Using english grammar tutorials to help 10 th graders develop their speaking skili at nong cong i high school

In the context of teaching English speaking skill in Vietnam, with theapplication of Communicative Language Teaching CLT, both English teachersand students still have been encountering t

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale for the study

In recent time, English, as a language of international communication andlingua franca, has been widely used and spoken worldwide for education,business, communication, and others purposes Admittedly, English has become

a means of international communication and one of the most popular languages

in the world It is used for almost all aspects of human life, such as mass media,business, sports, science and technology, education culture and so on Therefore,the knowledge and skills of English are highly valued As a result, someeducational institutions in Vietnam have introduced English since the pre-elementary level Moreover, in high schools, it is one of three core subjectstested in the National Examination

Regard to the importance of English as Foreign language (EFL), theteaching of EFL speaking has emphasized as an important skill in theVietnamese context In general, Richards and Renandya [2002: p.201] point outthat a large number of language learners study English in order to developproficiency in speaking In other word, speaking is usually considered as thecore skill in foreign language learning Because of the worldwide demand forgood communication in English language has increased, the responsibility of theEnglish language teacher has been recently stressed on

In the context of teaching English speaking skill in Vietnam, with theapplication of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), both English teachersand students still have been encountering tremendous problems Based on someresearches, there have been at least four main issues that some researchers andteachers often investigate Widiati and Cahyono [2006; p.277] report that theteaching of EFL speaking for secondary- level students deal with teachingproblems, classroom activities, teaching materials, and assessment These thingsare related to the improvement of the teaching quality of English speaking thatwould point out obvious picture of the teachers’ position and what they arenecessary to do

As a teacher of English with more than 18 years of experience at NongCong 1 high school, I noticed that my students are not motivated and qualifiedenough to speak English confidently, naturally compared with students of otherregions nationwide One reason for this is that they were not exposed to naturalspeaking environment at their lower secondary school as well as other practicalsetting to speak English More importantly, the inability to utilize their grammarknowledge to speak out is another serious problem Most of them did grammarexercise in written form instead of spoken one during their English lessons.Therefore, despite their considerable knowledge of grammar, the students fail touse the language they have learnt to communicate in real-life situations Thisresults in the lack of confidence, demotivation to communicate in spoken form

All the aforementioned reasons urged me to carry out the study entitled

“Using English grammar tutorials to help 10 th graders develop their speaking skill at Nong Cong 1 high school” Hopefully, the results will serve

as a useful source of reference for those who are concerned teaching andlearning speaking

1.2 Purpose of the study

This study aimed at gaining an insightful look into the use of grammartutorials to help 10th grade students develop their speaking skill

The aims are specified in the research question:

(1) To what extent does grammar tutorials improve student’s speaking skill?

1.3 Scope of the study

This study limited itself to focus on improving the 10th graders speakingperformance at class 10B5 of Nong Cong 1 high school Forty students involvedparticipation

1.4 Method of the study

This study using qualitative and quantitative research method aimed todetermine whether grammar tutorials can enhance students’ speaking skills o rhave a positive affect on the ability of students to utilize grammar andstructure they have learned to enhance their speaking I myself used datacollection instrument to gather information about the students involved, monitorthe progress of the students when they were tutored to use common grammarand structure throughout the study, and determine the effectiveness of thegrammar tutoring based on the students’ pre-test, post-test result

The pre-tests were necessary to assess the reading comprehension leveland skill the students possessed before the intervention of the strategy and used

as a baseline score The post-tests were used to determine the effectiveness

of the strategy used by the students during the experiment process bycomparing the pre-test scores to the posttest scores taken at the end of the study

to conclude the hypothesis

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 2.1 Literature Review

2.1.1 The speaking skill

Speaking skills is the ability to communicate in a new language based onits grammatical, contextual, social, and cultural rules There are many factorsaffecting the students’ learning speaking We can name some of major factors:voice, accent, intonation, stress, pronunciation, speed, etc

