Applying cooperative learning principles to the teaching of english speaking skills in large classes at ba đình high school

THE CURRENT SITUATION OF APPLYINGCOMPENSATION STRATEGIES IN LISTENING 15 THANH HOA PROVINCE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING BA ĐÌNH HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE APPLYING COOP

TABLE OF CONTENTS

17 2.The importance of compensation strategies in listening 6

19 3.1.Raising awareness of compensation strategy training 7

21 3.3.Teaching basic grammatical rules and phonological rules 8

31. II THE CURRENT SITUATION OF APPLYINGCOMPENSATION

STRATEGIES IN LISTENING

15

THANH HOA PROVINCE DEPARTMENT OF

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

BA ĐÌNH HIGH SCHOOL

EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE

APPLYING COOPERATIVE LEARNING PRINCIPLES TO THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS IN LARGE CLASSES AT BA ĐÌNH HIGH SCHOOL,

NGA SƠN, THANH HÓA

Implementer: Nguyễn Thị Lan Anh Job title: Teacher

School: Ba Đình high school – Nga Sơn Experience initiative: English

THANH HOÁ 2020

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the Study

Entering the 21st century, under the impact of globalization Vietnam is facing a range

of political, social, economic, technological and educational changes It is widely acceptedthat the shift from a central economy to a mixed system with both socialist and market sectorssince the late 1990s has required the Vietnamese education system to carry out remarkablechanges Today, people insist that education and training must not only be able to equipstudents with new scientific and cultural knowledge but also develop their reasoning thought,creative abilities and team work skills

Language teaching is a complex process involving many interrelated factors Besidessuitable and effective methods of teaching language, classroom interaction is considered asthe most vital element in language learning process The emphasis on individual achievementand transmission of information has become inadequate in supporting the development ofstudents’ thinking and learning skills The best way is to enable students to become activelyinvolved in their learning processes, which will provide them with more opportunities todevelop important knowledge and skills for today’s labour market

It is clear that one of the main goals of learning English is to use it effectively incommunication Speaking skill, more or less, is an important skill that students must acquire

in the learning process Since the application of the new textbooks, speaking skill has had adifferent position at upper secondary schools

As we know, learning a foreign language is a process in which learners do not have anatural communication environment like native people Thus, in order to help students master

a foreign language as a means of communication, the teacher plays an important role infinding out the ways to make their speaking lessons more interesting and productive.Accordingly, nowadays, instead of making use of activities that demand accurate repetitionand memorization of sentences and grammar patterns, activities that ask learners to negotiatemeaning and to interact meaningfully are required

All the reasons mentioned above encouraged the researcher to carry out the study

"Applying cooperative learning principles to the teaching of English speaking skills in large classes at Ba Đình high school” with the hope to contribute her small part

to improving the teaching and learning of the speaking skill for students at Ba Đình highschool

2 Aims of the Study

The study aims at answering the following questions:

- What are the difficulties of teaching English speaking skills in large classes at

Ba Đình high school?

- To what extend did the application of cooperative learning principles improveEnglish speaking skills of students in large classes at Ba Đình high school?

3.The Participants

In this individual research, the researcher will only focus on the effectiveness ofapplying CL principles in teaching speaking skills to two large classes 11A, 11K at BaĐình high school The speaking activities are selected and adapted the text book Thedata collected from classroom observation, informal interviews and questionnaires arethen analyzed by the researcher

4 Scope and Significance of the Study

The study is divided into three main parts The contents covered in each part are asfollows:

- Part A is the introduction which gives the rationale of the study, the objectives, theresearch questions, the scope, methods and organization of the study

- Part B is the development of the study which comprises 3 chapters Chapter 1presents the literature reviews of the study Chapter 2 describes the process ofimplementation of the study such as data collecting and analyzing, findings andresearch discussing questions Chapter 3 is devoted to pedagogical implications andsuggestions for further study

- Part C is the conclusion of the study

5 Method of the Study

The action research employs both quantitative method and qualitative method toanalyze the collected data During speaking lessons on the basis of CL principles,classroom observation is made to note down the students’ attitude, participation andcooperation in groups, discussion and even conflicts,…The students are alsointerviewed to clarify their answers in the questionnaires previously done bythemselves The collected information, thus, is more reliable and straightforward

PART II: CONTENT

I Theoretical background

1. Speaking skills

Speaking skill is very important as it enables us to express our thoughts and feelings,gives comments or feedbacks to what we hear orally As Lawtie, (1992) says thatspeaking is fundamental of human communication

