Sử dụng hoạt động nhóm để cải thiện kĩ năng nói của học sinh lớp 10 tại trường trung học phổ thông tỉnh bắc ninh

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOIUNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ---O0O---NGUYEN THI TRANG THE APPLICATION OF GROUP WORK ACTIVITES

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-O0O -NGUYEN THI TRANG

THE APPLICATION OF GROUP WORK ACTIVITES

TO IMPROVE SPEAKING SKILLS FOR 10 TH GRADE STUDENTS

AT A BAC NINH HIGH SCHOOL

Sử dụng hoạt động nhóm để cải thiện kĩ năng nói của học sinh lớp 10 tại

trường trung học phổ thông tỉnh Bắc Ninh

M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01

Supervisor: Dr Vu Thi Thanh Nha

Hanoi, 2019

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-O0O -NGUYEN THI TRANG

THE APPLICATION OF GROUP WORK ACTIVITES

TO IMPROVE SPEAKING SKILLS FOR 10 TH GRADE STUDENTS AT A

BAC NINH HIGH SCHOOL

Sử dụng hoạt động nhóm để cải thiện kĩ năng nói của học sinh lớp 10 tại

trường trung học phổ thông tỉnh Bắc Ninh

M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01

Supervisor: Dr Vu Thi Thanh Nha

Hanoi, 2019

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this thesis represents my own work for the Degree of Master inTESOL at the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages andInternational Studies - Vietnam National University, and that it has not beenpreviously submitted to this University or any other institution in application foradmission to a degree, diploma or other qualifications

Bac Ninh, May 29th 2019

Nguyen Thi Trang

First of all, I would like to acknowledge the debt of gratitude to mysupervisor, Dr.Vu Thi Thanh Nha for her helpful suggestions, invaluable criticalfeedback and encouragement in the writing of this study Without her guidance andhelp, this work would not have been completed

My sincere thanks go to all the staff at the Department of Post-graduateStudies, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies for giving meassistance and the lecturers who conducted the Master's course for providing mewith valuable knowledge

I would also like to express my deep sense of gratitude to my dear students,whose participation in and dedication to the research remain invaluable have beenacknowledged Without their precious support, the thesis would not have takenshaped

Finally, the support extended to me by the members of my family has beenimmeasurable I would also like to express my thanks to my parents and myhusband for their wholehearted encouragement

Bac Ninh, May 29th 2019

Nguyen Thi Trang

The study was carried out with an attempt to investigate the application ofgroup work towards enhancing grade 10 students’ speaking skill The subjectsparticipating in the research were 40 EFL students studying in the same class at ahigh school in Bac Ninh province To achieve the desired aims of the study, anaction research was carried out Survey questionnaires for students and learninglogs were used as the major instruments to collect data about students’ challenges indeveloping their speaking skill and the impacts of group work implementation onstudents’ speaking ability The results of the study showed that group work haspositive influence on the development of students’ speaking skill and has thepotential to help students deal with some challenges that they may encounter inspeaking lessons

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LISTS OF TABLES AND FIGURES vii

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale of the study 1

1.2 Aims of the study 3

1.3 Scope of the study 3

1.4 Organization of the thesis 4

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Theoretical background of speaking 5

2.1.1 Definitions of speaking skill 5

2.1.2 Aspects of speaking skill 5

2.1.3 Characteristics of a successful speaking activity 6

2.1.4 Problems with speaking classes 8

2.1.5 Relating categories of oral production 9

2.1.6 The roles of the teacher in different stages of teaching speaking 10

2.2 Group work in speaking lessons 11

2.2.1 Definition of group work 11

2.2.2 Benefits of group work 12

2.2.3 Some problems in using group work 13

2.2.4 Group formation 14

2.2.5 Teacher’s role in carrying out group work 16

2.2.6 Steps of organizing group activities 17

2.3 Previous studies 18

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 22

3.1 Participants and context of the study 22

3.2 Reasons to choose action research method 22

3.3 Phases of action research 24

3.4 Weekly schedules and research procedures 26

3.4.1 Weekly schedules 26

3.4.2 Research procedures 29

3.5 Data collection instruments 31

3.5.1 Questionnaires 31

3.5.2 Learning logs 31

CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 34

4.1 Information collected from the survey questionnaires 34

4.1.1 Students’ opinions on the importance of speaking skill 34

4.1.2 Students’ challenges in developing speaking skill 34

4.1.3 Students’ preference of group work in speaking lessons 35

4.1.4 Reasons for students’ preference of group work 36

4.1.5 Students’ opinions on the effectiveness of group work in speaking lessons 37

4.1.6 Students’ opinions on the advantages of group work in speaking lessons 38

4.1.7 Students’ opinions about the impact of group work on their speaking ability 39 4.1.8 Students’ self-evaluation regarding speaking aspects before and after the application of group work 40