There are many definitions of speaking that have been proposed by someexperts in language learning Speaking is one of the four language skills taught

in the teaching of English People speak in order to express their idea, theirfeeling or respond to the other’s talk When the others can understand what hasbeen talked, it means that the speaker gets the meaning across Thornbury [8;p.20] mentions that speaking is an interactive real time activity to expressmeaning to interact with others that unplanned and just continues based onsituations However, the teacher must notice that in EFL context the studentsseldom try to produce their foreign language because they aware about the gaps

in their knowledge A speaker requires attention to precise details of thelanguage She/he needs to find the most appropriate words and the correctgrammar to convey meaning accurately and precisely and also need to organizethe discourse, so that a listener will understand According to him, speaking is

an interactive skill that requires the ability to have cooperation with the otheraspects of language Speaking skill needs to be developed and practicedindependently from the other aspects of language, such as grammar andlistening In that case, the teaching and learning process will be as interesting aspossible to be conducted in each classroom in order to make the studentsbecome more interested in learning the other aspects of language

Thornburry [8; p.40] proposes the terms of the basic knowledge thatenable speech in a second language, as follows:

- A core grammar

- A core vocabulary of at least 1000 high-frequency items

- Some common discourse markers

- A core -phrase book of multi-word units (chunks)

- Formulaic ways of performing common speech acts, such as requesting orinviting

- Mastery of those features of pronunciation that inhibit intelligibility

2.1.2 Fluency and accuracy

Many researchers and language practitioners believe that the constructs ofsecond language performance and second language proficiency are multi-componential in nature and that their principle dimensions can be adequately,comprehensively and captured by the notions of complexity, accuracy andfluency Shehan [7; p.80]

In term of Accuracy (or correctness), Wolfe-Quintero et al [10; p.105]shared their view that it is probably the oldest, most transparent and mostconsistent construct of the triad, referring to the degree of deviancy from aparticular norm Deviations from the norm are usually characterized as errors.Straightforward though this characterization may seem, it raises the thorny issue

of criteria for evaluating accuracy and identifying errors, including whetherthese criteria should be tuned to prescriptive standard norms (as embodied by anideal native speaker of the target language) or to non-standard and evennonnative usages acceptable in some social contexts or in some communities.There is not the same amount of (relative) denotative congruence in the appliedlinguistics community with regard to fluency and complexity as there is withregard to accuracy

In short, accuracy refers to how correct learners' use of the languagesystem is, including their use of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary.Accuracy is often compared to fluency when we talk about a learner's level ofspeaking or writing [12]

2.1.3 Assessing speaking ability

According to O’Malley [5; p.265], assessment of oral language shouldfocus on a student’s ability to interpret and convey meaning for authenticpurposes in interactive contexts It should include both fluency and accuracy.Cooperative learning activities that present students with opportunities to useoral language to interact with others whether for social or academic purposes areoptimal for assessing oral language

Brown and Yule [1; p.120] state that the oral component of Englishlanguage assessment may be based on a very general impression of how wellstudents speak This normally takes the form of an oral interview in which theexaminer asks students questions, or prompts students to talk on certain,sometimes pre-arranged topics

Sharing these ideas, Thornbury [8; p.147] states that there are two ways

to assess students’ speaking ability The first is known as a holistic scoring Inthe holistic scoring, the teacher only gives a single score on the basis on anoverall impression This holistic way has advantages of being quick and isperhaps suitable for informal testing of progress Then, the second way isthrough an analytic scoring which gives separate scores for different aspects ofthe task This scoring takes longer, but requires the teacher to take the variety offactors into account and it is probably fairer and more reliable However, onedisadvantage is that the score may be distracted by all categories and lose sight

of the overall situation performed by the students Therefore, four or fivecategories are probably to be the maximum criteria

2.1.4 Methods to assess speaking ability

Regarding to assessing speaking ability, the teachers should give outobjective grades in speaking class, and they can use the following criteria forevaluating students’ speaking abilities