When examining the nature of speaking skill, Littlewood (1992) is more concernedwith the lack of transfer from the practice of motor-perceptive skills to genuinecommunicative interactions He points out that successful oral communicationinvolves the development of: (a) The ability to articulate phonological features of thelanguage comprehensibly; (b) Mastery of stress, rhythm, intonation patterns; (c) Anacceptable degree of fluency; (d) Transactional and interpersonal skills; (e) Skills intaking short and long speaking turns; (f) Skills in management of interaction; (g) Skills

in negotiating meaning; (h) Conventional listening skills; (i) Skills in knowing aboutand negotiating purposes for conversations and; (j) Using appropriate conversationalformulae and fillers

Because speaking the second language constitutes great cognitive load, emotionalload, and linguistic load as Ali has pointed out above, it is really a challenge to thestudents The challenge is far greater when students have to learn English in a largeclass This issue is reviewed in the subsequent section

2. Large classes

The term of large classes may vary from place to place In some language school, agroup of 20 students may be considered large However, in my teaching situation at BaĐình high school, a teacher will feel relieved if there are thirty students in a class Thissize is certainly considered as small since the number of students in each class rangesfrom 45 to 50

3 Cooperative learning (CL)

CL has long been introduced and repeatedly shown to be superior to the traditionalteacher-centered approach to instruction During the past 90 years, more than 600studies have been conducted by a wide variety of researchers in different decades withdifferent age subjects, in different subject areas, and in different environments

There have been many definitions of CL by many scholars and followings are some ofthem:

CL is group learning activities organized so that learning is dependent on the sociallystructured exchange of information between learners in groups and in which eachlearner is held accountable for his or her own learning and is motivated to increase the

learning of others (Olsen and Kagan, 1992)

The fact that CL is a method of instruction that promotes the development of order levels of thinking, essential communication skills, improves motivation, positiveself-esteem, social awareness and tolerance for individual differences in group

high-activities of the learners differentiates CL from traditional group work which may exist

uneven participation when one or two members dominate the work

Many principles have been proposed for CL The discussion of some principles ispresented in the next section

II RESEARCH SETTING

1 An overview of Ba Đình High School

Ba Đình High School is located in Nga Sơn district Ba Đình High School

is one of the oldest as well as biggest schools in the area At present, there are 31 classes with over 1200 students placed into three different grades: grade 10th, 11th and 12th The teaching staff composes of more than 100 teachers of 12 compulsory subjects, of whom two-thirds are young, creative and well trained whereas the others are experienced and enthusiastic With the innovation in educational policy, Ba Đình High School is one of the schools in Nga Sơn which has high percentages of high school graduated students

2 The teachers of English in Ba Đình High School

There are 10 teachers of English currently working in Ba Đình High School Nearly all of them are female whose age ranks from 28 to 50 Among them, one half studied at Hanoi Foreign Language Teachers Training College Another quarter that was trained from in-service training programs has experienced teaching for many years However, their communication ability as well as new teaching methods should be improved.

Obviously, the age of the English teacher staff reveals the fact that many of them were trained in the traditional method-the grammar-translation one Few of them have taken retraining courses to improve their English and their teaching methods This constrains them from teaching writing effectively Nevertheless, most of them are severe, enthusiastic in working Of the 6 teachers, a teacher got M.A degree At the present, each teacher has to teach twelve periods divided into

4 classes per week excluding the burden of marking examinations and time for a lot of different school work Apparently, the teachers in Ba Đình High School have to deal with a heavy workload in order to fulfill their task.

3 The students in Ba Đình High School

The majority of students in the study at Ba Đình High School are aged from 15 to 18 Most of them come from urban areas and they have learnt English since they were at primary schools Therefore, their English proficiency

is some how better than students from rural parts due to the availability of opportunities to attend part-time English courses Among them, there are a large number of students who are really interested in learning English and want to develop their ability in using English In contrast, the other part of students is lowly motivated They tend to regard English as less important than other subjects and they study English only in order to pass the examinations.