4.2 Data collected from students’ learning logs 43

4.2.1 Things students can do 43

4.2.2 Things students learnt 46

4.3 Summary 48

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION 49

5.1 Summary of major findings 49

5.2 Recommendations 50

5.3 Limitations 51

5.4 Recommendations for further research 52

REFERENCES 53 APPENDICES.……… ……….I APPENDIX 1 PRE-ACTION QUESTIONNAIRE I APPENDIX 2 POST-ACTION QUESTIONNAIRE II APPENDIX 3 LEARNING LOG: SPEAKING SKILL IV

LISTS OF TABLES AND FIGURES

TABLES

FIGURES

Figure 4.2 Students’ opinions on the improvement of speaking ability -39

Figure 4.3 Students’ self-evaluation of the vocabulary aspect -40

Figure 4.4 Students’ self-evaluation of grammar aspect -41

Figure 4.5 Students’ self-evaluation of fluency aspect -42

Figure 4.6 Students’ self-evaluation of pronunciation aspect -42

Figure 4.7 Students’ changes in styles of answers -44

Figure 4.8 Students’ opinions on the level of hesitation -45

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

This chapter mentions the background and rationale to conduct the study, states the aims, scope, and organization of the graduation thesis.

1.1 Rationale of the study

English has received growing recognition as the preferred foreign language

in Vietnam nowadays (Do, 2006) and is considered an “unquestionable asset”(Shapiro, 1995: 4) for the Vietnamese people due to its role as a key to Vietnam’sregional and global integration under the impact of the so-called open-door policy

or Doi Moi since the last decade of the 20th century (Nguyen, N 2012) This globalintegration trend has directly led to a spectacular increase in demand for Englishtraining (Nguyen, N 2012) in order to facilitate the communication ability, increaseinteractions and develop international relations between the local enterprises,labours and those from foreign countries Since then, English has become one majorsubject at schools and continuously receives significant attention of the government,with a number of national projects which aim at promoting the quality of teachersand that of the English teaching and learning process

Among the four English skills (speaking, listening, writing, and reading),speaking has been perceived as the most important one (Flohr & Paesler, 2006).According to Nunan (1993), the importance of speaking skill is obvious as humandepend themselves more on speaking rather than writing when interacting withothers As defined by Brown (2001), speaking is an interactive process to conductmeaning which involves producing, receiving and processing information Speakingcan also be considered as an indicator for students’ success in mastering a language

By speaking students may realize how much language they have mastered ad howthey can use it Besides, through students’ speaking, teachers can get feedback fromstudents faster and more exactly Thanks to students speaking activities in class andoutside class, the teacher can find out how much students understand the lesson

Hence, she can know what their weak and strong points are in language to haveappreciated solutions and plans

It is clear that speaking skill plays a significant role in teaching and learning

a foreign language Therefore, it is necessary that speaking be paid enough attentionfrom those English language learners who aim to master the language This alsoleads to the need for English teachers to create more opportunities for their students

to practice this oral skill during class time

As a teacher of High School in Bac Ninh for ten years, I has been familiarwith the fact that my students of different generations may have rather goodunderstanding of grammar knowledge and good control of in written language;however, encouraging them to speak remains a challenging job as most of them find

it really hard to express themselves in oral language Students often show theirpassive learning during speaking lessons Many of them feel extremely nervouswhen being called to present orally in front of their classes, some even cannot sayany words when they have to stand up and speak while when I write the questions

or topics for discussion on the board and tell them to write their answers, themajority of them can perform the task though at different levels of success.Obviously, their unwillingness and refusal to practice indispensably lead to theirpoor speaking performance in all speaking lessons, which is supposed to also reducetheir confidence and demotivate them to speak Unfortunately, this is not theproblem of students in my classes only but is the shared problems of all otherEnglish teachers in my school However, little has been done to improve thesituation due to a number of constraints

For a number of decades, many researchers have investigated the impacts ofgroup-work on language learning process and reported its various positive effects.For speaking, group-work is proved to help reduce anxiety, create interactionamong students (Long & Porte, 1985), provide safer language learning environment(Richard & Rodgers, 2001), increase speaking opportunities, encourage learners to

share their opinions, enhance cooperation and negotiation skills and promote learnerautonomy (Harmer, 2007) Being aware of the benefits of group work in promotingspeaking skill, English teachers in my school, including me, decided to apply it inour speaking lessons with a view to helping our students improve their skills Toformally investigate the application of group work and its impacts on students’

speaking skill, I therefore conduct this study, entitled “The application of group

work activities to improve speaking skills for 10 th grade students at a Bac Ninh High School”.

1.2 Aims of the study

The study is conducted to investigate how group work activities can be used

to improve high school students’ speaking skill

To achieve the mentioned goal, the two research questions are proposed:

 What are the challenges for grade 10 students in developing theirspeaking skill?

 How does group work help improve their speaking skill?

