Using drama to reduce anxiety in speaking english for sixth graders an action research project at a lower secondary school in thanh oai district

This study was conducted to help 35 sixth graders to reduce their anxiety level towards speaking the target language in an EFL classroom setting.. Besides, the findings revealed that dra

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

ở huyện Thanh Oai)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01

HANOI - 2018

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

ở huyện Thanh Oai)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01

Supervisor: Nguyễn Thị Mai Hương, Ph.D

HANOI - 2018

DECLARATION

I, the undersigned, declare that this thesis is the result of my own research and has not been submitted to any other university or institution partially or wholly Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‘s work has been used without due acknowledgement in text of the thesis

I would also like to thank all of the lecturers of the Faculty of Post - Graduate Studies, Vietnam National University for their useful lectures and materials which are of great value to my thesis

A special word of thanks goes to all of my colleagues and the students under

my investigation for their useful support

Last but not least, I owe my gratitude to my family members for their support and encouragement

ABSTRACT

Speaking is regarded as a key skill in real-life communication and in language learning alike This study was conducted to help 35 sixth graders to reduce their anxiety level towards speaking the target language in an EFL classroom setting The study was carried out for six months of the academic year (2017-2018), using pre- and post-intervention questionnaires, observations and students‘ reflections The findings showed that the students‘ English proficiency, the teacher‘s strictness and explicit mistake/error correction, the learners‘ communication apprehension, fear of being called to speak the target language and fear of being negatively evaluated were the factors causing the students‘ nervousness in speaking the target language Besides, the findings revealed that drama assisted considerably in lowering the students‘ anxiety level towards

speaking the target language in their EFL classroom

Key words: Reduce, anxiety, target language, EFL classroom, drama

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

LIST OF TABLES viii

LIST OF CHARTS ix

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims and objectives 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 3

6 Significance of the research 3

7 Structural organization of the thesis 4

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Theoretical background 5

1.1.1 The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 5

1.1.2 Anxiety in L2 speaking 7

1.1.3 Drama in language teaching 10

1.1.4 Roles of drama in language teaching 11

1.1.5 Types of drama techniques 12

1.2 Review of previous related studies 15

1.2.1 Previous studies overseas 15

1.2.2 Previous studies in Viet Nam 17

1.3 Summary 19

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 20

2.1 Restatement of the research questions 20

2.2 The setting of the study 20

2.3 Participants 22

2.3.1 Students 22

2.3.2 Teacher 22

2.4 Research design and research instruments 22

2.5 Research procedures 23

2.6 Summary 33

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 34

3.1 Data analysis methods 34

3.2 Pre- and post- intervention questionnaires 34

3.2.1 Items from 2 to 4 34

3.2.2 Items from 5 to 16 36

3.2.3 Summary 45

3.3 Teacher‘s checklist 44

3.4 Teacher‘s diary 46

3.5 Students‘ reflections 47

3.6 Summary 48

CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION 49

4.1 What factors contribute to the students‘ anxiety in speaking English in their EFL classroom? 49

4.2 How do drama activities help to lower the students‘ anxiety level in speaking English in their EFL classroom? 50

4.3 Summary 52

PART 3: CONCLUSION 53

1 Recapitulation 53

2 Conclusion 54

3 Limitations of the study 54

4 Suggestions for further studies 55

REFERENCES 56 APPENDICES I

Appendix 1: QUESTIONNAIRE I Appendix 2: STUDENTS‘ REFLECTIONS VII Appendix 3: IX Appendix 4 X Appendix 5: CHECKLIST FOR TEACHER‘S OBSERVATION XV Appendix 6: SOME DIARY ENTRIES XVI Appendix 7: SAMPLES XVII

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL English as a foreign language ESL English as a second language FLA Foreign language anxiety FLCAS Foreign language classroom anxiety scale

SLA Second language acquisition TEFL Teaching English as a Foreign Language

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Frequencies and Percentages of each Individual Variable for the Pre-intervention Questionnaire 37 Table 3.2: Frequencies and Percentages of each Individual Variable for the Post-intervention Questionnaire 38 Table 3.3: Extent of anxiety in speaking L2 by the Means of Questionnaire Score 43 Table 3.4: The Overall Means and the Means of components in the Pre- intervention Questionnaire 43 Table 3.5: The Overall Means and the Means of components in the Post- intervention Questionnaire 44

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 3.1: Frequencies of each Individual Variable for the Pre-intervention Questionnaire (Items from 2 to 4) 35 Chart 3.2: Frequencies of each Individual Variable for the Post-intervention Questionnaire (Items from 2 to 4) 36

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Theoretically, much emphasis has recently been put on the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language, using the "Communicative Approach" It is widely considered that English language teaching is synonymous with Communicative Language Teaching The fact is that the art of language teaching cannot be isolated from the social setting of language learners, so drama becomes an effective tool that involves students in a shared context, facilitating language learning in an effective and pleasant style Drama can be used in instruction of English as a second language because of its enriching values in enhancing language learners‘ communicative competence, which are confirmed by various educators and researchers in linguistics In language teaching, drama refers more to informal drama as it is used in the language classroom, but not on stage Accordingly, the participants in the drama activities are thus learners, but not actors

Practically, in Viet Nam, although English has become a compulsory subject

in secondary schools for years, the teaching of English language falls short of fulfilling its goals in that most learners suffer from anxiety or fail to gain enough confidence of using the language in and outside the classroom In many secondary schools in the countryside, normal English language classes hardly give learners an opportunity to develop skills in communication, especially speaking skill The school where the researcher (teacher) is working is one of these cases and in order

to solve this matter, an attractive alternative for the researcher (teacher) is integrating the use of drama techniques in the language classroom

Despite the fact that the school, where the researcher (the teacher who did this study) is working, is considered as one of the high-quality lower secondary schools

in Thanh Oai district, the school children here are not very good at the four communicative skills and only about one fourth of them are fairly good at doing English grammar and vocabulary exercises Since the beginning of this school year,

the researcher (teacher) has been assigned to teach English for one class of sixth grade students plus two classes of seventh grade students

