Using visual aids to motivate non-major English first year students speaking English at Hanoi Tourism College

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI Vũ Thị Kim Loan Using visual aids to motivate non- major English first year students in speaking English at Hanoi Tourism College.. VIETNAM NATIONAL

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

Vũ Thị Kim Loan

Using visual aids to motivate non- major English

first year students in speaking English at Hanoi

Tourism College

(Sử dụng giáo cụ trực quan nhằm gây hứng thú cho

sinh viên năm thứ nhất không chuyên học nói

tiếng Anh ở trường Cao đẳng Du lịch Hà Nội.)

M.A Thesis Linguistics

CODE: 60 14 10

HA NOI - 2009

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

Vũ Thị Kim Loan

Using visual aids to motivate non- major English

first year students in speaking English at Hanoi

Tourism College

(Sử dụng giáo cụ trực quan nhằm gây hứng thú cho

sinh viên năm thứ nhất không chuyên học nói

tiếng Anh ở trường Cao đẳng Du lịch Hà Nội.)

M.A Thesis Linguistics

CODE: 60 14 10

Supervisor : M.A Lê Văn Canh

HA NOI - 2009

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT……….II ABSTRACT……….IV TABLE OF CONTENT……….V, VI

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……… 1

1.1 Rationale……… ………1

1.2 Aims of the study……… 3

1.3 The significance of the study……… 4

1.4 The outline of the thesis……… 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW……… 6

2.1 Visual aids as a supporting device in language learning………6

2.1.1 Definition of visual aids……… 6

2.1.2 Visual aids as a supporting device……… 7

2.2 Visual aids as a motivating device in language learning……… 10

2.3 Visual aids used teaching speaking……….12

2.3.1 Teaching speaking……… 12

2.3.2 Using visual aids in teaching speaking……….14

2.4 Summary……… 15

CHAPTER 3: THE METHODOLOGY……… 16

3.1 Rationales for the use of action research………16

3.1.1 What is action research? 16

3.1.2 Rationales for the use of action research……….17

3.2 The research questions………18

3.3 Description of the data collection instruments……….18

3.3.1 Informal talks with the students……… 18

3.3.2.Questionnaire……… 19

VI

3.4 Participants……… 22

3.4.1 The researcher- The teacher……… 22

3.4.2 The Students……… 22

3.5 The procedure of the action research……… 22

3.5.1 Planning……….22

3.5.2 Action……….23

3.5.3 Reflection………23

3.5.5 Dissemination……… 23

CHAPTER 4: THE RESULTS……… 24

4.1 Initial data……… …24

4.1.1 Results from talks with the students……….24

4.1.2 Results from questionnaire 1……….25

4.2 Issues emerging from pre-treatment data……….30

4.3 Description of the action plan……….29

4.3.1 Aims of the action plan……… 30

4.4.2 Modifications in the plan action to obtain the above objectives ……….31

4.4 Data collected during two experimental weeks……… 31

CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION……….35

5.1 Major findings……….35

5.2 Recommendations on the basis of the findings……….36

5.3 Conclusion……….38

REFERENCES……… 40

APPENDIX 1……….42

APPENDIX 2……….43

APPENDIX 3……….44

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter, Introduction, contains 4 sections The first section will be the rationale The two aims of the study will be presented in the second section After

that, the significance of the study will be discussed in 1.3 and the outline of the rest

of the thesis presented in 1.4

1.1 Rationale

Students‟ poor involvement in speaking lessons is one of the concerns of classroom teachers It is documented in the literature that students‟ involvement in language lessons in general and in speaking particular depends on cultural, linguistic, and effective factors There has been a variety of different pedagogical solutions recommended to increase students‟ involvement in speaking lessons The choice of those solutions is depend on what factors that inhibit students‟ involvement