1.3 Scope of the study

The researcher intends to start with an overview of the current situations ofstudents’ learning English speaking skill, then analyze the effects of group workactivities on students’ speaking and make some recommendations on the effectiveuse of group work to motivate students to practice speaking English more As anaction research project, the study was conducted with the researcher’s own students

in her own class with the participation of 40 students The action researchframework employed in this study is the framework proposed by Kemmis &McTaggart (2000) with four phases including plan, action, observation andreflection The three major data collection instruments for the study arequestionnaires, classroom observation and students’ diary in the form of learning

logs It is hoped that the information collected will be able to fully answer the tworesearch questions Detailed information on the research procedures is presented inchapter 3

1.4 Organization of the thesis

The graduation thesis consists of five chapters, organized as follows:

Chapter I- Introduction This chapter mentions the background and rationale to

conduct the study, states the aims, scope, and organization of the graduation thesis

Chapter II- Literature Review This chapter represents theoretical background

knowledge related to speaking skill, and a brief review of the previous studies ongroup work and its impacts on students’ speaking ability

Chapter III- Methodology This chapter states the subjects of the study, research

instruments, and data collection procedures employed in this research

Chapter IV- Findings and discussions This chapter analyzes and discusses the

results collected from survey questionnaire, learning logs Besides, the limitations

of the study are introduced

Chapter V- Conclusion This chapter summarizes the main points discussed in the

previous parts, presents the limitations of the thesis and provides some suggestionsfor further research

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter represents theoretical background knowledge related to speaking skill, and a brief review of the previous studies on group work and its impacts on students’ speaking ability.

2.1 Theoretical background of speaking

2.1.1 Definitions of speaking skill

Bygate (1987) defines speaking as oral expression that involves the use ofthe right sounds in the patterns of rhythm and intonation as well as the word choiceand inflections in the right order to convey the right meaning According to theauthor, it is a means for building social relationships, ranking, a vehicle ofprofessional advancement and of business, also a medium through which muchlanguage is learned According to Chaney (1998), speaking is the process of makingand sharing meaning by using verbal and non-verbal symbols in different contexts.Brown (1994) and Burns and Joyce (1997) defined speaking as an interactiveprocess of making meaning that includes producing, receiving, and processinginformation Those different authors defined speaking ability in different ways, theirdefinitions all share one feature which is the ability to use a language as a means toachieve some communicative purpose

2.1.2 Aspects of speaking skill

According to Gower (1995), speaking involves accuracy and fluency The

author’s explanation of the two mentioned aspects can be found below

Accuracy

As for Gower (1995), “accuracy” involves “the correct use of vocabulary,grammar and pronunciation” (Gower, 1995:99) and suggests teacher make studentsclear about the importance role of accuracy in their feedback for controlled andguided activities However, teachers should not be too focused on accuracy at the

beginning because this may make students afraid of making mistakes and preventthem from improving their fluency.

Fluency

The term “fluency” refers to the ability to keep the conversation going onGower (1995) Richards (1993) defines fluency as the level of communicationproficiency involving the ability to produce oral and written language with ease, theability to control intonation, vocabulary and grammar; and the ability to makeoneself understood in communication Both fluency and accuracy are importantelements of communicative approach, therefore, learners’ activities should bedesigned based on equivalence between fluency and accuracy achievement(Mazouzi, 2013)

The Council of Europe (2017) provides a more detailed description of thequalitative aspects of spoken language use, which includes “vocabulary range”,

“(grammar) accuracy”, “fluency”, “interaction”, “coherence” and “phonology” (TheCouncil of Europe, 2017:156) Also according to this guidebook, in a number ofanalytic scales for assessing speaking performance, Range, Accuracy, Fluency andPronunciation are common regards

It is easy to recognize that according to both descriptions, speaking ability issupposed to involve such aspects as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation andfluency Therefore, in this study, the researcher makes plans to investigate the

impacts of group work on these four common aspects

2.1.3 Characteristics of a successful speaking activity

According to Nunan (1999:39) “success (in speaking) is measured in terms

of the ability to carry out a conversation in the (target) language” A successfulspeaking activity is therefore supposed to fulfill a number of characteristics thathelps students achieve this goal Ur (1996) explains some characteristics ofsuccessful speaking activities which include creating as many opportunities for

leaners to speak as possible, distributing fairly even chances for participants,making them feel highly motivated, and assuring that language is of an acceptablelevel More detailed description of these characteristics is presented below.

Learners talk a lot

As much as possible period of time allotted to the activity which is occupied

by learners talk This is obvious, but often most time is taken up with teacher talks

or pauses It can be understood that the learners must be active to talk with theirfriends as much as possible It is very clear that the learners are busy, but theyseldom spent their time to talk with their teacher

Participation is even

Classroom discussion is not dominated by a monitory of talkativeparticipants It means that all learners have a chance to speak, and contributions arefairly evenly distributed The classroom discussion is not dominated by oneparticipant only, but all of participants get a same chance to speak

Motivation is high

Students are eager to speak because they are fascinated by the topic and havesomething new to say about it, or because they want to make contribution to achieve

an objective task It means that the students have high motivation to speak English

By having a high motivation, the students will feel interested in learning English,especially in speaking

Language is of an acceptable level

Learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easilycomprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of language accuracy Itmeans that they use the components of speaking which are relevant with theacceptable level of language such as, pronunciation, grammar, fluency, and

comprehensible So, the students often try to speaking English correctly in realcommunication