The fact is that the researcher‘s class 6A2 used to be considered to be at the same level of English in comparison with the other normal sixth grade classes in the school except for the two special classes (class 6A1 and class 6A7) During the first days of being the English language teacher of class 6A2, the researcher (teacher) felt that all of the students of class 6A2 did not enthusiastically get involved in L2 oral production in the classroom setting This fact made the teacher get devoted to this action research study with a desire to solve the problem

2 Aim and objectives

The aim of the study is to lower the sixth graders‘ speaking anxiety in L2 in the language classroom context

The study has been conducted to explore some factors causing the students‘ nervousness towards speaking English in the classroom context Another target is to figure out how drama helped to reduce the sixth graders‘ anxious feelings in L2 oral production in the classroom setting

3 Research questions

This study addresses two questions as follows:

(1) What factors contribute to the students‘ anxiety in speaking English in their EFL classroom?

(2) How do drama activities help to lower the students‘ anxiety level in speaking English in their EFL classroom?

4 Scope of the study

The aim of this study is to reduce the students‘ anxiety in their L2 oral performances Among the numerous benefits of using dramatic techniques in a classroom, drama is believed to be entertaining, fun and useful to engage language learners in oral communication

In fact, there are various drama techniques used for teaching the target language, but in this study, the teacher paid attention to some of them such as mine, role-playing and drama games, from which various drama activities could be

designed in accordance with the contents and task patterns of the course book Indeed, the inclusion of drama-based activities has not been so evident in current ELT course books, resource books, supplementary materials and teacher training courses The researcher (teacher) clearly needs practical step by step applications on how to incorporate drama more comprehensively and cohesively into her teaching

In addition, this study was conducted to solve the current problem of only one small group of sixth graders in the language classroom setting and due to the limit of time, only Cycle I of this action research project is shown in this study This cycle will inform the design of the next cycles, which will be conducted but not reported in this study

5 Methods of the study

This action research study employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches The study was carried out by some steps as follows:

First, the pre-intervention questionnaire was employed to identify the classroom problem of L2 speaking anxiety among the sixth graders Besides, some factors contributing to these students‘ nervousness in speaking L2 in the classroom setting were revealed through this questionnaire

Second, the data of the while-intervention process was collected through the teacher‘s observations and the students‘ reflections This data made a considerable contribution to the answers to the two research questions

To end with, the post-intervention questionnaire was addressed to the participating students to collect the data, which was compared to the data collected from the pre-intervention questionnaire so as to partially reconfirm the factors negatively affecting the students‘ classroom L2 oral production and partly help to figure out how the drama application helped to reduce the students‘ English language speaking anxiety level in their classroom

6 Significance of the research

From reading different drama-related academic documents in English

teaching, the teacher has learned that drama is a vital tool for language development

as it simulates reality and develops self expression Additionally, drama activities

are considered to provide various interactions in English teaching and learning process From the teacher‘s experience of teaching English for students aged between eleven and thirteen, she sees that this age group usually enjoys interactive activities and movement in the EFL classroom context As a result, this research is

an attempt to raise the awareness of the importance in lowering young students‘ anxiety level toward speaking English by using dramatic techniques

7 Structural organization of the thesis

The thesis is composed of three following parts, starting with Introduction and ending with Conclusion The second part, named Development, consists of

four chapters The following are the brief overviews of each of the parts and the chapters:

Part 1– Introduction – presents the rationale for the research, the aims and

objectives of the research, the research questions, the scope of the study, the methods, the significance and the structural organization of the study

Part 2– Development – is organized in four chapters as follows:

Chapter 1 - Literature review provides an overview of the theoretical background and the previous studies relating to this research problem under investigation in order to conceptualize the framework of the study

Chapter 2 – Methodology restates the research questions, and describes the setting, the participants, the research design, the research instruments used in this study, and the research procedures

Chapter 3 – Data analysis and the findings are shown

Chapter 4 – Discussion discusses about the findings which answer the two research questions

Part 3 – Conclusion – offers a summary of the study, states limitations, and

provides some recommendations for further studies

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Theoretical background

1.1.1 The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

The approach to language teaching known as Communicative Language Teaching or CLT emerged in the 1970s and 1980s CLT was developed as a reaction to language teaching methods that seemed ineffective,namely, Grammar Translation and Audiolingualism According to Brindley (1986), the 1970s and 1980s seemed to be considered as the era of CLT

CLT starts from a theory of language as communication Wilkins (1976) points out that CLT comes into existence with the purpose that a realistic context for language acquisition is created in the classroom setting to develop communicative competence Communicative competence, in Hymes‘ (1972) view, means that a language user needs to use the language not only correctly (based on linguistic competence), but also appropriately (based on communicative competence) In CLT, learners are motivated to use the language to serve the purpose of communication, i.e people learn a second language so as to perform different functions in life, as in Larsen-Freeman‘s (2000) view, all tasks should be done with a communicative intent Therefore, as Wilkin (1976) and Widdowson (1978) states, more emphasis is put on the use of language for communication of meaning than learning language structures, forms and vocabulary Here, it does not mean that grammar is not important, but rather grammar should be taught within contexts and through communicative tasks Teachers had better develop materials based on the needs of a particular class, and students need to feel secure, unthreatened, and non-defensive in a CLT classroom as well as students are provided with a far better chance to interact with one another in their language classroom

In general, CLT is a broad approach rather than a specific teaching methodology, so many practitioners interpret it in different ways Howatt (1984) distinguishes between a ―strong‖ and a ―weak‖ version of CLT The ―strong‖ version claims that language is acquired through communication, while the ―weak‖ version stresses the importance of using the language for communicative purposes within a wider program of language teaching Canh (2004) indicates that most of definitions of CLT come under the weak version, favoring interaction among small numbers of learners so as to maximize their talking time