I was in charge of teaching English to class C5B2, which has 40 non major English first year students at Hanoi Tourism College Lifelines pre- intermediate written by Tom Hutchinson Ann Ward is currently chosen to teach English Lifelines pre - intermediate was chosen because it has some good points First, in this book, the students are guided to an understanding of the new language, rather than just have examples of it on the page Second, the skills work is integrated and balanced, the students have equal opportunities to practice all the four skills in each lesson and there is no exercise for only one skill Third, the material comes from a wide range of reliable sources- newspapers, magazines, biographies, short stories, radio programs, songs However, it is not difficult because it has been simplified and adapted to suit the our students‟ level Last, much attention was paid to practice activities There are greatly various speaking activities, controlled and free, personalized and impersonal In addition, there is a good combination between long and short activities Each unit has one or two long activities interlaced by many

short ones so the students can follow them easily

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Most of the activities in the book are recommended to be organized in pairs and groups At any stage of a unit, warm-up, presentation, controlled practice or free practice, there are always pair and or group activities Take the first unit as an example, in the very beginning of the unit, students are given a chance to communicate with their partners.In Vocabulary and Reading, there are a lot of exercises that students have to exchange their opinions Especially, in Listening and Speaking, there are a lot of interesting speaking activities that go from easy level to more difficult ones In the last part of the unit, there is an exercise that students have

to work in pairs to role play a conversation As can be seen, there are a lot of activities for practicing speaking in each unit, and if the activities were well designed and organized, teachers would gain students‟ interest and motivation to speaking English

Despite the interesting and well designed speaking activities, what is experienced at Hanoi Tourism College is that the students do not like speaking English anymore The problems are various Some of them will be mentioned as follows

First, it seems that most of the students find it difficult to make a conversation to practice English As a result, it often takes them a lot of time to get started In addition, many of the students are not patient enough to overcome this obstacle, and the easiest thing for them to do is to stop trying and turn to do other things

Second, it is noticed that the students don't often try their best to finish the tasks by a certain time This leads to the fact that they often waste a lot of time to complete one simple exercise This may be because teachers do not have a proper time limit for each activity It is argued that the students will have chance to chat or

to do something else, when they have plenty of time

Since I started teaching at my college, I have taught this textbook for many times By tradition and my own sense, I always try my best to handle my students‟ English language production in speaking lessons However, during the first few

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times teaching the course, I had frustrations because I often found many of my students were not motivated in class From my personal observation in the classroom, students seem to be unwilling to practice speaking English They appear

to be reluctant in participating in classroom activities that require them to practice orally The reasons for this students‟ poor participation could be that they are not sufficiently motivated to speak, which is resulted from their lack of ideas and stimuli to speak English in addition to their low English proficiency To address this problem, I postulate that students need to be provided with necessary cues and stimuli that can help encourage them to speak

To solve this problem I undertook this action research First, I talked with the students to find out the reasons why they did not want to speak English in the class room On the basis of the information I gained from these chats with the students, I developed a questionnaire to identify the major factors that inhibited them from speaking English in the class room It was found that students did not like speaking very much because they were not stimulated and largely they did not have ideas to speak, and finally they did not have enough vocabulary

The results of this questionnaire encouraged me to undertake this action research in which I wanted to identify if visual aids help to involve students better

in speaking lesson

1.2 Aims of the study

The study was carried out with the aim to increase the students‟ participation

in speaking lessons With the hypothesis that a use of visual aids can increase the motivation of non- major English first year students at Hanoi Tourism College to participate in speaking lessons, this study aims at:

 Investigating the reality of students‟ poor participation in speaking activities and the possibility of visual aids to increase their participation in classroom speaking activities if necessary

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 Exploring the use of visual aids as pedagogical tool to involve students in speaking activities

1.3 The significance of the study

The findings of the study will provide us plenty of useful information First, the study will give us convincing information about the great value of using visual aids in increasing students‟ motivation in speaking English Second, the practical aim of the study is to suggest some appropriate techniques to make the best use of the visual aids, so it is possible to have further improvement in making English speaking lessons more motivating Last, by doing this action research, the researcher can evaluate the actual use of visual aids in her classes

1.4 The outline of the thesis

Chapter 1, INTRODUCTION, presents information about the rationale of

the study, the aims and the research questions as well as the significance of the research and the outline of the thesis

Chapter 2, LITERATURE REVIEW, reviews the literature in the issue of

visual aids in language learning

Chapter 3, METHODOLOGY, provides the reader with the detailed

description of the subjects and the data collection instruments, and the procedure of the study The data collection instruments include the questionnaire and informal talks The procedure of the study will be also mentioned

