Improving english speaking skill to 10 TH from student at nong cong i high school

Being a teacher of a high school, I would like to investigate the reasons of thestudents’ inhibition and unwillingness to speak English, and I hope to be able to makesome recommendations

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

I Rationale of the study 1

II Aims of the study 2

III Scope of the study 3

IV Method of the study 3

V Design of the study 3

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 4

Chapter I: Research methodology, data analysis and discussions 4

I Research methodology 4

1 Research questions 4

2 The participants 4

3 The instruments 5

4 Conclusion 7

II Data analysis and discussion 7

1 Questionnaires 7

2 Conclusion 24

Chapter II: Findings and recommendations 25

1 Summary of the findings 25

2 Recommendations 26

PART THREE: CONCLUSION 31

1 Summary of the study 31

2 Limitations and suggestions for further study 32

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

I Rationale of the study.

When it comes to English, people immediately think of it as a global language: theofficial language of more than 53 countries and territories, the official language of the

EU and the third most widely used language only after Chinese and Spanish (you shouldnote that China has a population of more than 1 billion people) International events,global organizations also consider English as the language of communication

In addition, English is spoken by more than 400 million people worldwide, morethan 1 billion people speak English as a second language (according to Wikipedia), themost developed countries with the highest per capita income on the world are allproficient in English, or commonly used, taught as school subjects

For Vietnam, a country standing in front of an era of development, expanding withthe door of globalization, do you see the importance of learning English With students,students, future generations of the country, learning English becomes even morenecessary than ever

Understanding that, Vietnam's education system has put English as a compulsorysubject in school chair since elementary school years English is also a mandatorygraduation exam at all levels English has been widely taught in schools, universities,companies as well as in organizations There are also many different English teachingprograms available on radio, television and internet

It is widely accepted that one of the main purposes of studying English is to use itfor communications Being able to speak English is an important criterion to assess alearner of English However, it is a common issue at my school that the students rarelyspeak English, even in English classes, though they have been learning English sincethey started at the lower secondary school

Being a teacher of a high school, I would like to investigate the reasons of thestudents’ inhibition and unwillingness to speak English, and I hope to be able to makesome recommendations that can help the students overcome their inhibition andunwillingness, and thereby improve their speaking skill My experience idea‘s namely

“Improving English Speaking skill to 10 th -form students at Nong Cong I High School”.

II Aims of the study.

The study is aimed at:

- Investigating the current English speaking teaching and learning situations ofgrade 10 at Nong Cong I High School

- Identifying the factors which make the students inhibited or unwilling to speak English

in class

- Making some suggestions for the teachers at Nong Cong I High School with the hope

of helping the students overcome their inhibition and unwillingness, and therebyimprove their speaking skills

- Suggesting some realistic and appropriate class teaching techniques with the hope thatthey can enhance the learners in speaking skill

III Scope of the study.

To improve speaking skill for the students at Nong Cong I High School, variousactivities can be used, and a number of things should be done However, the researcheronly intends to overview a brief of the current situations of teaching and learningEnglish speaking skills of grade 10 at Nong Cong I High School, and to identify thefactors which make the students inhibited and unwilling to speak English, and to makesome recommendations to motivate students to speak English more

IV Method of the study.

To realize the aims of the study, quantitative and qualitative methods have beenused The data collected for the study came from two sources: the 10th- form studentrespondents and the teacher-respondents at Nong Cong I High School, Thanh Hoaprovince

Two questionnaires, one for students and the other for teachers, and an interview ofteachers are going to be used to collect information and evidence for the study All thecomments, remarks, recommendations and conclusions provided in the study are based

on the data analysis

V Design of the study

The minor study consists of three parts:

- Part one: introduction

- Part two: development

- Part Three: conclusion

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT Chapter I: Research methodology, data analysis and discussions

This chapter deals with the methodology, data analysis and discussions have beenemployed to achieve the aims and objectives of the study In order to collect the data,both quantitative and qualitative methods have been used

I Research methodology

1 Research questions

In this paper, the reasons for the unwillingness to speak English of the 10th formstudents in Nong Cong I High School have been investigated Then some techniquesthat can help to improve the students’ speaking skills will be suggested

1 Why are the 10th – form students at Nong Cong I High School inhibited andunwilling to speak English in class?

2 What should be done to help the students overcome these above problems, andimprove their speaking skills?

2 The participants.

In order to get the data for the study, 120 students from three 10th-form classes andfive teachers of English teaching grade 10 at Nong Cong I High School, Thanh Hoaprovince have been randomly selected for investigation