Although there have been supporting and non-supporting debates on CLT, Hiep (2007), who drew on a study on teachers‘ belief and implementation of CLT in Viet Nam, shows his view that despite a range of issues arise when CLT is put into practice in a particular context, these issues do not necessarily negate the potential usefulness of CLT Teachers are to decide reasonable adjustments in applying CLT effectively in their teaching in a specific classroom setting In Viet Nam, with the current teaching culture, which is being transferred from the teacher-centered to learner-centered classroom, CLT is being preferred to other methodologies It can

be seen that CLT has given a chance to teachers to create purposeful communicative activities in a classroom setting while simultaneously retaining the best elements of other teaching methodologies and these communicative activities had better be organized properly to develop learners‘ communication in the target language

In order to learn an L2 efficiently, it is a must to practice the four important skills like writing, speaking, listening and reading However, in this study, there is a focus on ―speaking‖ In fact, since speaking is interrelated with the other skills, its improvement results in the development of the others Speaking is very rarely carried out in isolation and naturally it becomes an interactive skill According to Widdowson (1978: 58), ―what is said is dependent on an understanding of what else has been said in the interaction‖ Speaking a language is really difficult for L2 learners because effective oral communication requires the ability to use the target language appropriately in social interactions though oral communication, of course,

involves a very powerful nonverbal communication system In fact, the interactive behavior of EFL / ESL learners is influenced by a number of factors, of which anxiety is an issue of L2 speaking The following are some views of anxiety in L2

speaking

1.1.2 Anxiety in L2 speaking

Second language anxiety has a debilitating effect on the oral performance of speakers of English as a second language Language anxiety is becoming an important area of research in our profession After Krashen‘s (1985) affective filter hypothesis in the theory of SLA, there has been a lot of research done in this area The affective variables discussed by Krashen are motivation, confidence and anxiety In his view, individuals learn second language only if they get comprehensible input and if their affective filters are low enough to let the input get

in Like Krashen (1985), Du (2009) offers the idea that the affective filter works like a barrier to language acquisition when the learner is not motivated, not having confidence or thinking about failure, and the filter is low when the learner is not anxious or is trying to get involved in the language

In terms of anxiety, Dörnyei (2005:198) states that ―there is no doubt that anxiety affects L2 performance‖ Zheng (2008, as cited in Atas, 2014) indicates that when students are supposed to complete an oral task, their anxiety level can increase It may be asserted that FLA occurs more in output language abilities such

as writing and speaking than in input abilities (Chiu et al., 2010) In the study of Chiu et al (2010), a high percentage of students reported that it was easy for them

to become anxious when they spoke in English (p.109) Accordingly, from the results of their study, MacIntyre and Gardner (1991) came to a conclusion that speaking is the most anxiety-provoking activity in second language acquisition Also, it can be implied from MacIntyre and Gardner‘s (1991) study that with no anxiety-provoking situation, speaking a foreign language can increase students‘ self-confidence From the findings in the study conducted by Park and Lee (2005),

it can be seen that low self-confidence or high anxiety levels affect students‘ oral performances negatively In addition, Tanver (2007, as cited in Indrianty, 2016: 30)

points out that English language learners often express a feeling of stress, nervousness or anxiety while learning to speak English and claim to have a ―mental block‟ against learning English

From what has been discussed above, it is apparent that the anxiety experienced in this case is related to language anxiety In terms of definition, Clement (1980) defines FLA as a complex construct that deals with learners‘ psychology in terms of their feelings, self-esteem, and self-confidence Emphasizing the distinctive feature of FLA, Young (1992) offers a definition for FLA as a complicated psychological phenomenon peculiar to language learning More specifically, according to Maclntyre (1999), FLA is regarded as the worry and negative emotional reaction arousal in learning or using a second or foreign language Similarly, MacIntyre and Gardner (1994b) define it as the feeling of tension and apprehension specifically associated with second or foreign language contexts, including speaking, listening, and learning Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986) define FLA as ―a distinct complex construct of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of language learning process‖ (p 128)

According to Horwitz et al., no other fields of study implicate self-concept and self-expression to the same degree as foreign language study, which makes the anxiety caused by foreign language learning distinctive from other academic anxieties This view of Horwitz et al is supported by MacIntyre and Gardner (1989) and Chen and Chang (2004) MacIntyre and Gardner (1989) assert a clear relationship between FLA and foreign language proficiency It can be seen that students with general anxiety are likely to experience FLA It is Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope (1986) who first identified FLA and developed FLCAS (See Appendix 4)

as an instrument to measure it The FLCAS consists of 33 items with significant part-whole correlations with the total scale, aiming to assess communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation associated with language anxiety It is argued that these three forms of anxiety are fundamental to the concept

of FLA and together make language learning a daunting task for a learner In more

detail, the communication apprehension category contains items 1, 4, 9, 14, 15, 18,

24, 27, 29, 30, 32; the category of fear for feedback by peers and teachers includes items 2, 7, 13, 19, 23, 31, 33; and the category for fear of language tests is composed of items 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28 Each item on the FLCAS is rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree) Total scores of the scale range from 33 to 165 with lower scores indicate higher levels of anxiety Twenty-four of the items are positively worded, and nine of the items are negatively worded

The fact is that some issues have triggered rather heated debates challenging Horwitz et al.‘s theory According to Trang (2012), the four points in Horwitz et al.‘s theory that have been challenged are (1) the direction of the causal relationship between FLA and language learning difficulties (that is, it is argued that anxiety is likely to be both a cause and an effect of language difficulty); (2) the important role

of FLA (that is, some linguists consider FLA to have little influence on foreign language achievement); (3) the components of FLA (i.e there has been an argument that test anxiety should not be the component of FLA); and (4) the validity of the FLCAS (i.e some researchers claim that FLCAS measures language skills rather than anxiety levels) Despite these challenges, the theory has played a vital role in language anxiety research with a large number of studies using it as the theoretical framework Trang (2012) reports that many researchers show their evidences to support FLCAS To provide a positive confirmation of Horwitz et al.‘s theory, such supporters as MacIntyre (1999), Young (1994), and Horwitz (2010) express that the variety of anxiety types made it possible that the anxiety being studied was not the anxiety specific to language learning because according to Scovel (1978) and Gardner (1985), researchers should be specific about the type of anxiety to be studied Another idea from Gardner (1985) is that not all forms of anxiety would influence second or foreign language learning, but ―a construct of anxiety which is not general but instead is specific to the language acquisition context is related to second language achievement‖ (p.34) Indeed, with its complexity and controversy, FLA is likely to continue to be a key area of research interest