Chapter 4, RESULTS, Data analysis and Discussion, will be divided into

five parts as follow: initial data, issues emerging from pre- treatnent, the action plan, the data collected during the experimental period and the evaluation of the action research

Chapter 5, CONCLUSION, Major findings, Recommendations and

Conclusion, will summarize the major findings of the study The writer's recommendations for using visual aids in speaking lessons will follow After that,

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there will be the conclusion of the thesis Finally, the writer will point out some limitations of the study and there will be some suggestions for further study

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter, Literature review, will discuss about visual aids in language learning There are three main issues in this: the discussion of visual aids as supporting

device, visual aids as motivating one and visual aids in teaching speaking

2.1 Visual aids as a supporting device in language learning:

2.1.1 Definition of visual aids:

According to Wingard (2000) the aids can help in teaching languages and that can be seen are called “visual aids”.They provide practical solutions to the problems of a language teacher whose equipment, as a rule, consists of nothing more than books and classroom They include black-board, pictures, actual objects (realias) that facilitate the process of teaching Visual aids are anything visible to students, which the teacher uses for different purposes in the class They can be used in different stages of a lesson, and they are rich in forms , cheap to make, easy

to find, convenient and effective use in a language class.The function of each of these in helping the teaching process is discussed below

* Black board: A big strong piece of wood, called black-board, is the oldest associate of the teacher but an essential teaching aid It is used to reading and writing to the pupil Anything to which the teacher wants to draw the attention of the students, is written on it, e.g difficult words, phrase patterns, structure patterns, grammar works, questions to test comprehension In this way the teacher finds his lessons more interesting, lively and effective It is an important means of picture composition

*Pictures: Pictures comprise text pictures and class pictures Text pictures are to be found in the texts designed primarily for beginners The meaning of a single word can be shown in different pictures For example, the very first lesson of the beginner's text may have different patterns of heads of persons and animals to teach the word head Class pictures may be sub-divided into picture cards and wall pictures Picture cards or post cards are extremely helpful in language teaching

2.1.2 Visual aids as a supporting device

Visual aids play in an important role of helping the teaching project, the teachers use them to facilitate their teaching

Firstly, visual aids almost appear as the objects that facilitate our understanding of language because a student‟s sensitivity to language and their ability to create relations among words can be further enhanced by the use of visual aids Using graphic images can bring out more knowledgeable, detailed awareness

to the situation and the object related or text being communicated

Secondly, they can be used to create situations to make the meaning of a word or a structure clear, and to practice them in meaningful situations In some situations contrived with the help of teaching aids would be found more advantageous than actual physical situations in learning Moreover, in language teaching, visual aids are also known to dispel the monotony of practice work by

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creating variety They can introduce a play element in serious work and make lessons lively Even the introduction of a readymade substitution table at the right moment in a grammar lesson can enliven the class Display of various charts, tables, pictures, models, etc on classroom walls will lend an atmosphere of gaiety to the room and at the same time help the pupils to learn a troublesome item Such visual aids can be systematically put up to focus attention on a particular item and changed periodically to present other items

Visual aids are a good and useful tool for examination purposes because they lead the student into drawing out language from their own knowledge and personal experiences through exposition , immersion to the stimuli presented before them Visual aids permit strategies to orgazine knowledge into semantic or associative clusters In testing and teaching situations pictures items can can be developed to test whether the students understands the syntax or structure of the target language Visual aids allow for options, responses alternatives patterns and ranges Students can see immediate meaning in terms of vocuabulary recognition provided the item exists in the first language Pictures can be develped into a test to see whether the learner understands the structure and the syntax (Canning 1998; 2000)

Visual aids can help make a task or situation more authentic Pictures can help testers and teachers to identify or manipulate structures, vocabulary, functions, situations and skills Visual aids used as testing prompts can be used to measure semantic and associative clusters Pictures allow students to focus on the whole item or a piece of an item Pictures can give or not give a context depending on what needs to be tested Pictures offer test takers options for more interpretive responses, patterns and ranges to answer posited exam questions

According to more current research, the more sensory modes in which mental representation is stored, the more likely they will be remembered (Borsook Higginbotham &Wheat, 1992) Bagget (1989) posits that images are stored in memory These images contain more information because they have more cognitive pegs that can be used to make associative and referential connections between