4. Current situation of teaching and learning speaking skills at Ba Đình high school

The teaching and learning of English speaking skills at Ba Đình high school facecommon problems that most school with large classes of students do Within a limitedtime and a large size of students in each class which ranges from 40-50, most teachersfind themselves unable to implement efficiently their tasks Besides, it is impossible tocarry out individual checks which is essential for evaluating and adjusting theirteaching methods and materials To make matter worse, the levels of proficiency of thestudents are mixed while it is extremely difficult for the teacher to carry so manyteaching plans simultaneously Most students enrolled at Ba Đình high school withrelatively poor knowledge of English since it is neither their major nor a requirementfor university entrance exam This made them more demotivated and disinterested inEnglish in general and in improving their speaking skills in particular

III RESEARCH METHODS TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM

1. Large classes

1.1 Advantages of large classes: For many students, large classes are best places to

meet with other students.Large classes also benefit students by giving them theopportunity to learn from the interesting ideas and life experiences of a large anddiverse body of classmates (Bradley, Cara & Green, Eric) There is more variety ofpeople to communicate with, to compare notes, to have fun and to form groupstogether

It is also suggested that “students may work by themselves in the large classroom, as alarge class gives them a feeling of independence so that learning was assisted byreliant self and having to study and learn themselves.” (Wulf, Nyquist andAbbot,1987)

The content of the large class provides general information which is easy to digest inthe large classrooms “It is usually good for any person to learn, as the content is lessdetailed, more general and broader” (Wulf, Nyquist and Abbot,1987)

Obviously, when there are many students in a class, many different ideas andexperiences are shared Some students may even be more capable than the teacher inexplaining certain difficult concepts to each other This stimulates the students andenlivens some parts of the lessons where they discuss and learn from each other, thusbrings variety and speeds up the work.

1.2 Disadvantages of large classes: The teaching of a large class is truly challenging

and requires more effort and planning It may distress any teacher due to its negativeinfluence on teaching and learning quality Small classes are believed to achieve betterresults than large ones do Most EFL teachers in the world reject teaching in a largeclass as it often means heterogeneous ages with many difficulties in learning andindividually giving and getting attention They also find it difficult to motivateparticipation, to make interaction and to give feedback

Connant (2003) states that teaching large classes is demanding and difficult Amongother things, as the size of a class increases, the challenges associated with building aparticipation-based class culture intensify In a large class, the students are notprepared to be called upon by the teacher and this is difficult to keep everyoneinvolved in the discussion Students are not motivated to share their thoughts as noformal incentives exist

Challenges of teaching a large class includes the difficulties in keeping good classdiscipline It is quite easy to get distracted in a large class There will always belatecomers and students chatting or doing something else while the teacher is teachingand that can be distressing It is also imperative to ensure that in large classes studentsunderstand the materials well

Cao Xia (2006) states some major problems in a large class There is little chance forteachers to check individual student’s performance and for students to practice andlack of teacher-student interaction, which is unfavourable for language teaching andlearning There exists a gap between the theory of teaching methodology and reality ofthe teaching situation

From the students’ perspective the main problem with large classes is the feeling ofanonymity, which makes it harder for them to be motivated Many feel too intimidated

to ask questions or to participate in class discussion (Islam, 2001)

Because of the above-mentioned disadvantages, it is not surprising that teachers oftenfind it difficult to carry out their teaching in an effective way which involves fullparticipation and contribution of all students

1.3 Teaching speaking skills to large classes: As we speak more than we write in our

daily lives, teachers should maintain a good balance between teaching of reading,writing and listening, speaking skills Nunan (1991) wrote, "success is measured interms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the (target) language." Therefore, ifstudents do not learn how to speak or do not get any opportunity to speak in the

language classroom, especially in a large class, they may soon get de-motivated andlose interest in learning On the other hand, if the right activities are taught in the rightway, speaking in a large class will then develop its advantages and can be a lot of fun,raising general learner motivation and making the English language classroom a funand dynamic place to be

However, it is certainly not easy to carry out speaking activities in large classes as wealways faces hurdles as mentioned above

1.4 Key aspects effective for large class management

a Getting attention and participation : The teachers are advised to use some

attending strategies that are “the ways a teacher acknowledges, through verbal or

non-verbal means, the presence, contribution, and needs of individual learners”

(Wajnryb,1992) These attending behaviours may be using students’ names, eyecontact, facial expressions, etc

Lewis and Hill (1992) stated that having eye contacts with students helps the teacher

know if the class understands or not and if they are bored, confused or interested in thelectures

Brown (1994) states that in order to create a positive classroom atmosphere, the teacher should establish rapport which is built on trust and respect and that leads to

feelings of capable, competent and creative It is imperative that teachers introducethemselves and get to know the students Students will feel more comfortable andmore open as they know more about the teacher Conversely, the more the teacherknows about the students and their attitudes, this will assist in preparing more effectiveclasses