To make a small contribution to the area of research for FLA, the researcher (teacher) has just carried out this study adopted Horwitz et al.‘s theoretical model It

is found that among various ways of helping create a low anxiety level ESL/EFL speaking environment, drama application is considered as one way

1.1.3 Drama in language teaching

Most language teachers nowadays advocate some elements of a

‗Communicative Approach‘ and therefore recognize and appreciate the value of drama in language teaching So far drama in language teaching has been defined in many different ways According to Holden (1981), "drama applies to any activity which asks the student to portray himself in an imaginary situation; or to portray another person in an imaginary situation" Holden (1981) describes drama as the world of ―let‘s pretend‖, i.e it provides an opportunity for a person to express himself through verbal expressions and gestures using his imagination and memory Riggenbach and Lazarton (1991: 128-129) define drama as a performance activity Performance activities are ―those in which the student prepares beforehand and delivers a message to a group‖

Drama in language teaching is used in the language classroom and not on stage, so the participants in the drama activities are learners and not actors Drama

in L2 teaching context is different from drama in theatre context (called Theatre) Theatre implies performance It is largely concerned with communication between the actors and their audience As Holden (1981:8) says, ―…the dramatic action should be shaped with that audience‘s presence in mind‖ However, Drama is focus

on ―doing‖ In Malley‘s (1983) viewpoint, Drama is more concerned with what is happening within and between members of a group placed in a dramatic situation Drama is never intended for performance and rarely, if even, rehearsed as it depends

on the spontaneous invention and the participants‘ reactions

The matter is that whether drama plays important roles or not in language teaching Take a look at some views on this issue

1.1.4 Roles of drama in language teaching

Many educators and researchers in linguistics have explored the positive roles

of drama in language teaching The following are a very small number of illustrations

According to Alan Maley and Alan Duff (1982), using drama techniques helps

to learn new vocabulary, builds confidence, motivates the students and helps shift the focus from the teacher to the students It is Susan Holden (1981) who adds that drama provides opportunities for a person to express themselves From its nature, as Nishikawa (2012:125) states, drama enables its performers to communicate with other people and communication consists of mental activities, verbal and body language That is, drama helps students to perform on three elements, namely, mental activities, verbal and body language at the same time It has been revealed that a verbal activity entailing physical movements helps students to develop memory more efficiently (ibid) Nishikawa (2012) adds, ―As the drama scene reflects the situations of a real life, students can practice the language in the particular situation of a play‖ and as a result, ―it is easier for students to memorize words or idioms because they are related to the real world‖ In the terms of teachers‘ roles in a drama environment, Kao (1998) assesses that drama is a special communication situation which makes considerable demands on the flexibility and skills of the teacher Drama, therefore, has various advantages over the current system of teaching English Up to now, teaching through drama has helped to develop communication skills, especially speaking ability

By reading a number of related materials, the following are what the researcher of this study has learned about the positiveness of drama in the teaching

of speaking Drama provides the chance for language learners to improve their oral communication by using the target language more meaningfully and appropriately Through drama activities, learners can experience the real-life emotions and impulses from which the communication develops in some situations An argument with a classmate about a recent soccer match is taken as an example Moreover,

drama assists language learners in developing their creativity, self-expression and confidence in speaking L2 Drama creates a very low anxiety level learning environment by giving L2 learners much more freedom to express their feelings, emotions and opinions about an assigned task in the classroom without being afraid

of making errors More interestingly, L2 learners usually have a lot of fun when they are put in a drama-embedded classroom Interesting classroom activities attract learners‘ attention and fill the classroom with laughter, so learners are willing to involve in L2 speaking activities Additionally, through drama activities, classmates know one another better Classmates talk to many partners and interact with one another in different roles From their collaborative work, they get to know their classmates‘ ideas, feelings and personality Most importantly, drama satisfies the requirements of communicative activities By experiencing real-life situations, learners learn to use the target language appropriately in a certain communicative context because for learning communicatively, ―to learn it‖ is ―to do it‖

From the above views, drama is highly recommended in teaching speaking for L2 learners, as Holden (1981:7) states, ―Once the teacher has decided for himself what the real nature of oral communication is, he can begin to use dramatic exercises in the classroom‖ There are a number of drama techniques, but in this study, several ones such as drama games, role-playing, and mime were recommended because of the correspondence of these techniques with the old English language teaching curriculum for Vietnamese teenagers as well as the L2 proficiency level of the students under investigation

1.1.5 Types of drama techniques

Various drama activities can be designed from these three drama techniques Some illustrations should be provided in Chapter 2 of this thesis

1.1.5.1 Drama games

Drama games are short and easy games which involve action and interaction among students More importantly, drama games involve the whole class‘ participation with great fun, but with very little preparation

In Charlyn Wessels‘ (1987) idea, drama games are characterized by the four features that make drama games different from other types of language games These four characters are summarized as follows: (1) Drama games frequently involve action on the part of students The rule of drama games requires both verbal language and physical actions; (2) Drama games stimulate students for imagination and creativity so that they can go beyond what has been taught and invent new situations; (3) Drama games help students to go beyond reproduction into a deep level of thinking since drama games have no fixed structure; (4) Drama games allow and even require students to express emotion and feelings When students place themselves in other roles, they use verbal and non-verbal language to show the emotion and feelings of those characters during the task

In general, such drama games, which are likely to be the perfect way to break the ice and engage learners of all ages, are used for warm-up, to introduce or practice a new skill, or just for fun