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visual representations and information held in long term memory This research suggests learners employ dual coding to construct a mental model of the learning experience Therefore, it can be implied that visuals may evoke relevant knowledge for those that have it to draw on It is then assumed that most learners will integrate available symbol systems (visual or text) to construct or elaborate on a model of the situation as a strategy to recreate in their mind a picture image of an event

Visual aids allow for greater cognitive mapping and navigating in an environment The use of visual aids can either lead to sensory acuteness or to sensory depravation In the process, perception becomes the ability to process the stimuli as meaningful to the viewer

It is also fair to state that research shows that people can construct a mental representation of the semantic meaning of a story from either audio or visual aid information alone However, it appears that when presented together each source provides additional, complementary information that retains some of the characteristics of the symbol system of origin For example, the students recall sounds and expressive language from the audio track and visual aids details from the visual track It also appears that the bushier nature of representations derived from the visual symbol systems are better for building mental models of the situation than are representations based on audio linguistic information (Kozma 1991)

The use of representational visual aids to supplement the orthographic symbols of text generally increases recall of illustrated text information (Issing et all 1989; Kuntz eta l 1989; Livie et all 1982 Levin 1987; Peeck 1987; Pressley 1987; Stone 1981) Ehrilich and Johnson-Laird (1982) showed that adults interpret spatial descriptions by constructing mental models of them An alternative strategy may be to encode descriptions verbatim and then try to represent them overtly, one sentence at a time

It is a biological fact that the eye is not separate from the brain The eye and brain are part of the same organ Because human beings have evolved to have

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several distinct intelligence and no one general intelligence, interpretation of visual aids and the use of visual aids may affect learners in different ways Studies such as those in the early 1970s at the University of California at Berkley show that the different hemispheres of the brain may affect human learning Physical perception

of what is scene may differ amongst different learners thus allowing a greater range

of responses to any given visual aids For example if "Learner X" is given a picture

or a real object the student may be able to interpret how they see the picture or the real object and relate it to language in two distict ways First they may use top down pictures or realia to test ideas against facts or solve specific problems Secondly the student may use bottom up the picture or real object to scan and organize information with the use of graphics (Canning 1997)

2.2 Visual aids as a motivating device in language learning:

Visual aids have been used in learning teaching for a long time, although their effect is still hypothetical They are often thought as a motivational tool or as

an aid in cognitive in language learning Empirical studies have emphasized the function of visual aids as a contextual cues in reading comprehension It is also known that imagery is instrumental in processes of retention and recall (Horst and Helmut ; 2000)

Using visual aids lead individual students to predict information, infer information, deduce information, analyze today‟s world so that it can be brought into today‟s classroom and offer social settings which can immerse or expose the learner to new ideas or further promote an already created setting.If a visual aid is used in a testing or teaching situation it can enhance clarity and give meaning to the text or to the message being communicated Visual aids can serve to create a solid link between the material learned and the practical application of it on a test (Canning, 1998)

The nature of a graphic images and real objects serves as a catalyst and stimulus Moreover, the visual aids can offer input, output and or feedback on

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materials learned Likewise, a student uses pictures and real objects may be more to give an added response to the traditionally expected form The response may change according to the pictures and the real objects in collaboration with the task as it works as an interactive partner As teachers manipulate texts daily in lessons, teachers can also control and open a picture to a variety of language learning activities as well as a variety of interpretations

Using visual aids helps a student more abstract thought as well as the ability to distinguish ideas or to demonstrate greater precision counting organizing skills through the use of logical structure In general, an bring out a more complex sensitivity in the learner (Canning, 1998)

In addition, visual testing and teaching prompts can aid in measuring syntactical, phonological, lexical and cultural proficiency Perhaps this is because a visual cue may also be accompanied by a written cue to focus a students‟ attention

on the specific lexical unit being furnished Pictures and real objects can force full

or partial student production For example, visual aids may possibly be able to empower test takers to decode information using top-down or bottom-up processes Top down encoding in the visual process would include the learner testing ideas against facts or solving specific problems by viewing concept maps to relate their ideas to facts or ideas found in a second language text or test In contrast, bottom up encoding in the visual aids process would include using the visual image and the realia to help students to scan, sort and/or organize information in a testing environment