The first criterion is to create a rubric Most teachers will be familiar withthe concept of grading with a rubric, a table with different criteria and a gradingscale

The second criterion is based on pronunciation Pronunciation is a basis

quality of language learning Though most second language learners will neverhave the pronunciation of a native speaker, poor pronunciation can obscurecommunication and prevent an ESL student from making his meaning known.When evaluating the pronunciation of our students, listen for clearly articulatedwords, appropriate pronunciations of unusual spellings, and assimilation andcontractions in suitable places Also, listen for intonation Listen for thesepronunciation skills and determine into which level the students fall

Vocabulary should also be taken into consideration Vocabulary

comprehension and vocabulary production are always two separate banks ofwords in the mind of a speaker, native as well as second language We shouldencourage students to have a large production vocabulary and a largerrecognition vocabulary

The next criterion relates to accuracy Grammar has always been andforever will be an important issue in foreign language study Writing sentencescorrectly on a test, though, is not the same as accurate spoken grammar Asstudents speak, listen for the grammatical structures and tools we have taughtthem Are they able to use multiple tenses? Do they have agreement? Is wordorder correct in the sentence? All these and more are important grammaticalissues, and an effective speaker will successfully include them in his or herlanguage

Fluency may be the easiest quality to judge in our students’ speaking.How comfortable are they when they speak? How easily do the words comeout? Are there great pauses and gaps in the student’s speaking? If there are thenyour student is struggling with fluency Fluency is a judgment of this ease ofcommunication and is an important criterion when evaluating speaking

2.1.5 Principles for teaching EFL speaking

In the research of speaking skill, Chaney [2; p.13] defines speaking as

"the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts” Despite its importance, for manyyears, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language teachershave continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization ofdialogues However, today's world requires that the goal of teaching speakingshould improve students' communicative skills, because, only in that way,

non-students can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and culturalrules appropriate in each communicative circumstance

Sharing the same ideas, Nunan [4; p.54] states some of the followingteaching speaking principles which should be mastered by the teacher oflanguage:

Firstly, be aware of the differences between second language and foreignlanguage learning contexts, learning speaking skills in the foreign languagecontext is very challenging because the students only have little opportunities topractice in their environment

Secondly, give students practice with both fluency and accuracy Fluencyand accuracy are important in speaking skills

Thirdly, provide opportunities for students to talk by using group work orpair work, and limiting teacher talk

Next, plan speaking tasks that involve the negotiation for meaning.Speaking tasks mean activities to communicating appropriately and acceptablywith others in the target language The negotiation for meaning happens whenother students try to understand what their friend said by asking clarification,confirmation, or explanation

Finally, design classroom activities that involve guidance and practice inboth transactional and interactional speaking There are two purposes inspeaking They are transactional and interactional purposes Transactionalpurposes mean communicating to get something done such as expression ofasking for information, asking for complains, responding for complains and etc

2.2 Grammar in speaking

2.2.1 The importance of grammar in speaking

Grammar is the sound, structure, and meaning system of language Alllanguages have grammar, and each language has its own grammar People whospeak the same language are able to communicate because they intuitively knowthe grammar system of that language - that is the rules of making meaning.Students who are native speakers of English already know English grammar.They recognize the sounds of English words, the meanings of those words, andthe different ways of putting words together to make meaningful sentences.However, while students may be effective speakers of English, they needguidance to become effective writers They need to learn how to transfer theirknowledge of grammatical concepts from oral language to spoken language Effective grammar instruction begins with what students already knowabout grammar, and it helps them use this knowledge as they speak Byconnecting their knowledge to oral language, teachers can demystify abstractgrammatical terminology so that students can speak or listen with greatercompetence and confidence

2.2.2 Teaching grammar for speaking

Hillocks and Smith [3; p.25] show that systematic practice in sentencecombining can increase students' knowledge of syntactic structures as well as

improve the quality of their sentences, particularly when stylistic effects arediscussed as well Sentence-combining exercises can be either written or oral,structured or unstructured Structured sentence-combining exercises givestudents more guidance in ways to create the new sentences; unstructuredsentence-combining exercises allow for more variation, but they still requirestudents to create logical, meaningful sentences