1.1.5.2 Role-playing

Apart from drama games, role-playing is another common drama technique

―Role-playing‖ is probably the term that is familiar to most language teachers Role play suggests taking on some character in an imagined situation to play with it The role represents for students a task that forces them ―to behave and speak in a way to create an image of a fictive person or some phenomenon‖ (Valenta, 2008: 53 as translated by P.Brandalíková) Students generally interact in pairs or groups in a more or less controlled situation and due to the play - like environment, they feel safe and relaxed Each student plays himself/herself or assumes the role of some other person, a creature or an object which is familiar with or far removed from his

or her experience According to Livingstone (1985:6), role-play is ―a classroom activity which gives the student the opportunity to practice the language, the aspects

of role behavior, and the actual roles he may need outside the classroom‖ Three possible types of role plays can be distinguished In Holden‘s (1981:10) view, ―it (role-play) involves the students taking the part of different characters, for example

a student, a taxi-driver, or a London shop-assistant – roles which might be similar or very far removed from his own personal experience There is a wide variety of approaches to role-play: the student can play his part in a highly controlled language situation, perhaps working from a script, or the language can be semi-scripted for him,…‖ Another type is the extended role-playing or improvisation Students might work in groups on their own scenarios in order to extend their new character They think more about the setting and the attitude of their characters towards each other

in the setting and they create some more complex dramatic situation The third type

of role-play where the students keep their own personalities and act for themselves

is called simulation or role-simulation

From the explanations above, the researcher of this study has found that the first type of role-playing should be employed because of its appropriateness with the L2 proficiency level of the participating students

1.1.5.3 Mime / Pantomine

Another useful drama technique in an EFL classroom is mime Outside Britain, ‗pantomime‘ is usually used to mean ‗mime‘ Mime is ―a non-verbal representation of an idea or story through gesture, bodily movement and expression‖ (John Dougill, 1987) In other words, mime is a form of acting without words or mime is often called the art of silence Zyoud (2010) states, ―Mime builds

up the confidence of learners by encouraging them to get up and do things in front

of one another‖ As Savignon (1983) says, mime assists learners in getting comfortable with the idea of performing in front of peers with no concern for language and although no language is used during a mime, it can be a spur to use language When mime is performed before the rest of the class, the target language

is usefully employed for evaluating and interpreting what has been seen This kinetic approach to language instruction has proven successful in arousing student interest and promoting language acquisition Several illustrations are given (in Chapter 2) to demonstrate how to include mimetic activities for a variety of language instruction in a classroom setting

In brief, it is interesting that students are usually not afraid to give their own opinions or share an experience while it happens throughout drama activities The learning atmosphere in a drama-embedded classroom is usually very relaxing and usually brings along quite much of fun Importantly, even quite anxious students are surprised that they can participate

1.2 Review of previous related studies

In recent years, TEFL has been greatly affected by CA, so the topic related to improving language learners‘ ability in speaking L2 through drama is always the centre of many researchers‘ attention The following are several most recent studies related to the topic in both Vietnam and overseas countries

1.2.1 Previous studies overseas

In this section, the researcher presents the studies carried out in the countries where English is taught and learnt as a foreign language They are the studies conducted by Atas (2014), Sağlamel & Kayaoğlu (2013), Li (2016), and Megat Khalid (2014)

The study by Atas (2014) showed that drama helped to reduce speaking anxiety in EFL classes Atas (2014) conducted the study with twenty-four twelfth graders in Kozan Anatolian Medical Vocational High School The participants‘ language level was A2 The instruments used in the study were pre- and post- tests

by the use of the FLCAS of Horwitz et al (1986), semi-structured pre- and interviews, students‘ diaries and the teacher‘s reflections The findings of the quantitative data from the pre- and post- tests asserted that drama positively affected students‘ anxiety, fear and embarrassment towards speaking in the FL Most of the students felt confident while speaking English, overcame the feeling of being worse

post-at speaking English than other students and the feeling of being laughed post-at while speaking English, and most of them could speak English when unprepared The findings of the qualitative data from the other instruments were not much different from those of FLCAS Atas (2014) suggested that language teachers should be informed about the positive effects of drama on speaking and anxiety of FL learners

The study by Sağlamel & Kayaoğlu (2013) indicated a statistically significant decrease in the language anxiety levels of the students who participated in the six-week creative drama programme To have a general picture of the participants, 565 students at a Turkish state university were administered an adapted version of the FLCAS of Horwitz et al (1986) Then, a one-group pre-test / post-test study was conducted with 22 randomly selected students who took part in this drama application programme The FLSAS (the adapted version of the FLCAS) was administered both at the beginning and at the end of the study The findings from the pre- and post-questionnaires elaborated on possible sources of language anxiety, the relationship between anxiety level and students‘ proficiency level and classroom performance grades The researchers of this study stated that data from different settings and larger sample sizes should be needed to validate the findings, and that this study reported a limited number of techniques used in the creative drama, i.e numerous other methods could also be integrated

Another study of a similar topic carried out by Li (2016) discovered that the drama course under this study had a positive effect on reducing the participants‘ anxiety to various degrees The three types of change in the anxiety level were revealed as drastic, fluctuated and mild decrease This research took place in a Chinese university over a period of three months This study reflected the nature of action research and adopted mainly qualitative and partially quantitative data collection procedures The researcher designed the course and worked as the teacher

of a random group of thirteen students who reported the anxiety The questionnaires (developed from the FLCAS of Horwitz et al (1986) with modifications) were used

as quantitative tools to assess the participants‘ general ESA levels The qualitative data was obtained from the teacher‘s journals, observing the class and interviewing each of the participants Both of the group results and three individual cases were presented and analyzed In this study, Li (2016) employed a mixed method approach, so the findings from these different sources could be complementary to each other, ie the quantitative counts were also essential to process with the

interpretation of the qualitative data Li (2016) recommended that further research explore the ways of facilitating a learner-perceived friendly language environment for anxious learners through sufficient practice of using oral English with drama approaches