It is said that the use of a visual aid increase the learners‟ chances for improving and developing their language abilities The picture and real objects allow the student to interpret the use and physical appearance in great detail that may not otherwise be obtained with just a textual prompt Therefore, it can be concluded that visual aids positively affect learning strategies and writing capabilities of nonnative students of English

When we think about speaking, we mean when the students use any and all the language at their command to perform some kind of oral task The important thing is that there should be a task to complete and that the students should want to complete it Therefore, it is believed that the more motivated the students are, the better they participate in learning tasks

The reasons why it is a good idea to give students speaking tasks which provoke them to use all and any language at their command are mainly three:

1) Rehearsal: when students have free discussions or conversations inside the classroom they have a chance to rehearse having discussions or conversations outside the classroom.Simply enough, when they meet a new friend from abroad the first conversation will be about introducing oneself, one's own family etc Having them take part in a role-play at the lost property office allows them to rehearse such

a real-life event in the safety of the classroom It is a way for students to "get the feel" of what communicating in the foreign language really feels like

2) Feedback: engagement in a speaking task which demands for the use of all and any language at the students' command provides feedback for both teacher and students

3) Engagement: completing a speaking task can be really motivating and give real satisfaction Many speaking tasks (role-play, discussions, debate, problem-

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solving etc.) are intrinsically enjoyable in themselves and if planned carefully (by the teacher) and completed successfully (by the students) contribute to increasing their self-esteem

However, in my real teaching context, I have found that my students did not take part in the speaking activities as much as they were expected According to Ur (1996) there are four main reasons why students do not talk as much as possible Firstly, students do not have chance to talk, secondly, the topics are not interesting enough and the students are not confident enough The students are not confident when speaking because they are worried about making mistakes, afraid of criticism

or losing face The last reason is the students do not have enough ideas about the oral topics The following explanations for these reasons were shared by Davies (2000) First of all, the students might not understand what they have to do, or the teacher‟s instruction might not be clear enough Next, the students lack of necessary structures or vocabulary to express their ideas and the last one is they are not provoked enough by the teacher

It is also believed by Ur (1996) and Davies (2000) that the causes of students‟ poor classroom speaking participation that “ students do not have enough ideas” is one of the most challenging problems Therefore, the core thing that the teacher deals with to help students to provide ideas as many as possible

2.3.2 Using visual aids in teaching speaking

There are many factors that effect students‟ speaking activity participation in the classroom (Brown,1994 and Harmer,1998) such as the students‟ aptitude and attitudes towards the learning task, the learning condition, the material, the curriculum of the course, the teaching method etc…In my practical teaching , I assumed that the factors such as the learning condition, the material, the curriculum

of the course, the students aptitude and attitudes towards the learning task and the context of my teaching seem most likely problematic and in fact, some factors can

be managed by the teacher In this situation, regarding to material and teaching

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method, I concentrated on using visual aids in stage 1 of speaking lessons in order

to provide the students ideas related to the oral topics so that they can take part in speaking activities well

Firstly, using visual aids in teaching speaking to introduce to the students the oral topic by drawing their attention to the topic According to Hudbard et al (1983: 111) visual aids help to introduce a topic to students in an interesting and attractive way because they are visible, stimulating, colorful as well as imaginative

Moreover, in teaching speaking skill, teacher are expected to use visual aids given in section 1 of the unit to orientate students to the topic that they are going to deal with and organize some visual-based activities for students to discuss the provided leading questions.It is expected that with the help of provided visual aids the topic should be introduced interestingly and attractively enough for students to have opportunities to exchange their ideas so that their ideas can be enriched and they can take part in well in the oral interaction activities at while- speaking stage

Using visual aids in teaching speaking also provide students with the ideas that they may need in their discussion in section 3 of the unit Visual aids can help provide students with ideas by getting them to show what they have known and what they want to know about a certain topic According to Kang (2000) pictures as visual organizers are “effective in terms of helping to elicit, explain, and communicative information because they clarify complex concepts into simple, meaningful display”