To help students revise boring, monotonous sentences, teachers might askstudents to read their sentence aloud to partners This strategy helps both thepartner and the speaker to recognize when, for example, too many sentencesbegin with "It is" or "There are." Both the partner and the speaker can discussways to vary the sentence beginnings After the speaker revises the sentences,the partner can read the sentences aloud Then both can discuss the effectiveness

of the revision

2.3 Tutorials

Student tutorials are generally more academically challenging andrigorous than standard lecture and test format courses, because during eachsession students are expected to orally communicate, defend, analyze, andcritique the ideas of others as well as their own in conversations with the tutorand fellow-students As a pedagogic model, the tutorial system has great valuebecause it creates learning and assessment opportunities which are highlyauthentic and difficult to fake

Good tutorial teaching is inspiring, exacting, challenging and fulfilling fortutors and students alike In this study, I look briefly at the genesis of tutorials inorder to show the relationship between tutorial teaching and collegiateorganization, and in order to reveal some of the concealed assumptions thatunderlie modern-day tutoring I then present a model for conceptualizing thedynamic relationships between the worlds of the student, the tutor, anddisciplinary knowledge

2.3.1 Definition of tutorials

At its simplest, the Oxford tutorial is an approach to university tuition inwhich students are tutored in the subject they are studying, for about an hour aweek, on their own or with one or two partners, and by a scholar in theirdiscipline Writing in 1969, W.G Moore [9; p.12] described the typical artstutorial as:

The tutorial is a weekly meeting of the student with the teacher to whom he is specially committed…[It requires] the preparation of a weekly essay, which is presented orally, listened to by the tutor and discussed immediately…A usual feature of the method is its informality It all happens…in the tutor’s…college set of rooms…with easy chairs set near the fire…

Although some tutors do still require the oral presentation of an essay,there is now very considerable variation in how tutors approach structuring thetutorial hour Oxford tutors are an extremely inventive group, and according to

the demands of their discipline have over the years formulated a range ofdifferent ways of working with their students In those disciplines in which anOxford education does still mean learning to think by writing, a significantproportion of tutors require the weekly essay to be handed in before or after thetutorial Some tutors mark and return work to the student with a grade attached.Others regard a mark as redundant, and choose only to comment upon the paper,either in writing or orally In the sciences and mathematics the tutorial hour will

be focused not upon an essay but upon structured problem solving of one sort oranother Some science tutors may no longer take their students through an entirecourse of tutorials, teaching instead only those topics in which they specialize.Tutorials are generally intended to:

- Help students to gain a deep understanding of the subject matter in theirdiscipline - discussion in tutorials helps students to see the significance andimplications of their knowledge so they can apply what they have learned innew contexts; students should also develop a healthy skepticism about theliterature

- Enable students to learn how to think, for instance to synthesize disparatesources, to formulate a thesis and justify it, to anticipate criticisms of theirarguments, and to respond to questions and challenges – thinking 'on one’s feet'– in the tutorial setting

- Develop students’ basic academic skills (e.g identification and evaluation

of relevant resources, effective communication both orally and in writing,effective time-management, critical self-assessment)

- Enable students to pursue their individual academic interests within thecontext of their subject

- Develop students’ ability to think and act like a professional in theirdiscipline, like a classicist, mathematician, historian, scientist, or social scientist,rather than like a student 'covering' a syllabus in classics, math, history or ascience

- Foster a close relationship between student and tutor over the course of theacademic degree, thereby personalizing students’ university experience andsupporting students’ overall personal development throughout their studentcareer

To achieve this purpose, tutorials are organized differently across theuniversity, depending on discipline, the stage of the student’s course and tutors’own styles