In almost the same topic, the study by Megat Khalid (2014) also explored that applying drama was an effective tool to lower the students‘ anxiety when speaking

in English in public This study involved eighty non-native speakers of English who enrolled in two diploma marine-related programmes at a maritime university in Malaysia The quantitative data for this research was collected through the administration of a survey questionnaire to the participating students The 23-item questionnaire, adapted from the 33-item FLCAS by Horwitz et al (1986), was administered during the last class of the semester right after the drama application with the purpose of eliciting the learners‘ attitudes and perception towards the drama Then, the data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics of mean and percentage The findings of the research suggested that the participants regarded drama as a funny activity and they were also relieved of unnecessary nervousness during the drama activity Also, they felt more relaxed when asked to publicly speak

in English Megat Khalid (2014) offered the idea that teachers should facilitate learners in their language learning process by designing effective and enjoyable learning activities

All the above-mentioned researchers came to the conclusion that drama assisted in reducing language learners‘ anxiety in speaking English They all supported the idea that drama helped to create a friendly and funny learning environment The next section revisits the positive findings of drama employment

in classroom settings from some recent studies in Viet Nam

1.2.2 Previous studies in Viet Nam

Recently, in our country, the area of improvement of L2 oral communication has received the attention of a number of researchers Some most recent studies

which are presented in this section are the studies by Nguyễn Thị Bích Hiền (2005), Nguyễn Thu Thủy (2007), and Vũ Thị Thanh Tâm (2012)

The study by Nguyễn Thị Bích Hiền (2005) identified an effective method (using drama) to increase students‘ interests in speaking activities The study was conducted with the participation of twelve teachers and 112 second and third year students of English major in the teacher training section at Vinh University The data of the research was collected from classroom observation, follow-up interviews with seven of the teachers and twenty randomly-chosen students, and three questionnaires (one for the teacher and two for the students) The researcher of this study recommended some useful resources for using drama techniques

Another study conducted by Nguyễn Thu Thủy (2007) provided the confirmation that applying drama helped improve the learners‘ speaking skills and their oral communication skill as a whole Thirty-one 2nd-year students of the same class were chosen to participate in this action research Nguyễn Thu Thủy (2007) collected data by using the methods, namely two questionnaires, students‘ portfolios, information discussions, and teacher‘s observation She offered a suggestion that teachers can extend their choices to various drama resources like internet, newspapers, real-life situations and so on

The study by Vũ Thị Thanh Tâm (2012) showed a positively effective impact

on the language learning of the primary students at Quan Tru Primary School The results of the research revealed that most of the eighty participating students (of the three classes) had a positive attitude towards the use of stories and drama in their English lessons and made progress in their language skills like speaking and listening The study involved mixed methods (questionnaire surveys, class observation and teacher‘s journal) for data collection It was suggested in the study that teachers should be aware of such factors affecting the speaking and listening teaching process as lesson topics, task-worksheets prepared by teachers, the class atmosphere and the learners‘ group participation

The studies carried out in Viet Nam by these three Vietnamese researchers provided the support for the drama application in the classroom context in an attempt to improve L2 skills (mainly L2 speaking skill) for L2 learners

In summary, the studies both in Vietnam and overseas mentioned above showed the advantageous influences of the drama employment in reducing L2 learners‘ anxiety or increasing their confidence or interest in speaking English Such positive findings of drama application have led me to the idea of conducting this action research, which is presented in my thesis

1.3 Summary

In this chapter, many theories and discussions related to drama have been presented They were the basis for the researcher to design the questionnaire, the checklist for observation and the students‘ reflection form with which this action study of lowering sixth graders‘ anxiety in speaking English through drama was carried out The detailed description of the methodology, the procedures and the results should be addressed in the next chapters

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1 Restatement of the research questions

In order to work out factors causing the sixth grade students‘ anxiety in speaking English in their EFL classroom, and in order to find out how the drama employment assisted in reducing their nervousness in L2 speaking in their EFL classroom setting, it is necessary to find the answers to the following two questions: (1) What factors contribute to the students‘ anxiety in speaking English in their EFL classroom?

(2) How do dramatic activities help lower the students‘ anxiety level in speaking English in their EFL classroom?

2.2 The setting of the study

The setting in which this action research study was conducted is a lower secondary school situated in Thanh Oai district This school year (2017-2018), the school has slightly over one thousand students divided into twenty-eight classes (seven classes for each of the four grades: Grade 6, Grade 7, Grade 8, and Grade 9) The researcher of this study is working as a teacher of English at the school Of the twenty-one lower secondary schools in Thanh Oai district, the teacher‘s school is considered to be the most crowded one Usually in each academic year, about one third of the students of the school who are estimated to be good or fairly good at Math, Literature, Physics, Chemistry (for Grade 8 and Grade 9), and English are selected for better classes (called selected classes of the school) Each grade has two classes of this kind and each of them has 43-45 students Each of the remaining classes (called normal classes) has 33 -35 students All of the school students learn English as a compulsory subject at school and the course-books edited for teaching and learning English in this school and in the other lower secondary schools in Thanh Oai district follow the old English Language Curriculum of the Ministry of Education and Training In general, almost all of the language lessons for sixth graders are integrated lessons and the study results for this language subject are

taken from 15-minute and 45-minute written tests and oral homework-checking tests So far, developing EFL speaking skills has not been received enough attention and secondary school children in the district have not had a chance to experience an actual L2 speaking test, but rather some speaking practice in the classroom context, and sometimes ‗homework-checking‘ oral performances In the researcher‘s school,

if students perform well for these speaking tasks, they can be rewarded good marks (these marks are usually put in the ―oral mark‖ column in the ―mark‖ notebooks) However, in general, few students can get rewarding marks in this way

As mentioned above, there were twenty normal classes in the researcher‘s school, and the physical setting of the classrooms for all the normal classes was almost the same and was briefly shown in the drawing below

Above is an overall look at the setting, in which the researcher (teacher) carried out this study Below are the details of the participants

(Space)

Blackboard T‘s desk

Students‘ seats

- Three rows

- Six desks in each row

- Usually two students at each desk

Door (Space)

(Space)

(Space)