The students all come from countryside Most of them are at the age of 16, so theybelong to the same psychological age group Their time length of learning English isalso the same They all started learning English at grade 6 They all have a low culturalstandard Students at this school do not have much time to learn, they spend all theirtime working on the farm so the time for students study is limited

The five teachers who were invited to join the study are all full-time teachers at theschool One of them has been at work for ten years, the two other for eight years, one forthree years, and the last one for two years

3 The instruments.

Data for the study was obtained with two different instruments: questionnaire andinterview

a The questionnaire

Two questionnaires were designed: one for students and the other for teachers Thequestionnaire for teachers is written in English It consists of ten questions concerningfour aspects:

- Teachers’ opinion on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

- Difficulties they usually encounter when teaching grade 10

- Teachers’ opinion on reluctant speakers, the students keep making the samemistakes and the way to correct them

- Their recent techniques to motivate reluctant speakers

The questionnaire for students is written in English, too It consists of fourteenquestions concerning to some aspects, as follows:

- (Question 1) Students’ assessment of speaking topics in the textbook “English10”

- Students’ attitude toward speaking skill (Questions 2, 3, 4)

- Factors making students reluctant to speak English in English classes (Qs 5, 6)

- Current methods applied to speaking skills (Questions 7, 8)

- Current implementations to encourage students to speak English (Qs 9,10,11, 12)

- Students’ desires (Qs 13, 14)

b The interview

An interview was carried out for more in-depth data The interviewers were fiveteachers teaching English 10 at the school Each of them was asked five questions (seeAppendix B) The two first questions are about their teaching techniques and steps inspeaking lessons The next is about their thought of the design of speaking lesson in thenew textbook “English 10” The two last questions focus on their ideas about the criteria

of a good speaking lesson, and their common feeling about the speaking lessons theygave The interview is a structured one in which “the agenda is totally predetermined bythe researcher, who works through a list of the set questions in a pretermined order”

4 Conclusion

This part presented the research questions, participants, instruments, andprocedures of data collection and analysis In a best attempt to build a scientific

methodology, the researcher hopes to achieve a reliable and valid data for the study.Next, is the presentation of the data analysis and discussion.

II Data analysis and discussion

1 Questionnaires.

1.1 Questionnaire for teachers.

Questionnaire for teachers consisting of ten questions is designed to find out theinformation concerning four aspects The questions and responses to them are presented

in the headings below

a Difficulties in teaching process at Nong Cong I High School.

Question 4 of the questionnaire asks about the difficulties that the teachersencounter in their teaching grade 10 at the school The information collected shows thatnone of the five teachers experience the same difficulties in their teaching Especially,two of them complain that class sizes and students’ low English proficiency are the twodifficulties they have encountered, while another says her students’ English proficiency

is not good enough for lesson requirements, and as to the three others, it is multi-levelclasses that matters them With my own experience from several years’ teaching atschool, these are not the distinctive difficulties of any school in Son La Besides, thesufficient substance conditions of schools also matters the teachers a lot Due todifficulties, it is not easy for teachers to get a high effect in teaching without their greatattempt and creativeness

b Teachers’ attitude towards reluctant speakers and the learners keeping making the same mistakes, and way to correct them.

These two aspects are the aims of questions 5, 6 and 7 All the teachers opened outthat they have never been angry with their students’ reluctant or mistakes, but verytolerant They just keep silent until their students have finished their task, smile andencourage them to go on Moreover, three of them rarely interrupt for correction of theirstudents’ mistakes, while two others are sometimes not patient enough to wait until theirstudents have finished their presentation and correct the mistakes, but correct them whenthey are speaking When being asked about the solutions to students’ reluctance tospeak, the researcher finds that the teachers do not get angry, make students speak or

ignore those solutions, but try to encourage students to speak by asking them easierquestions.

c Teachers’ current techniques to motivate reluctant speaking learners at Nong Cong I High School.