2.3.2 Principles of tutorials

Tutorials take a variety of forms Occasionally students are taught insingletons; pairs are much more common, and threesomes and foursomes arealso found There is no simple advice about the 'best number' of students toteach at a time An important consideration is that the larger the group, the lesspossible it is to provide individual attention or to be flexible and match content

to the particular level or interests of individual students Groups of two or three

are probably the most effective, offering the advantage of supporting discussionand argument between students: as well as being productive in itself, this canserve to lift students' confidence in expressing their ideas Singleton teachingcan be extremely successful and especially enjoyable, but, as a very personalapproach to teaching, it is unavoidably influenced by the degree of compatibilitybetween student and tutor; in particular, it is essential there be a good level ofunderstanding and trust – singleton tutorials can be disastrous if a student findsthem intimidating.

2.3.4 Benefits of tutorials in teaching

Learning is not only about memorizing, practicing, and examinations It

is also about the ability to reason, debate, and think independently – allattributes that need to be developed for future success at university and in theworkplace Development of this ability requires a student to be challengedthrough discussion, debate and direct contact with a tutor In today’s world,information is more freely available and accessible than ever before and webelieve that this method, which focuses on the processing of concepts, ideas andknowledge through discussion, is more relevant than ever before

The tutorial method is the most useful when both students and tutors meet

a number of conditions The first of which is that the students will do therequired work prior to the tutorial The students should aim to come to eachtutorial having already absorbed the information and knowledge that the tutorwill flesh out through discussion The second is that the tutors should provideregular feedback, both during and after each tutorial The tutor should direct thethinking and discussion during the tutorial toward topics and concepts that thestudents are having difficulty with or may not have considered Feedbackduring the tutorial will help the students challenge their thinking and knowledge;whilst feedback after the tutorial, in the form of comments and grades in reports,helps the students and the tutor to measure the students’ progress; yet there havebeen no concrete benefits of grammar tutorials in improving writing skill forEFL high school students all over the world up to now

2.4 Research context

2.4.1 Setting and participants

This study was conducted in 16 weeks from October 2019 to January

2020 in class 10B5 at Nong Cong 1 high school in rural area of Thanh Hoaprovince

Thirty 10th graders involved in the study They mainly came from thecountryside In general, they had learnt English for over 7 years However, theirproficiency is not satisfactory enough, and their learning style is quite passive

In addition, they hardly acquired any effective skills in speaking, especially inreal context as a presenter In their opinion, learning English means gettinggrammar and structures with common lexical resources As a result, they werealmost beginners in speaking as a high school student

After one month studying at my school, their language skills regardingreading, writing had improved a little bit In term of speaking skills, thestudents had been accustomed to basic reading aloud a short sentence with somesmall pronunciation mistakes Speaking long sentence fluently, accurately orpresenting is almost impossible to them.

2.4.2 The textbook

The reading materials used in the study consisted of selected texts fromnew English Textbook 10 (learner-centered and communicative approach withtheme-based teaching) published by Education Publishing House and Pearson

In the textbook, there are 10 units with diverse topics related to 4 themes: Our

lives, Our society, Our environment, Our future 5 sections were included in one

unit namely: Getting started, Language, Skills, Communication and Culture,Looking back and Project in which there are some Looking back and Projectlessons are not simple enough that did not require a lot tutoring from the teacher.However, some of the Project required a lot of attention and time to be fulfilled

It is hoped that English teachers will have a better insight look in tutoringstudents to integrate their knowledge into conducting the Project requirements.The study was conducted when the participants were in the first semester whenthey already had had knowledge about basic structures as well as vocabulary intextbook in lower secondary level Therefore, the author found that it matchedwith the objectives of the learning program and students’ levels of competence

In the narrow scope of this study, I only focused on using grammartutorials to improve the students’ speaking skill in two Project parts of Lookingback and Project lessons namely Unit 3: Music - Period 25 – Looking back andProject and Unit 7: Cultural Diversity- Period 70- Looking back and Project