In practice, however, not many classroom activities satisfy all the abovementioned criteria This requires language teachers to make efforts in finding outand conducting activities that work best in their teaching context

2.1.4 Problems with speaking classes

According to Ur (1996) there are four main problems in speaking, which arepresented below

The first problem is called “Inhibition” (Ur, 1996:121) Unlike reading,

writing or listening activities, speaking requires some degree of real-time exposure

to an audience EFL students are often inhibited about trying to say things using aforeign language in the classroom due to their worry about making mistakes or thefeeling of shyness for the attention that their speech attracts, the fear of beingcriticized or losing face in front of the rest of the class Many prefer to be silentrather than being criticized in front of a large number of people (Brown, 2000)

The second problem is “Nothing to say” Ur (1996:121) reported that even not

being inhibited, his students often complained that they could not think of anything tosay In reality, they may feel bored or think that the topic surpasses what they know.Thus, students often lack confidence about their speaking ability and believe that theyhave insufficient language skills to express exactly what they want to express

Also pointed out by Ur (1996), low or uneven participation is another problem.

He explained that only one participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be heard;and in large groups, this means each one will have little talking time This problem iscompounded by the tendency of some learners to dominate, while other speaks verylittle Therefore, in English class, timid students are quite happy to sit back and watchthe lesson unfolding instead of participating

Last but not least, “Mother tongue use” (Ur, 1996:121) is also supposed to be

one of problem for speaking classes because students with the same mother tonguenormally prefer to use their first language to exchange information and express theirthoughts rather than using the target language (Tuan & Mai, 2015) This may resultfrom the lack of topical and language knowledge, as well as motivation (Harmer,1991) Therefore, most of the students are not disciplined in using the target language

in the learning process even when the task is too easy

Large class size is also an important affecting factor If the classroom iscrowded with more than 40 students, it is a fact that the students has fewer chances topractice the language and it is also much more difficult for students to pay enoughattention to each of them, to keeping good disciplines, as well as to organize dynamicand creative teaching and learning sessions (Febriyanti, 2011)

To sum up, speaking is believed to be one of the most challenging skills whichrequire learners’ time and effort to make a success Therefore, it is necessary that bothteachers and students pay enough attention to the learning and teaching process tohelp students overcome these obstacles and make progress in their speaking skill

2.1.5 Relating categories of oral production

According to Brown (1994), there are six categories relating to oralproduction which are:

- Imitative: accounts for very small portion of speaking time in the speakingtime when learners are practicing an intonation contour trying to pinpoint a certainvowel sound

- Intensive: includes any speaking performance that is designed to practicesome phonological or grammar aspects of language

- Responsive: is short replies to the teacher or student initiated questions orcomments These replies are usually sufficient and do not extend into dialogue

- Transactional (dialogue): is carried out for the purpose of conveying orexchanging specific information Conversations, for example, may have more of anegative nature to them than merely responsive speech Such conversation couldreadily be the part of group work activity as well

- Interpersonal (dialogue): this type of dialogue is often carried out more forthe purpose of maintaining social relationship than the transmission of facts andinformation These conversations are a little trickier for learners because they caninvolve some or all the following factors: a casual register, colloquial language,emotionally changed language, and slang etc

- Extensive (monologue): Finally, students at intermediate or advanced levelsare called on to give extended monologues in the form of oral report, summaries, orperhaps short speeches Here the register is more formal and deliberative

As can be seen, the six categories proposed by Brown (1994) illustratedifferent forms of speaking practice with different levels of difficulties that can beorganized during the speaking lessons Teachers can base on these categories todesign the practice activities for their own students to help them step by step improvetheir speaking skill In this research, the categories that I used with my students weremainly but not limited to responsive, transactional, interpersonal and extensive which

I found suitable for the content planned to teach

2.1.6 The roles of the teacher in different stages of teaching speaking

Byrne (1986) introduced three stages of teaching speaking: the presentationstage, the practice stage and the production one In each stage, the role of theteacher is different

At the presentation stage, the teacher is considered an informant role Theteacher introduces something new to be learned and present it in such a way that themeaning of the new language is as clear and memorable as possible The studentslisten and try to understand It means that the teacher is at the centre of the stage

Therefore, teacher’s time spending should be sensible so that the students getenough time to practice themselves.

At the practice stage, it is the students’ role to do most of the talking whileteacher’s main task is to devise and provide the maximum amount of practice,which must the same time be both meaningful and memorable The teacher’s role,then, is completely different from that at the presentation one The teacher is likethe skillful conductor of an orchestra, giving each of the performers a chance toparticipate, observing and monitoring their performance to see that it is satisfactory

At the final stage- the production one, the teacher takes on the role ofmanager and guide Students are given opportunities to use language freely.Sometimes students can make mistakes at this stage, but mistakes are unimportant.What is more important is that students have chance to use language as they wish,

to try to express their own ideas Moreover, they become aware that they havelearnt something useful to them personally, and are encouraged to go on learning Itwill not be so easy for the teacher to measure students’ performance as it was at thepractice stage, nor is there any easy recipe for success So, what is needed isflexibility, tolerance, patience on teacher’s part- and, above all, an understanding ofthe learners’ difficulties

To sum up, the teacher through speaking lesson should work as an instructor.His/ her roles closely relate to the three stages of learning Whatever the teacher isdoing in the classroom, his/ her ability to enhance the students’ interest, to createmotivation and involve them in what they are doing, will be crucial

2.2 Group work in speaking lessons

2.2.1 Definition of group work

Group work is not a new technique in teaching and has been similarlydefined by a number of authors Nolasco and Arthur (1998) states that group work

is a number of people assigned a task together and they will work on it

cooperatively According to Doff (1998), in group work the teacher divides theclass into small groups to work together and similar to pair work, all the groupswork at the same time.

