An investigation into the use of group work to teach speaking to large english classes at a police university in vietnam

I, NGUYEN THI THUY, hereby certify that the thesis entitled “An investigation into the use of group work to teach speaking skills to large English classes at a police university in Vietn

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOIUNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching MethodologyCode: 60140111

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOIUNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching MethodologyCode: 60140111

Supervisor: Dr Hoàng Thị Hạnh

Hanoi 2014

I, NGUYEN THI THUY, hereby certify that the thesis entitled “An investigation into

the use of group work to teach speaking skills to large English classes at a police university in Vietnam” is my own study in the fulfillment of the requirement for the

Degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University ofLanguages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi

Hanoi 2014Nguyen Thi Thuy

I would like to acknowledge the assistance I received from a number of people

in the course of carrying out the research paper I highly treasure the important rolethey played in making the completion of this minor thesis a success

First of all, I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Dr Hoang Thi Hanh forpainstakingly reading through my work from the beginning to the end and for herconstant advice and invaluable comments and suggestions Without her continuoussupport I may not have come this far

Secondly, I want to express our sincere gratitude to the Post-Graduate lecturers whosupplied me with basic and useful knowledge about how I could structure a researchproject and what I should write in each chapter

Thirdly, I would like to extend my thanks to my colleagues and my students at thePeople’s Police University of Technology and Logistics for their willingness to help

me complete my thesis

Finally, millions of thanks go to our beloved family whose financial support andspiritual encouragement contribute a significant part to the completion of theresearch

This study attempted to investigate the effects of group work on students’participation in English speaking lessons Students’ attitudes towards the use of groupwork were identified To achieve these objectives, 36 second-year students of apolice university were involved The data were obtained through the analysis ofstudents’ journals; notes from the researcher and group secretaries; and interviewswith students and teachers before the treatment as well as an observing teacher afterthe treatment The findings show students’ positive attitude towards group work,which results in a significant increase in students’ speaking participation The resultsobtained indicate some improvements in students’ speaking Pedagogicalimplications drawn from the findings and suggestions for the further cycle in theaction research are presented

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale for the research 1

2 Objectives of the study 1

3 Research questions 2

4 Significance of the study 2

5 Scope of the study 3

6 Method of the study……… 3

7 The presentation of the study……… 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background of speaking 5

1.1.1 Nature of speaking skill 5

1.1.2 Teaching Speaking skill 6

1.1.3 Classroom speaking activities 7

1.1.4 Problems with speaking activities 9

1.2 Overview of group work 10

1.2.1 Definition of group work 10

1.2.2 Benefits of group work 11

1.2.3 The implementation of group work in the classroom 12

1.3 Review of the related studies 15

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Why action research? 18

2.2 Research setting 18

2.2.1 Overview 18

2.2.2 Description of the English course 19

2.2.3 Participants 19

2.3 The Research Design 20

2.4 The procedure of the study 20

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS 3.1 Students’ journals 26

3.2 Teachers’ notes and secretaries’ notes 30

3.3 The post-treatment interview with the observing teacher 31

3.4 Some newly-arising problems and solutions for the next cycle 34

PART C: CONCLUSION 1 Summary of the study 36

2 Pedagogical implications 37

3 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies 37

REFERENCES 39 APPENDICES I

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the research

With my own experiences of an English teacher, I see that speaking is a problemfor most of non-majored English students My students are not an exception Beforeentering their universities, they mainly come from rural areas, so they did not have a lot

of chances to practice English in communication or for interaction in their daily life.During the speaking lessons, the students seem to rather quiet and passive Whenever Iask them to say something in English, they just say “yes” or “no” and hardly answerthe open questions like “Why …?”, “What do you think…?”, etc As a result, teachertalking time was much greater than student talking time in class The speaking periodseems to be boring and stressful not only to the students but to me as well Besides, Iencountered quite a few problems in terms of a large number of students in my Englishclasses In speaking lessons, I cannot control and check individuals’ speakingperformance Speaking opportunities for each student become limited Most of students

do not have any contributions to their speaking, whereas only few students take part inspeaking activities

In order to overcome these obstacles and make my speaking lessons moreinteresting, I tried to search and read some studies to find some solutions to myproblems One of the strategies that reflect the principle of learner - centeredness isgroup work This method was applied widely in some classrooms and showed somepositive effects on students’ speaking However, when group work is used in my owncontext, I do not know whether it is appropriate and helpful to my students or not

Therefore, it is necessary for me to do a small action research on “the use of group

work to teach speaking skills to large English classes at a police university.”