There are some problems with silent students who are reluctant to take part in any kind

of discussions in English because of lack of confidence, fear of making mistakes,feeling of having nothing to say on the subjects or lack of appropriate language andpractice of conversational interaction Mc Keachie (1994) states that one way to dealwith this passiveness and reluctance is to find the root of the problem and start fromthere Opportunities should be given for learners to practice in the target language byproviding them with appropriate environment of collaborative work, authenticmaterials and tasks In tasks such as role-plays and discussions, the language learnerscontribute and participate freely using comprehensible expressions If the teacher is incontrol, such as in questioning and answering activities, the learners will onlyparticipate by providing words, phrases or short sentences He should reduce hisspeaking time and step back, observes to give help where necessary

b Giving and checking instructions: A teacher’s instructions may be broken down

into organizational and instructional categories The organizational instructions tellthe students what they are going to do and the instructional ones show them how to do

Cymru (2003) point out that organizational instructions should tell the students how toperform the activity in a safe and enjoyable environment They should tell where thegroup perform the activity, what are the boundaries, how many people the group will

be working with and how the group should be formed; what, how and when equipment

is needed and who is to collect it, how the activity starts or stops and when studentswill know when this is; and what happens if students finish early or have a question.Cyrus (2003) also states four key guidelines when giving informational instructions.The first key guideline is one idea at a time which means to tell them everything youknow about the skill then pick out the most relevant point and emphasize it Thesecond one is keeping instruction in brief which allows the students to spend greatertime of the lesson doing rather than listening to the teacher The third is using keywords or phrases which helps to refrain from lengthy explanation to a conciserepeatable form The last key guideline is making the instruction relevant The morerefined the observational and assessment skills are, the more pertinent the instructionsbecome

c Managing group work: Students have little opportunity to speak to the teacher in a

large class Therefore, it is suggested that students work in pairs or small groups.Nolasco & Arthur (1988) report that grouping is one technique that has been used toreduce the negative effects of large classes It is stated that “pair work and group workhave the advantages that learners are working simultaneously and, therefore, not onlylanguage practice time greatly increased, but children are less likely to become boredand lose interest because they are actively involved.”

On the other hand, the students feel less anxiety in the group than in front of thewhole class, more confident as they are not afraid of making mistakes or being judged

by the teacher

It is also true that in large classes, student pairs and groups can learn from each other.Therefore, the teacher should structure them into mixed-ability groups in which themore able learners can help the others to master the work They may also be asked towork in the same-ability groups in which the faster learners groups may get on withthe work on their own However, the teacher needs to move around to observe theirprogress or to see what problems are coming up to give advice, encouragement andindividual help where it is needed

It is important to monitor time and group size Time should not be wasted in confusionand complaining instead of working on the assigned task which must be specific andconcrete The time allotted must be proportional to the task with a timelimit set toforge group focus on the task Group size must also be proportional to participation

In large classes, group projects work best if they are brief and to the point, somethingquick and easy that adds presentational variety Advance planning and attention todetailed instructions is essential to ensure group activities work well in large classes

All considered, a large class seems to be a facilitating condition for the application ofcooperative learning (CL) principles However, little has been researched on theimpact of CL on students’ learning to speaking English as a foreign language.

2 Cooperative learning (CL)

2.1 Definition of CL: CL has long been introduced and repeatedly shown to be

superior to the traditional teacher-centered approach to instruction During the past 90years, more than 1600 studies have been conducted by a wide variety of researchers indifferent decades with different age subjects, in different subject areas, and in differentenvironments

There have been many definitions of CL by many scholars and followings are some ofthem:

CL is group learning activities organized so that learning is dependent on the sociallystructured exchange of information between learners in groups and in which eachlearner is held accountable for his or her own learning and is motivated to increase the

learning of others (Olsen and Kagan, 1992)

According to Jacob (1997), CL is a body of concepts and techniques for helping tomaximize the benefits of cooperation among students in education It provides

language teachers with essential concepts of heterogeneous classes, learner

cooperation and mutual help in learning; and equips teachers with effective

instructional techniques to exploit cooperation in language learning classes

Johnson (2001) considers CL as a general term for an instructional approach that

“emphasizes the conceptual learning and the development of social skills as learners

work together in a small heterogeneous group.”