The information about this aspect is the aim of the questions 8, 9 and 10 Helpingstudents interested in a lesson is an art in teaching Being asked about the techniques for

it, three out of five teachers say they usually praise their students, but two others answerthat they encourage them in many different ways depending on situations

Making students interested in lessons by praising them is quite a good way but Imyself prefer the latter, which is teachers should have different ways to interest students

in different situations

Students may feel unwilling to speak as they are afraid of their teachers Making aclose relation with students to motivate them is thus something teachers should do Thefinding shows that to make students feel a close relation to the teachers, the teachers atthis school avoid remaining in the teacher’s seat or standing at the blackboard, but walkaround the class and give help

Group - work and pair - work are two of the activities which the teachers here oftenuse to give chance to their students to practise speaking The disadvantage of these twoactivities is that students may chat in their mother tongue without the teacher’s goodcontrol To prevent this possibility, four out of the teachers move around the class andobserve, while the only other reminds his students of speaking English

In my own opinion, reminding students of speaking English is not a good way toprevent students from speaking Vietnamese as students’ voluntaries is not always high;they may not speak in the target language without the teacher’s observation In addition

to reminding them, teachers need to go around and observe what students are doing

In summary, it can be seen from the responses to the questionnaire for teachers thatthe teachers teaching grade 10 at Nong Cong I High School have all been trained inCLT Although not all of them have a full understanding of CLT, they have attempted toapply it in their speaking teaching reality afterwards However, the effect of CLT islimited

1.2 Questionnaire for students.

a Students’ assessment of speaking topics in the text book “English 10”.

Question one in the questionnaire is designed to explore students’ assessment ofthe text book “English 10” The result of 120 respondents is shown at rate in the tablebellow:

Options

Question

A(%) (%)B (%)C (%)DQuestion

1 How do you find the speaking topics presented in class, based on “English 10”?

A Interesting B All right

C Boring D Too boring

Table 1: Students’ assessment of speaking topics in the text - book “English 10”.

Of 120 respondents, seventy-two students finds the speaking topics in the textbook

“English 10” interesting which takes 60% 34% finds the topics all right The number ofstudents that have negative assessment is minimal, only six percent

The result reveals that speaking topics in the textbook are not the factor that causes

to unexciting atmosphere in speaking classes, because the rate of students that haspositive assessment of the topics takes the majority The cause of the problem is,therefore, not the material, but something else which should be explored in otheraspects

b Students’ attitude towards speaking skill.

The questions 2, 3 and 4 are designed to discover students’ attitude towards speaking skills The specific questions and students’ responses are shown in table 2.

Options

Questions

A(%) (%)B (%)C (%)D

Question 2 How is speaking skills important to you?

A very important B rather important

C little important D not important at all

80.3 16.7 1.5 1.5

Question 3 How much do you feel interested in

speaking English classes?

A very interested B rather interested

C little interested D not interested at all

Question 4 Do you feel reluctant to speak English in

class?

A Yes, often

B Yes, sometimes

C No, I like speaking very much

D No, I speak English willingly

Table 2: Students’ attitude towards speaking skills.

Being asked about the importance of English speaking skill, most of students findthat speaking skill is very important to them It takes 80.3%; 16.7% says that it is ratherimportant, and the percentage defying it is very small, which takes 3.0% However,when being asked about their interest in speaking English in class, there is only 22.9%

of students says it is very interested; 35% is rather interested while the percentage that

is not interested makes the biggest group, which takes 42.1% In question four, six percent often feels reluctant to speak English in class while 51.1% of students isrespondent sometimes Only 22.9% does not feel reluctant to speak English in class

twenty-In short, it can be said that most of the respondents suppose speaking is animportant skill However, the percent of students often feel reluctant to speak English inclass is bigger than that of students interested in speaking English in class So thequestion raised here is what factor makes nearly half of the students uninterested andover two third reluctant to speak English in class? The following responses will be theanswer to the question

c The factors that make students reluctant in speaking English.

The next questions 5 and 6 attempt to find out the factors that make studentsreluctant to speak English in class The questions, possible answers and responses can

be seen in table 3 bellow:

Options

Questions

A(%) (%)B (%)C (%)D

Question 5 What factors make you reluctant to speak

English in class?

A Being afraid of losing face

B Being not accustomed to speaking

C Learning goal is not to communicate

in English

D Boring teaching way

Question 6 What do you think often deter your speaking

process?

A Unability to find words

B Unability to find ideas

C Unability to find structures

D Not enough time for preparation

Table 3: The factors that make students reluctant in speaking English.