2.4.3 The reality of teaching and learning speaking skill at Nong Cong 1 high school

As mentioned above, speaking skill (presenting skill) in Project lesson in

new Tieng Anh 10 is the last part if the eighth lesson that make up of one unit in

the textbook In order to fulfill their project required in the Textbook, the teacher

is obliged to provide students with guidance how to do, what to do with theirProject in which targeted Grammar and structure of overall lesson isindispensible The students in our school, however, have been facing numerouschallenges in speaking lesson because of their poor source of vocabulary,structures They are unaware of utilizing what they have learnt in the lessoneffectively to produce the lesson outcomes Some get tired of speaking in front

of other people In addition, most of them have difficulty using the obtainedstructure and background knowledge to produce their utterances Moreover,Project- based learning is unfamiliar to students from lower secondary schools.They are not experienced enough to work in group and make their lessonoutcome confidently

Of all speaking skills targeted in new English 10, only presenting skill insome Project lessons are mentioned in this study

2.5 Stages of the study

2.5.1 Pre-test and post-test

The pre-test and post-test were designed to assess the students’ ability

(see appendix 1 and appendix 2) They were consisted of topics which the

students were required to speak about 3 to 5 minutes The topics relate to somekinds of music they have listened and the main features of Vietnamese culturesthey have been exposed to A marking scheme was designed to evaluate theparticipants’ speaking in terms of fluency and accuracy The speaking products

of each student were recorded and marked independently by two teachers toensure inter-rater reliability

To measure students' fluency, researchers have developed a simple andvery brief procedure that uses recorded tapes to determine the number of wordsthat students can speak in one minute

To measure students’ speaking accuracy, I subtracted the total number oferrors from the total of one hundred spoken words An error includes any wordthat is omitted, mispronounced, or misused Each time a word is spokenincorrectly, it is counted as an error Words delivered correctly that are repeatedmore than once, errors self-corrected by the student, and words mispronounceddue to dialect or speech impairments are not counted as errors

2.5.2 Conducting project parts in a language classroom

Step 1: Initial question

At this phase, the teacher starts the teaching and learning process bygiving students essential questions The questions need to be the ones whichengage the students and relevant to the goals that the students must achieveduring the project development The questions must be in relation to theknowledge that the students must construct and the topic must fit to theirproficiency level It ought to be related with students’ daily life

Step 2: Design a plan for the project

The design of a plan for the project involves not only the teacher but alsothe students In designing the plan for the project, the teacher gives studentschance to participate by sharing their ideas on the projects which they are about

to work on in order to make the project meet with the students’ interest,capability, and expectation The design of plan for the project includes theexplanation about the rules of the project development, the selection of thematerials, the activities leading to the project accomplishment, and the toolsneeded for the project

Step 3: Tutor students with Grammar and structure.

Draw students’ attention to the project objectives as well as how to realize

this objective Equip them with grammar focus in the lesson, that is, infinitives,

compound sentences, passive voice to do research on Vietnamese celebrations.

Step 4: Create a schedule

At this stage, the teacher and students discuss about the time allocation

of working on the project The teacher and students make an agreement about

the deadline of the project development in which the students must submit theirend product.

Step 5 Monitor the students and the progress of the project

Monitoring students’ progress on the project is the most crucial stage ofproject development It is very prominent since the success of projectaccomplishment is determined by how good the students do their project.Moreover, it is at this stage in which the teacher is required to play the role as amonitor The teacher is responsible to facilitate the learning process, to guide thestudents during the project development, to help students when they finddifficulties, and to ensure that the student is involved in the project

Step 6 Assess the outcome

After the students turn in their end product, the teacher conductsassessment to measure the students’ achievement It can be product- oriented orprocess-oriented The teacher also provides students with feedback at this phase.Assessing the outcome helps teacher in designing instruction to teach moreeffectively

Step 7 Evaluate the experience

This is the last stage of project development where the teacher andstudents reflect on the project they have done At this stage, the teacher needs tomake sure that the students are able to find answers of essential question Theteacher and students share their experience of conducting the project and discussabout the projects, what needs change and improvement for the following