The fact that CL is a method of instruction that promotes the development of order levels of thinking, essential communication skills, improves motivation, positiveself-esteem, social awareness and tolerance for individual differences in group

high-activities of the learners differentiates CL from traditional group work which may exist

uneven participation when one or two members dominate the work

Many principles have been proposed for CL The discussion of some principles ispresented in the next section

2.2 Principles of Cooperative Learning

a Heterogeneous grouping: This principle means that the groups in which students

do cooperative learning tasks are mixed on one or more of a number of variablesincluding sex, ethnicity, social class, religion, personality, age, language proficiency,and diligence This kind of grouping outweighs the homogeneous one because of avariety of benefits such as making peer-tutoring more likely to happen, providing avariety of perspectives or helping students to get to know and learn tolerance towardsothers’ differences

Generally, students prefer working with the peers they like to working with the oneschosen by the teacher However, it is the teacher who makes conscious decisionsabout such things as how different the levels of students in each group should be,which students should work together and so on

Failure in structuring groups suitably may result in ineffective cooperation Chen(2004) suggests that groups of three or four likely work best; sometimes larger group,

of five to ten, are expected to give good results in big tasks where enormous humanresources and the variety of people in terms of skills, background knowledge, etc arerequired

b Collaborative skills: Collaborative skills, such as giving reasons, are those needed

for students to work with others Students may lack these skills, the language involved

in using the skills, or the inclination to apply the skills which are supposed to be taughtone at a time However, which to teach should depend on particular tasks and studentsthat the skill instruction intends to be combined in

Some of the many skills important to successful collaboration may be: checking thatothers understand, asking for and giving reasons, disagreeing and responding politely,encouraging others to participate and responding to encouragement to participate

c Group autonomy: This principle encourages students to look to themselves for

resources rather than relying solely on the teacher When student groups are havingdifficulty, it is very tempting for teachers to intervene either in a particular group orwith the entire class

However, Roger Johnson suggests in his article: “Teachers must trust the peerinteraction to do many of the things they have felt responsible for themselves.”Students should learn to depend on themselves, teacher’s intervention should notalways be the first option

d Simultaneous interaction (Kagan, 1994): The normal interaction pattern in a

non-group classroom is like this: first, the teacher speaks then he is followed by sequentialinteraction of the students who have no time for their own active participation

In contrast, when group activities are used, each student in every group is speaking andnegotiating with others The Simultaneous Interaction principle means that students ineach small group are able to speak at the same time as they are given moreopportunities to learn actively and engage in the group activities

e Equal participation (Kagan, 1994): CL offers many ways of promoting more equal

participation among group members.It is recognized that participation will never betruly equal because students have unequal gifts and so their contributions differ.However,in CLeach member of the group is given an equal share of responsibility andinput to avoid the problem of dominating the group of one or two members and thus,impede the participation of others The teacher cannot control how equal thecontribution of each student will be, but the teacher can control and structure for more

equal opportunities for contributions Group members take turns to do similar tasks inrotation such as group leader, note taker, speaker,…

f Individual accountability: It is difficult to maintain equal participation among

group members and so they should be given a particular task each to avoid hiking” phenomenon in the group It is advisable that the teacher ask any of them to do

“hitch-a t“hitch-ask “hitch-at r“hitch-andom Also, they will be checked one by one to verb“hitch-alize the whole group’sideas individually When getting the students work and encourage individualaccountability in groups, we should make them feel that they have the right tocontribute their knowledge and ideas to the common task of the group Besides, theteacher should create a competitive atmosphere among groups so that learners feelmore accountable for their own group’s task

g Positive interdependence: Positive interdependence means that team members

need each other to succeed It is this “All for one, one for all” feeling that leads groupmembers to want to help each other, to see that they share a common goal

There are many forms of positive interdependence that can be structured in groups.One way to ensure that positive independence occurs lies with the face-to-facepromotive interactions between group members.Positive interdependence can also bebuilt into the group by having some form of shared grades For example, besides their

individual scores on an exam, students receive a certain number of points if all group

members score at or above a certain grade Besides, positive interdependence occurswhen one group member must first complete his/her task before the next task can becompleted

h Cooperation as a value: This principle means that cooperation is not only a way to

learn but also the content to be learned This flows naturally from the most crucialcooperative learning principle, positive interdependence Cooperation as a valueinvolves taking the feeling of “All for one, one for all” and expanding it beyond thesmall classroom group to encompass the whole class, the whole school, on and on,bringing in increasingly greater numbers of people and other beings into students’circle of ones with whom to cooperate

2.3 Benefits of cooperative learning

a Greater student achievement: Cooperative learning produces greater student

achievement than traditional learning methodologies (Slavin 1984) Slavin found that63% of the cooperative learning groups analyzed had an increase in achievement.Students who work individually must compete against their peers to gain praise orother forms of rewards and reinforcements In this type of competition manyindividuals attempt to accomplish a goal with only a few winners The success of theseindividuals can mean failures for others There are more winners in a cooperative teambecause all members reap from the success of an achievement Low achieving studentstend to work harder when grouped with higher achieving students There is