Statistics provided in table 3 shows that 76.1% of the respondents are afraid oflosing face in front of teachers and classmates while the other 15.6 percent of studentsresponses they speak English unwillingly in class as they are not accustomed tospeaking english in class that was effected by their prior learning experiences at school.The percentage of responses complaining about teaching method is up to 2.0% and14.9% of the students answer that the goal in their study is not to communicate inEnglish

It can also be realized in table 3 that 12.8 % of the respondent supposes one of thefactors deterring students to speak English in classroom is that they are unable to findthe ideas for the given topics, while the other 19% of them states their poor vocabulary

is an obstacle for them to express their ideas 33.2% of the students answers that theycan not speak since they can not find structures to express their ideas Also, thirty-fivepercent responses that they are not given enough time for the preparation of their topics

In summary, it has seen from table 3 that most of the students choose option B inquestion 5 It means that they are not accustomed to speaking English It is obvious thatoutside classroom they are not accustomed to speaking English, and especially they notonly communicate in Vietnamese but also in their language However, in Englishclasses, the teachers have to make speaking English their habit Only by doing this way,can students’ language learning gain the right goal to communicate

There is not too much difference in percentage of options in question six However,the four options are the problems that can be blamed for teaching

d Current methods and techniques applied to teach speaking skill.

Questions 7 and 8 are designed to find out what methods and techniques applied toteach speaking skill by teachers The questions, answer choices and responses aredisplayed in table 4:

Options

Questions

A(%) (%)B (%)C (%)D

Question 7 What do you think your teacher’s talking

D waits until you have finished yourpresentation, points out your mistakes andencourages you to correct them yourself

1.2 14.5 12.1 72.2

Table 4: Current methods and techniques applied to teach speaking skills.

As we can see in table 4, 48.4% of students comment that their teachers’ talkingtime in speaking lessons is enough The second taking 30.2% responses their teacherstalk too little The rest say that their teachers talk too much or too little time duringspeaking lessons

It can be easily recognized from table 4 that most of the students (72.2%) respondthat their teachers often point out their mistakes and encourage them to correct their

mistakes themselves after they have finished a speaking task while only a few of thestudents state their teachers usually point out their mistakes and correct them when theyhave finished their speech The percentage of students finds that their teachers do not getangry but interrupt for correcting when they make a speaking mistake which takes14.5%, and 1.2% of students may not feel satisfied with their teachers’ teaching whencomplaining that their teachers often get angry and interrupt them whenever they makemistakes.

To sum up, through data collection from the findings in table 4, most of theteachers at this school take more focus on fluency and contents than on accuracy andforms Teachers do not often stop students to correct mistakes until the students stopspeaking This means that the teachers here talk too much in class Obviously, studenttalking time is limited

e Current implementations to encourage the students to speak more.

Four questions are aimed at the current implementations to encourage the students

to speak English more All the choices and responses in table 5 below:

Options

Questions

A(%) (%)B (%)C (%)DQuestion

A provides you with new words and structuresrelating to the topics

B provides you with main ideas of the topics

C encourages you to plan the topics

D makes you discuss the topics yourselves

53 11

Question

10 What does your teacher usually do to encourage you to practise speaking?

A uses communicative games

B creates topics interesting and appropriates

to your level

C supports some suggested questions

D uses group work

11 Are you given enough time to prepare the answer to a question?

A Yes, usually enough

B Yes, sometimes enough

12 What does your teacher do after finishing a topic discussion?

A encourages students to keep talking aboutthe topic outside the class

B only corrects mistakes

C appreciates your presentation and draws outexperience

D does nothing

5.9 15

Table 5: Current implementation to encourage the students to speak more.

The data collected from question 9 in table 5 points out that most of learners whichtakes seventeen percent comment that their teachers almost do nothing after giving them

a topic for discussion, while 53% of them states that their teachers help them discuss thetopic by giving them some words, structures or main ideas related to the given topics.While 11.9% assumes that their teachers provide them main ideas of the topics, and thepercentage of students responses their teachers often encourage them to plan the topics-taking 18.1%.62% of the students use group work in question 10 The students say theirteachers use communicative games to encourage them to speak, which takes 3.2%(option A), while the percentage of students choose options B is 17% to express thattheir teachers give topics interesting and appropriate to their level and option C to saythat their teachers support some suggested questions to encourage them to practisespeaking

Question 11 is aimed at the time to prepare the answer to a question Of the fouroptions suggested, the students (50%) takes option B as their response to express thatthey sometimes have enough time The second biggest percentage (35.9%) is of thosewho choose option A to admit they usually have enough time for preparation The others