Group sizes can vary from pairs to large groups of students, each group mayconsist of three members, four or up to six members or sometimes only two likepair work (Doff, 1998) In fact, there are not any fixed rules on the number of groupmembers so this largely depends on teacher’s belief and decision

2.2.2 Benefits of group work

As previously mentioned, group work is proved to bring a number ofpotential benefits to speaking classes such as providing more opportunities forstudents to practice, increasing classroom interaction (Long & Porte 1985),enhancing cooperation and promoting learner autonomy (Harmer, 2007).Whenworking in groups, students can exchange, share their knowledge and understandingwith other members in their group, thereby improve the effectiveness of lessonacquisition

Group work also requires members to work collaboratively with the rest ofthe team to create an output, so the mutual understanding also increases Groupwork is a cooperative activity in which the students work at the same time, sharingideas and responsibility and independently have their own ideas which contribute tothe group work’s success without every minute observation from the teacher andother students Joining groups can also help students develop a host of skills that areincreasingly important in the professional world (Caruso & Woolley, 2008; Mannix

& Neale, 2005) Positive group experiences, moreover, have been shown tocontribute to student learning, retention and overall college success (Astin, 1997;Tinto, 1998; National Survey of Student Engagement, 2006)

Group work has also been proven to be an effective way of promotinglearning motivation, enhancing performance and lessening learners’ language

anxiety (Dumas, 2002); Kahle, 1993; Stahl, 1994) It is an effective way to offer aninteractive environment, which is crucial to communicative language learning

Harmer (1999) also presented a number of advantages of group work, whichinclude the possibility to increase the student talking time, enhancing problemsolving, teamworking and interpersonal skills This may be explained by the factthat in group work, normally a number of people involved, each with differentexperience, knowledge, points of view and values, a larger number and variety ofideas can be given Moreover, the exchange of the ideas in the group can act as astimulus which will encourage individuals to give more ideas, more opinions andtherefore contribute more to group work activities Thanks to this, students probablybecome more active in their learning process

Also according to Harmer (1999), another advantage of group work is that ithelps reduce bias This is because the shared responsibility in a group in coming todecisions can encourage individuals to explore seemingly realistic ideas and tochallenge accepted ways of doing things Therefore, individual biases andprejudices can be challenged by the group, forcing the individual to recognize them.Group pressure can also encourage individuals to accept that change is need

Finally, students’ group work frees the teacher from the usual role of “anexpert who always lectures” and allows him/her to walk to each group, to guide, toanswer questions from students or to encourage students to work actively (Harmer,1999)

To sum up, group work has proved to be beneficial to students in helpingthem improve their speaking skill

2.2.3 Some problems in using group work.

Despite a number of benefits, group work also has several disadvantages.Haines (1995) claims that “being forced to speak a second language to someonewho shares your first language is artificial” (Haines, 1995:57) This partly explains

why one major problem of group work among students of the same first language istheir frequent use of the mother tongue.

The amount of noise is also a big challenge which is not always easy forteachers to control Conducting group work is somehow time-consuming as teachersoften need more time to organize groups and instruct students on what to do.Another problem is the different levels of responsibility of the group members(Harmer, 1999) It is common that among members of a group, some may be highlyresponsible while some others may be quite passive and even lazy so theircontribution and participation in group work may not be equal Moreover, in amixed-level group, better students are sometimes dominant As consequence, lessproficient students often have fewer opportunities to participate According toHarmer (1999), working in group can also cause competitions as someunconsciously perceive the situations as a competition, which probably leads to thegeneration of a destructive behavior and therefore drains the creative energy of thegroup

Besides, Harmer (1999) argued that working in group is a relatively slowprocess compared to working alone due to the fact that students often have to bepresent at an assigned time and need time to negotiate before coming to anagreement

Although there are some disadvantages of group work, the advantages stilloutweigh Being aware of the all potential challenges in conducting group work willhelp teachers anticipate the problems they might encounter to be able to reduce thedifficulties and make use of its benefits

2.2.4 Group formation

There are a number of ways to form group work According to Jung (2004),groups can be formed randomly (counting off or by their seat proximity), on thebasis of teachers’-selection, or students’ selection Random group assignments

avoid cliques and ensure that students interact with different students throughout thesemester Once teachers know their students fairly well, teacher-selected groups can

be useful for pairing weak and strong students, students with common interests orshared learning styles, or characteristics It can be said that teacher can clearly

understand their students’ behavior in class

Random grouping

Random grouping is often used for in-class activities because of itsconvenience and readiness that is random grouping is a way including collectingand gathering students ignoring any differences among students in terms of theirlanguage level, learning style, interests etc The number of students in class varies

up to forty or more, so random grouping helps teacher saves time For the class ofdifferent levels, random grouping is supposed to narrow down the gap between thestudents of different levels