2.3 Participants

2.3.1 Students

This study was conducted with the participation of 35 students of class 6A2 with the sex ratio of 12 females and 23 males All of the participating students were born in 2006 and come from the same commune in Thanh Oai district In general, the girls were more hard-working than the boys The following is further information for the proficiency level of English: (1) Ten of the girls were considered to fall into the slightly above ‗average‘ range, and the two remaining ones were bad at English; (2) Twenty of the boys were at the ‗average‘, but the other three knew almost no English words; (3) Most of the students got marks ranging from five to eight for their first two written tests (a 45-minute test and a 15-minute test) prior to the research; (4) The `whole class were not interested in speaking L2 in their language classroom The fact is that the students did not have

an opportunity to experience in an L2 speaking environment outside their classroom

2.3.2 Teacher

The study was also conducted with the participation of the researcher (the English language teacher of class 6A2) She participated in a number of drama activities as the model and the facilitator In terms of the researcher‘s teaching experience, she has been working as a teacher of English in a lower secondary school for over fifteen years

2.4 Research design and research instruments

This is an action research study Action research embraces the actions needed

to solve a given problem in the classroom (J Bell, 2005) It consists of several

self-reflective cycles in which teacher-researchers complete four steps: plan to initiate a change, act and observe the process of implementation, and reflect on possible

results (Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014) Following the model of action research of Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon (2014), the researcher of this study

(1) made a plan to solve the problem; (2) acted by designing and implementing a

pedagogical intervention; (3) observed how the learners responded to the project‘s

development and completion through data collection instruments; and

(4) reflected on the experience by analyzing the data collected in order to make

decisions and generate more effective classroom strategies This action research explored some factors that made the sixth graders feel worried about speaking L2 and how the drama application lowered their nervous feelings in L2 oral production The goals of this action research were achieved by means of both quantitative and qualitative data The quantitative data was chiefly obtained from the pre- and post-intervention questionnaires delivered to the participating students The qualitative data and the other quantitative data (from the teacher‘s observations and the students‘ reflections), which was collected during the drama application, would contribute to the deeper and more accurate interpretation of the research results

2.5 Research procedures

This action research was developed during six months of the academic year (2017-2018) in the following steps:

Step 1: Problem identification

After experiencing a number of lessons with the students of class 6A2, the English language teacher (the researcher) felt that most of them were not worried about their classroom written tests and about one third were fairly good at doing written tasks related to testing the vocabulary and grammar correspondent to their current level of English proficiency In contrast, most of the students were not willing to participate in the pair-work and group-work oral practice in the classroom, i.e, few of them said few words, some kept quiet, and some pretended to engage in the speaking activities by chatting something in Vietnamese with their partners Also, the whole class kept silent when the teacher told them to volunteer to talk something familiar in front of the class, i.e the teacher told them to introduce themselves in front of the class or to talk about their families and so on When the teacher called on some students (these students were considered to be the best of the class), she found that they felt nervous and only spoke one or two simple sentences,

―My name is (Ngan) / I am 11 (years old)‖, and then rushed to their seats

Preliminary investigation

After feeling the problem, the teacher took more careful observation on the students‘ behaviors and feelings when they had to engage in oral performances in the classroom so that she could find out and took notes on how unenthusiastically they involved in the oral activities The teacher saw that no students were active in their target language speaking No students in the class were willing to enthusiastically involve in their oral production They were always in the state of being forced to say something in English in the language class

This classroom L2 speaking problem could be definitely identified through the students‘ responses to the questions in the pre-intervention questionnaire, which was based in part on the original FLCAS designed by Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986) This questionnaire was piloted on ten students who were randomly chosen from class 6A4 before it was officially delivered to each of the investigated students with the teacher‘s very careful explanation to make sure that all the students had a thorough understanding of each of the items in the questionnaire Accordingly, all the items in the questionnaire were translated into Vietnamese (the students‘ mother tongue) to help them to be really clear about the meaning of the items, which was especially essential to reach the best consistency in the students‘ responses The items of the pre-intervention questionnaire had to be made adapted and prone to the intent of this study on using drama to reduce anxiety in English speaking performances in the classroom setting Additionally, this method tool helped to explore some chief factors causing their nervousness in their classroom L2 oral performances as well as the indicators which would be compared to those in the post-intervention questionnaire so as to partly evaluate the effects of the drama application (After permitted by the headmistress of the school, the researcher chose

a lesson of English language selective subject, invited the participating students to fulfill this questionnaire, and then the hand-outs were handed in by the researcher)

This questionnaire should be described in detail as follows:

This questionnaire is divided into two parts The first part contains four questions for general information about the participating students‘ full names and

their general feelings of learning the target language with some focus on speaking The second part includes twelve five-point Likert-type items associated with communication apprehension, fear of negative feedback, ―being-called-to-speak‖ anxiety and comfort in oral performances in a language classroom setting This questionnaire was used to identify the classroom L2 speaking problem, and then a number of factors resulting in the students‘ nervousness in speaking English in the language classroom could be uncovered The category of ‗test anxiety‘ in the original FLCAS is transferred to the fear of being called to speak L2 in this questionnaire because, as mentioned above, the participating students have not had

to take an actual speaking exam so far Testing of English speaking in this study means that the participants were called on (by their teacher) to perform their oral tasks during their English language speaking practice in the classroom or sometimes

at the beginning of a language lesson for homework-checking Each of the items, except for those in the first part, is rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) with a neutral category in the middle To enter into more details, these twelve remaining items are categorized into three subgroups The first category, labeled ‗communication apprehension‘, includes items 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 The category of being-called-to-speak fear consists of items 10,

11, 12 And, the category of fear for feedback contains items 13, 14, 15, 16 This

questionnaire is put in Appendix 1 in this thesis

This questionnaire can be directly compared to the original FLCAS Only some of the items in the original version are selected and these chosen items are worded and slightly changed to be adaptive to this study focusing on anxiety of speaking English These are items 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 These changes can be clearly seen in Table a (see Appendix 4) Basing on her experience

of teaching, item 9 of the questionnaire is self-designed by the researcher The reliability of the questionnaire has been tested by Cronbach's alpha (>0.6).The negatively worded items (6, 14) has been reversely calculated

