Are they motivating enough? Why (not)?
6 What is your opinion of your teacher’s methodology and classroom techniques?
7 Are speaking activities interesting and inspiring enough for you to learn?
8 What is your opinion of the language teaching and learning environment at Political Academy? Does it accommodate you
to learn speaking activities?
9 Are the textbooks suitable for your speaking activities?
10 What is your opinion of your English proficiency? Are your vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation proficient enough to fulfill speaking tasks in the classroom?