Student-selected grouping

Student selected grouping is another popular way to form groups Manystudents feel more committed when they are let choose their own partners withwhom they feel most comfortable to communicate However, student-selectedgrouping can result in high level of noise in class because students of such groupstend to exchange a large amount of information both relevant and irrelevant to thelesson content

Teacher-selected grouping

Compared to random grouping and student-selected grouping, selected grouping is a more time-consuming method due to the fact that teachershave match students together to form the best group for each of them basing on theirpreferences, learning style, level of activeness and other related characteristics.However, this kind of grouping is also supposed to be the most effective as itenables peer tutoring that gives students more chances to learn from one another

teacher-Group size

It is suggested that three to five members in one group can be the best for it.According to Honeyfield (1991), I-Jung (2004) and Ngoh (1991), a group with fourmembers make group work more interesting as there are a wider range of opinionsbeing expressed, as well as more negotiation required for the group members toreach an agreement In addition, each group member has better chances to expresstheir own ideas in such group size Six should be the maximum number of members

in one group (Honeyfield,1991; I-Jung, 2004) as bigger groups may lead todifficulties in controlling, organizing activities and encouraging contribution fromall members

2.2.5 Teacher’s role in carrying out group work

In Communicative Language Teaching, teachers are supposed to take theroles of a guide, an instructor, an organizer, an assessor, a prompter and aparticipant (Hammer, 1991) When carrying out group work, even though thestudents are more independent, the teacher still plays an important role in designing,conducting the tasks and analyzing the need

According to Cross (1992), the teacher is the manager of an activity whomust plant it, organize it, start it, monitor it, time it and in the end conclude it Theteacher in the group work activities is not the free one but the one who is active withassisting, supervising and monitoring the group The teacher is not only there withtheir students only at the beginning or the end of the learning process but frombeginning to the end of the process as they perform a number of roles including

- an activity selector who creates activities that fit the students' skills andabilities, assigns group tasks that allow a fair division of energy as well as set up

"competitions" among groups

- an instructor who is there to ensure that the students will be not misleading

- a performance controller who provides help and assists students to tacklethe difficulties they have with the group while the students are working together

- a group evaluator who not only evaluates the whole group work but also theperformance of each group member

According to Cross (1992), whether group work is successful or not dependsmuch on how and where the teacher applies these roles

2.2.6 Steps of organizing group activities

Harmer (1999) divides group-work activities into three steps: beforeactivities, during activities, and after activities and suggested that each group workactivity should follow these steps More information about each step is presentedbelow

Before activities: In this step, the teacher should make students feelenthusiastic about the activity Students also need to understand what they are going

to do, and when they will have finished the task they are going to get involved in.Therefore, the instructions teachers make in this step should be clear enough forstudents to understand and agree on what the task is

During activities: While students are working, it is time for the teacher toassist them with the knowledge and in tackling difficulties they have with the group.Also, he/ she can stand in the front or the side of the class (or at the back oranywhere else in the room), and keep an eye on what is happening, noting who orwhich group appears to be stuck or disengaged The teacher can then decide to helpthat group

After activities: When groups stop working together, the teacher needs toorganize feedback The teacher can let them discuss what occurred, add his/ herown assessments and make corrections It is important that the teacher not onlyevaluates the whole group-work but also each member of the group Constructivefeedback on the content of student work can greatly enhance the students’ future

motivation and inspire them the willingness to actively participate in the followingactivities

2.3 Previous studies

So far, a number of researches into the application of group work have beenconducted Presented below is the summary of the findings from similar researcheswhich also investigate the application of group work to enhance students speakingskill

Ningtyas Orilina Argawati (2014) conducted a study entitled “improvingstudents’ speaking skill using group discussion” The result of the study shows thatthere was significant improvement of the students’ speaking test results Groupwork also helped increase students’ confidence in speaking Siti Nurkasih (2009)also indicated that group-work techniques could create free atmosphere during thelearning process, make the classroom situation more alive, help improve both theteaching-learning situation in the classroom and students’ speaking skills Grouptechniques also made a contribution in increasing students’ motivation andparticipation

Divya John’s research, carried out in 2017 was a reflective study using asample activity conducted in the English class for engineering students Thesestudents were in an English class where all of them were well aware of theimportance of making improvement in their English speaking skill, because thishelped them to convey a complete and successful message to communicate.Evaluations of both students and the researcher were carried out and analyzed.Focusing on the factors analyzed, he came up with guidelines and recommendationsfor ideal group work and he suggested a 5D procedure which are:

1 Direct: the teacher directs the students how to go about the group work

2 Discuss: the students discuss among themselves

3 Develop: the students develop the content for presentation

4 Deliver: the students deliver the content in front of the class.

5 Document: the teacher documents the feedback

The researcher recommended creating meaningful activities, controlling theattitude of the students with careful internal evaluation and observation forspeaking, and including a final oral exam The study concluded with the idea thatthe best way to foster speaking skills is through group work and when done withenough planning and monitoring, group work can inspire students in any class,regardless of age, subject of study, aptitude and attitude

Ibtissem (2013) also admitted the significance of using work group tomotivate speaking skill in class In his research, he made effort to explain theimportance of establishing a comfortable and friendly environment as an attempt toget learners to use the language appropriately Therefore, the research targets todescribe two aspects: group work activities and its benefits in improving learners’speaking proficiency The relationship between group work activities and students’speaking output was studied The results revealed that group work is considered to

be the appropriate and quite effective technique for improving learners’ languageuse and classroom performance, which also affects learners’ oral proficiency

In Vietnam, researches into this topic matter are also common Pham ThanhMai (2007) did research into group discussion and its impacts on speaking ability ofthe EFL students in Military Science Academy She formed groups randomlythough to increase the reliability of the research, students participated in theresearch were selected in advance according to some criteria Pre-interventionquestionnaires and post-intervention questionnaire were distributed before and afterthe implementation of group work During the research period, the researchercarefully recorded group work and individual presentations on a weekly basis for aperiod of two-month study The results of the study show that group discussion has

great impact on speaking ability of the students Most of them found that theirspeaking ability had been improved after working in group discussion

Another research into the impacts of group work on students’ speakingability by Le Thuy Duong (2014) also showed that group work has positiveinfluence on students’ speaking ability It provides them more opportunities tospeak, helps them reduce anxiety and increase their confidence Thanks to regularpeer and group feedback, students step by step improved their fluency and accuracy

in speaking However, there were also some problems that the researcherencountered such as the difficulty level of the group task, the lack of time, effort tocontrol group work, the high level of noise Duong (2014) then made somesuggestions such as assigning a group leader, awarding students with goodperformance and simplifying the task for better group work practice

Do Thi Huyen (2017) also investigated the use of group work to improvefirst year students’ speaking skills at Hanoi University of Industry The study againconfirms the positive impacts of group work on students’ speaking ability,especially on students’ grammar and vocabulary mastery as well as fluency, whichwas proved by their improvements of scoring and performance In this study, theresearcher strictly followed the cycle of action research framework starting withplanning, then continuing with acting, observing and reflecting The researcher alsoproposed clear criteria for assessing pre-test and post-test in terms of pronunciation,grammar, word order, fluency and vocabulary Evaluation based on such criteriacan make it clear about the improvement of students’ speaking skills after thepurposeful implementation of group work activities

According to the previous studies’ results, the application of group work hassignificant impacts on enhancing students’ speaking ability as well as promotingtheir responsibility and motivation Therefore, the practitioner decided to conductsuch activity in her class and investigate its influence on her students and basing on

the research results to propose some suggestions on the effective use of group work

in her teaching context

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents a review of the methodology of the study It describes

in detail the subjects of the study, the research design, the procedures and the data collection instruments.

3.1 Participants and context of the study

The research was conducted at a high school in Bac Ninh for the period oftwelve weeks (from August 20th to November 11th 2018)

Participants of the research are 41 students of the 10th grade studying in thesame class For those students, English is a compulsory subject and they haveEnglish lessons every week, normally the frequency is three periods of forty-fiveminutes per week

The course book used is the new English text book named “English 10” Volume 1 by Hoang Van Van and Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa (2018), with thecooperation by David Kaye, published by Pearson Longman Press and Ministry ofEducation and Training The book consists of five units and two unit reviews Eachunit includes eight parts which are Getting started, Language, Reading, Speaking,Listening, Writing, Communication and culture, Looking back and Project In thefirst semester which lasts for twelve weeks with thirty seven periods, teachers arerequired to deal with the all units of volume 1 In the text book, speaking is afrequent classroom activity with practices range from more controlled to freer ones.More specifically, each unit starts by providing students with necessary languageinput and getting them to discuss simple matters, and ends with the preparation andcompletion of a project in which students are supposed to practice speaking in afreer and more complicated way

-3.2 Reasons to choose action research method

Dick (2002) defines action research as a natural way of acting andresearching at the same time It is a form of self-reflective inquiry that teachers canuse to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding

of these practices, and the situations in which these practices are carried out (Carr &Kemmis, 1983) Action research provides teachers a means to investigate their ownpractice, have an insight into what they and their students actually do and fail to do,develop a deeper understanding of students, and based on that they are more able todecide what works best and what needs improvement in their classrooms (Gay &Airasian, 2003)