The results gained from the analysis of the data collected from the

pre-Chapter 3) revealed that the students were afraid of speaking English in their EFL classroom, and such factors as the L2 speaking atmosphere covered by the teacher‘s strictness and explicit mistake/error correction, the students‘ L2 proficiency, their communication apprehension, fear of being called to speak L2 and fear of being negatively assessed made a great contribution to their L2 speaking anxiety

Before making a plan for the drama intervention, the teacher let the students try on a number of drama activities of different types like mime, role-play, script, and other drama games for two weeks These drama-based activities were integrated

in the six lessons As soon as the students finished each of these activities, the teacher gave them the hand-outs, in which they were invited to choose their answers

to such questions as ―Have you taken part in such an activity before? A Often B Sometimes C Seldom D Never‖ and ―Do you enjoy it? A Very much B Much

C Little D Very little‖ Accordingly, the teacher found out the fact that the participating students had not been really exposed to drama activities before, and they were interested in those drama activities The specific figures were thirty students (86%) answering ―never‖, five students (14%) choosing the answer

―seldom‖ for the first question, and thirty –five students (100%) selecting ―much‖

or ―very much‖ for the second one Moreover, the researcher (teacher) considered that only drama techniques, namely mime, role-play and easy drama games were appropriate for the students‘ proficiency level, the allowance of the time and the contents of the lessons, and the physical setting of the classroom as well

From the above identification, the teacher researcher planned her pedagogical intervention (as presented in Step 2)

Step 2: Intervention planning

As scheduled by the management board of the school, the class 6A2 had three English lessons plus one English selective subject every study-week (at the teacher researcher‘s school, the English selective subject was designed for grammar revision) The drama activities were planned to be gradually employed during five months (regardless of the two weeks of the preliminary investigation and

approximately two weeks-off during the Tet Holiday) During the first four weeks, the teacher would teach four drama-integrated language lessons (one for each of the weeks) The frequency of the drama-inserted lessons was planned to increase to three every week during the four remaining months of the drama intervention, except for the ―Grammar Practice‖, the test and test-correction periods

The following was the more detailed plan for the drama application

In general, the teacher intended to employ simple drama activities in this study However, easier ones should be applied during the early stage of the drama intervention since most of the students had not really been familiar with drama activities before Gradually, more interesting drama activities should be embedded

in the students‘ English lessons when they got accustomed to this new way of learning English In addition, the students should get clear guides from their English language teacher before performing the dramatizing work, and after their performance for each drama activity, they should get positive feedback and encouragement from the teacher

Step 3: Intervention

As planned, the selected drama activities were applied in the language class during the intervention The drama-embedded lessons and non-drama ones were under the teacher‘s careful observations over the drama application time The brief notes from the observation, regarded as the qualitative data, were taken in the checklist (see Appendix 5) by the teacher immediately after each of the drama-integrated lessons More qualitative data was collected from the teacher narrating the most featured events of the drama-embedded and non drama-embedded lessons

in the form of a diary over the investigating time In addition, the students wrote their reflections in the given form (see Appendix 2) after some of the lessons within the drama intervention time, and these reflections were handed in by the teacher The information from the participants‘ reflections was used as the other qualitative and quantitative data

The following are several illustrated drama-based activities and the comments (expressed in full sentences) from the checklist

 For role-playing:

In this study, the teacher only applied the simplest forms of the first type of role-playing mentioned by Holden (1981)

Illustration No.1 from Period 40 / Unit 7: YOUR HOUSE / Lesson 2: A3,4,5,6 -

Date of teaching: November 18th, 2017

For the ten-minute “Check up the old lesson” stage, the class took part in a

role-play activity of asking and answering about Hoa‘s house (Unit 7 – A1) in the roles of Minh and Hoa

In order to facilitate the role-play speaking task, the teacher, at first, gave the class a quick revision for such structures as

- S + [be/not] + adj / [Be] + S + adj?

- S + [be/not] + Prep.P / [Be] + S + Prep.P?

- There + [be/not] +…… / [Be] + there + … ?

Of course, their course-books were closed and the class could look at this poster on the blackboard

Hoa’s house

The teacher observed the whole class while the students were taking part in the dramatic activity and she called some better pairs of the students to do the oral work first The teacher realized that these good and quite good students took good involvement in asking and answering about the house (Unit 7/A1) in the roles of Minh and Hoa In fact, they did the work quite well Then the teacher asked the whole class to participate in the activity in close pairs at the same time The teacher saw that there were some weaker students were, at first, distracted and did other things She came to them, reminded them to do the work and gave them more help The result was that almost all the students could engage in the activity However, the weaker ones could only ask and answer one or two questions with some grammatical errors However, the teacher took notes of those errors and corrected

them later in the suitable time Importantly, there were about six volunteers for their performances in front of the class and they were invited The teacher only gave good marks for the ―Good‖ performances and gave encouraging words to the

―Needs improvement‖ performances

 For mime:

In fact, there are various miming activities, ranging from easy ones to complex ones, which can be applied in a language classroom In this study, the teacher only concentrated on employing simple ones

Illustration No.2 from Period 23 / Unit 4: BIG OR SMALL / Lesson 4: C1,2,3 -

Teaching date: October 10th, 2017

The following is the mime-embedded part of the lesson plan:

Teacher′s activities Students′ activities;

Contents of the lesson Mime

- Without saying any words, T acts the

actions of getting up/ getting dressed/

brushing her teeth in front of the class

and then asks the class ―what do I do

every morning?‖

- T continues to do her acting of washing

her face/ having breakfast and going to

school in front of her students without

saying a word and asks the class ―what

do I do every morning?‖

- T: ―please ask and answer about what I

do every morning.‖

- After modeling, T lets the class

practice the mime activity in

mixed-level groups of 4 or 5

3 Production: (15 minutes)

- Look at their teacher‘s acting and try to answer her questions

- Take the right to answer T‘s questions

by raising their hands

S2: She gets up, …………

- Work in mixed- level groups under T‘s careful observation and with T‘s help if essential

(The students are allowed to mime various daily activities)