Finally, things that we see have an enormous importance in affecting and giving us information The emphasis has to be made on giving the students “a reason” for speaking tasks Visual aids are, in this way, a very good “reason” in order to motivate students to interact with the foreign language because they can clearly “see” the language in use by means of meaningful elements which call their attention and, at the same time, motivate them to use the language in different ways Moreover, the activities in which speaking skill practiced, or in which several things

In short, through the theoretical and practical consideration, in this context the teacher used her teaching method to elicit ideas in speaking lessons had great effects on students‟ motivation In the next chapter, a study on the effects of the

methods to use visual aids to motivate the students was carried out is presented

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CHAPTER 3: THE METHODOLOGY

This chapter will discuss five main parts First, there will be the definition and some characteristics of and action research as well as the rationales for use of action research Second, the research questions will be presented Third, the data collection instruments applied in the research are discussed in the next part Forth, there will be the description of the subjects who are the students taking part in the experiment Finally, last part will be the procedure of the study

3.1 Rationales for the use of action research

3.1.1 What is action research?

Action research involves a self-reflective, systematic and critical approach to enquiry by participants who are simultaneously members of the context in which the research takes place The aim of action research is to identify „problematic‟ (in sense of areas that can be problematised) situations or issues that participants consider worth investigating, and to undertake practical interventions in order to bring about informed changes in practice (Cohen and Manion, 1994)

The action research process has a number of steps or phases which progress

as a spiralling and evolving process Kemmis and Mc Taggart‟s (1988) „classic‟ model of this process includes four steps:

1 Planning - a problem or issue is identified and a plan of action is developed

in order to bring about improvements in specific areas of the research context

2 Action - the plan is put into action over an agree period of time

3 Observation - the effects of the action are observed and data are collected

4 Reflection - the effects of the action are evaluated and become the basis for further cycles of research

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To this model, Burns (2000) added a fifth step, dissemination, where the

result of the research are made known through presentations and publications to a wider audience

Burns (1994) also identified some essential features that help to distinguish action research from other forms of educational research:

1 It is small-scale, contextualised and local in character, identifying and investigating teaching-learning issues within specific situations

2 It involves evaluation and reflection aimed at bringing about continuing changes in practice

3 It is participatory, providing oportunities for communities of participants to investigate collaboratively issues of concern within their social situation

4 It is based on data collection and analysis which become the basis for changes in practice

3.1.2 Rationales for the use of action research

The problem I have mentioned was that my students were reluctant in taking part in during the speaking lessons In order to solve the problem as well as improve

my teaching skill of speaking English, I really wanted to find out the causes of the problem And an action research could help me to do this for some reasons

First of all, according to Nunan (1993) an action research is first and foremost concerned with the identification of problems in a specific context

Secondly, it is stated by Wallace (1998) that action research is a process which collects data on your everyday practice and analysis it in order to make decision about what your future practice should be

Thirdly, it was suggested by Richard el al (1993) that action research can increase the teacher‟s understanding of classroom teaching and learning, and therefore, bring out improvement in classroom practices

3.2 The research questions:

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This action research aims at answering the following questions:

1 What is the main cause of the poor oral practice in speaking lessons among the students in class C5B2 at Hanoi Tourism College?

2 To what extent do visual aids help to increase students‟ motivation to speak English in the classroom?

3.3 Description of the data collection instruments

The two data collection instruments used in the study are informal talks with the students and questionnaire:

3.3.1 Informal talks with the students

In second language research, interviews are used to collect data on covert variables such as attitudes and motivation for learning the second language Some kinds of interview are: „open interview‟ which provide the interviewee with broad freedom of expression and elaboration and often resemble informal talks; „semi-open interview‟ in which there are specific core questions determined in advance from which the interviewer branches off to explore in-depth information, probing according to the way the interview proceeds, and allowing elaboration, within limits; „structured interview‟ which consists of questions defined from the start and presented to the interviewee No elaboration is allowed in either the questions or the answers This type of interview is usually employed when uniform and specific information is needed and when it is necessary to interview a large number of subjects (Seliger & Shohamy, 1997)

Informal talks were conducted to get information about how students rate their participation in speaking tasks and the level of students‟ interests in speaking lessons I had informal talks with my students during the short break after the speaking lessons I chose this time for having the talks with the students because I assumed that when students were having a break, out of the teacher‟s control they were free to express their opinions or points of view frankly, comfortably, and honestly So that the results might release the real causes of the problem Being