Basing on the definition and description of an action research, it can be seenthat there are four distinguishing features making action research different fromother types of research Firstly, action research is conducted by teachers themselves.Conducting an action research helps teachers identify the problems in their teachingpractice as well as the problems their students encounter to be able to draw up aplan to solve it, implement and evaluate the effects of their solutions on theirstudents’ learning The second point is that action research is a reproduction cycle,which means after the evaluation, the process can be repeated with the revised plan.Thirdly, it is collaborative Teachers conducting an action research have toparticipate, collaborate, and examine their knowledge and the ways they interpretthemselves and their actions They do research in their own teaching context andcollect data about how they teach as all the data comes from the class on which theresearcher is working They invite students to study their own learning and tocomment on their teaching method, curriculum and organization of their learning.Last but not least, action research aims at changing things (Nunan, 1992) It meansthat for teachers, the study conducted aims to change and improve the situationwithin the class that they are taking care of, and it also affects the students’ output

to some extents

In this study, my purpose is to investigate the challenges that my studentsface in developing their speaking skills, identify the impacts of group workintervention on enhancing their speaking ability and based on the findings to makesuggestions on how to apply group work effectively in my own teaching context Toachieve these aims, action research framework seems to be the most suitable;therefore, I decided to do this research following the steps proposed for an actionresearch

3.3 Phases of action research

So far, a number of action research models have been proposed by variousresearchers According to Kemmis and Mctaggart (2000), action research hasnumber of cycles, each cycle of an action research often involves the planning of achange, the acting and observation of the process and the consequences of thechange, and the reflection on these processes and consequences After a cycle ends,the new cycle begins, following the same steps An illustration of action research'scycles by Kemmis and McTaggart (2000:564) is presented in the following figures

Figure 3.1 Action research spiral (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000:564)

The figure outlines four steps in action, the transition from one essentialphase to another and how the progress can be done through the system It can beclearly seen that in an action research study, the researcher does not stop afterreceiving the results from his actions He must evaluate the effectiveness of hisactions as well as the limitations of the methods After that, he should modify theplan, make some changes and do it again for better results These stages areinseparable but embedded in action and reflection

Figure 3.2: Action research framework (adapted from Lewin, 1946)

Figure 3.2 presents detailed action research model by Lewin (1946) The foursteps in this model are described as follows:

- Diagnosing and plan: the researcher needs to identify the problem byobserving the context or collecting information about the problem In addition,researcher also wishes to make a plan himself for the next action including opinion

of new method changing or any amendment for the current context The plan should

be clear enough to be understood and easy enough to be followed

- Implement action strategy: the researcher proposes different ways ormethods which can be used to solve the problem After considering the advantagesand disadvantages of different solutions, the researcher chooses one course ofactions to apply in the study context The new method applied should be suitable forspecific context.

- Evaluate action strategy: This is an important stage In this stage, theresearcher reviews what she or he has done and makes a conclusion on his own.The findings of research study might base on some extents of evaluation stage Theresearcher analyzes the data to find out the consequences of a taken action, presentsthe general findings, what can be solved and what remains problematic, from which

he adjusts the plan to act again and another cycle in an action research begins

In this study, the researcher underwent the following action researchframework by Kemmis and McTaggart (2000):

 Planning the action

 Implementing the action

 Observing the action

 Reflecting the action

3.4 Weekly schedules and research procedures

This part presents details about the group work topics and activities as well

as the procedures that the researcher followed to conduct this research

3.4.1 Weekly schedules

Due to the time constraint and the fact that there was a strict syllabus tofollow, the researcher could only implement activities focusing on the two majorparts in the textbook that require more speaking, namely Speaking and Project

The table below shows the topics, requirement, preparation and groupactivities of all speaking lessons that the researcher had to complete during the

twelve weeks of the research It also gives information about the procedures theresearcher followed in this period, which mainly involves the preparation processand the group speaking activities.

Table 3.1 The timetable of the action implementation

requirement

Preparation Group activity

1 Family Life Expressing

opinions about housework

- Ask and answer about household chores with at least two students in the class

- Report about their friends’likes and dislikes in groups

- Ask and answer questions

in the class

- Do a survey on family life of different students inthe class

- Report the survey results

and You

Talking about how toget rid of badhabits

- Read the habit list and decide which one is good/ bad, prepare some explanation for their judgments

- Brainstorm the ways to get rid of one bad habit

- Discuss why some habitsare good/ bad

- Discuss the do’s and the don’ts in order to kick a bad habit

- Ask and answer questions

in groups

- Get feedback from other group members and teacher

and You

Project:

Doing a survey on the

importance

- Go round the classand ask some students to rank the order of importance

of categories

in staying healthy

in staying healthy

- Make notes of the answers and their explanation

about TV shows

- Prepare a talk about a TV show

- Present about their ideas

Doing a research on afolk song and Dangdutsong

- Collect information about these two kinds of music

- Discuss the similarities and differences of these two kinds of music

- Get feedback from other group members and teacher

8 For a Better

Community

Talking about local community development

- Prepare a talk about three most important activities for community development and reasons why they are important

- Discuss in group and choose the three most important activities

- Prepare group presentation then present

in front of the class

- Listen to other groups’ presentation, discuss and votes for the most

interesting ideas

- Get feedback from other group members and teacher

9 For a Better

Community

Project:

Making a plan to help

a person/ a place in

- Find someone/ a place in their community that need help

- Make a report on

- Make a group presentation in front of the class, listen to other

groups’ contribution to the plans