3.3.2 Questionnaire

This kind of data collection instrument is chosen in this study because of several reasons Firstly, questionnaires are self-administered and can be given to large groups of subjects at the same time, therefore is a quick way of collecting information, and easy to administer (Gillham, 2000; Hayllar & Veal, 1996; Seliger

& Shohamy, 1997) Secondly, the informants can complete the questionnaire anonymously and when anonymity is assured, subjects tend to share information of

a sensitive nature more easily (Seliger & Shohamy, 1997; Gillham, 2000) In addition, since the same questionnaire is given to all subjects, the data collected are more uniform and standard (Seliger & Shohamy, 1997) Besides, since they are usually given to all subjects of the research at exactly the same time, the data are more accurate (Seliger & Shohamy, 1997) Moreover, questionnaire surveys can be used together with other types of research such as observation to provide an additional perspective in a research project and questionnaire surveys can be used for descriptive, explanatory and evaluative forms of research (Hayllar and Veal, 2000)

In second language research, questionnaires are used mostly to collect data

on phenomenon which are not easily observed, such as attitudes, motivation, and self-concepts They are also used to collect data on the processes involved in using language and to obtain background information about the research subjects, such as age, previous background in language learning, number of languages spoken…

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There are several kinds of questionnaire „Unstructured questionnaires‟ which have a low degree of explicitness, include open questions to which the subjects will be expected to respond in a descriptive manner On the other side,

„structured questionnaires‟ which have high degree of explicitness, may require the subject to mark responses, to check agreement or disagreements, or to select among

a number of alternatives Structured questionnaires are considered to be more efficient than open ones, and it is possible to have different types of questions in the same questionnaire (Seliger & Shohamy, 1997)

In this study, a questionnaire was to get the information on their ideas about the level of the students‟ interest with speaking lessons, and the factors that inhibit them to participate in speaking lesson and the teacher‟s stimuli for students‟ motivation in speaking lessons The researcher designed a sort of questionnaire containing close- ended questions, half close- ended questions, half open- ended questions and open- ended questions to make a good use of this kind of questions According to Nunan (1992, p147),

“One of the great advantages of close- ended questions is that they yield responses which can readily be quantified and analyzed, particularly if one has access to computer packages”

Questionnaire 1 consists of 4 questions, the two first were close- ended questions, the third question was half closed and half- opened and the fourth question was an opened - item Questionnaire 1 was delivered each of students after each speaking lesson in the first phase of the action class which was carried out before the experiment, to gather on 3 aspects These are the level of students‟ interest in speaking English in the class, the rate of students‟ participation in speaking activities in the classroom and the factors that inhibit students from speaking in the classroom

Questionnaire 2 consists of 4 questions Questionnaire 2 was applied in the second phase of the action research to gather data on students‟ participation when carrying the experiment The results from Questionnaire 2 was used to evaluate the

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solution to the problem set up in step 2 of the action research The findings from

Questionnaire 2 are presented in 4.4

In order to obtain valid information, the 8 questions related to each aspect were designed:

Question 1 helped to point out the level of students‟ interest in the speaking English lessons Basing on the fact the researcher could know whether students like speaking English and know the importance of this skill for their future job or not

Question 2 gathered information about the rate of students‟ participation in the speaking English lessons Like question1, this question could help to know about student motivation with the belief that the more students talk, the more they are motivated

Question 3 was used to find out the factors that inhibited students from speaking English in the classroom In this question, 7 options were listed as the causes for little speaking The answer might help the researcher find out the most common reasons for poor speaking English participation in the classroom among students

Question 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 collected data on the students‟ assessment of the using

of visual aids for the speaking English lessons The answers released the fact of the level of the students‟ interest in the visual aid based activities themselves And this could help the researcher to know whether the solution from the visual aid based activities was good or not It also helped to obtain reasons why students liked the visual aid activities that were organized by their teacher during four lessons The results might help the researcher in deciding on the solution to the problem

To sum up, this section has discussed the contents of 8 questions used in Questionnaire 1 and Questionnaire 2 and the aims of these questionnaires to find out the reasons of poor participation of students in speaking lessons and whether the solution was suitable or not

3.4 Participants