2 Objectives of the study

With the attempts to find out the extent which the use of group work can help

my students enhance their speaking skills and also know how my students perceive thislearning technique Specifically, this study is carried out with two main objectives asfollowing:

- To investigate the effects of group work on students’ participation in English speaking lessons

- To examine students’ attitudes towards the use of group work in the classroom

3 Research questions

In order to achieve the set goals in the previous section, the research seeks to answer the following research questions:

1 How does the use of group work influence students’ speaking?

2 What are students’ attitudes towards the use of group work in English speaking lessons?

4 The significance of the study

After finding out the impacts of group work in oral performance, this study ishoped to be valuable to both teachers and students at my university

Firstly, it helps me to understand whether the use of group work increasesstudents’ participations in speaking activities or not Moreover, this research is alsoexpected to raise the teachers’ awareness of students’ motivation in language learning

in general, and in speaking in particular From these findings, it will be useful for mycolleagues to select the suitable methods in their future lesson planning

Besides, for my students, they may have one more chance to practice theirspeaking skills in another way in comparison to previous methods Their teacher’stransformation in group work implementation will be able to be beneficial to thestudents.

5 The scope of the study

This study mainly focuses on the impacts of group work on students’ speaking

in English lessons Besides, their attitudes towards the use of group work in speakingactivities are also one of the concerns of the study

The participants in this study are 36 second year non English-majored students

at my university

6 Method of the study

In consideration of the research’s purposes, this study employs three datacollection instruments including interviews with teachers and students; students’journals; notes from the researcher and the groups’ secretaries

The interview with students and teachers: this instrument is employed to find

out the problems students encountered in previous speaking lessons

Students’ journals: These journals are collected at the end of each lesson during

the experiment to investigate what students like and dislike about the use of groupwork in speaking lessons

The interview with the observing teacher: This method is carried out to

investigate her opinions about the use of group work to teach speaking skills and itsappropriateness after she observed some speaking lessons in the process of experiment

The notes from the researcher and the groups’ secretaries: These notes are

collected to identify whether there is any progress or not after the actions

7 The presentation of the study

This study is organized in three main parts Part A is the INTRODUCTIONwhich presents the rationales, the objectives, the research questions, the significance,the scope, the methods and the presentation of the study Part B is theDEVELOPMENT of the research including in three chapters The first chapter reviewsthe literature relating to the use of group work to teach speaking The second chapterdescribes the situation where the research was conducted and the informants involved

in the research It also includes the description of English course, research design, theteaching cycle in the study The method of data collection and its procedures The thirdchapter comes up with the results of the effects of group work on students’ speakingperformance and students’ attitudes towards group work Part C is the CONCLUSIONwhich includes the major findings, their implications and plan for the next researchcycle

PART B : DEVELOPMENTCHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEWThis study investigates the use of group work (GW) to teach speaking skills Itaims at finding out how this implementation influence on students’ speaking and whattheir attitudes towards this method are This chapter reviews the literature ontheoretical background of speaking including nature of speaking skill, teachingspeaking skill, classroom speaking activities, problems with speaking activities Inaddition, some theories about GW such as the definition of GW, benefits of GW, someproblems and suggested solutions in using GW, the implementation of GW in the classroom are also addressed in this chapter Besides, some reviews of related studies arementioned at the end of the chapter.

1.1 Theoretical background of speaking

1.1.1 Nature of speaking skill

In the process of teaching and learning English, speaking skill plays animportant role in mastering this language Therefore, there are many different studiesabout this field Each scholar has their own views about it Nunan (1991, p.40) saysthat “speaking is the same as oral interaction which are conventional ways of speakinginformation, expressing our idea, and thought in our mind Sharing the same opinion,speaking can be considered to be “an interactive process of constructing meaning thatinvolves producing and receiving and processing information” (Brown, 1994b; Burns

& Joyce, 1997) These definitions can be understood that the interaction of learners is the vital factor in speaking activities

Moreover, Brown (1994b) affirms that interaction is the heart of

communication; it is what communication is all about, for example in the cases of

sending messages; receiving them; interpreting them in a context; negotiatingmeanings; and collaborating to accomplish certain purposes And interaction is thecollaborative exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more peopleresulting in a reciprocal effect on each other.

In another way, Chaney and Burk (1998, p.13) argues that speaking is "theprocess of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbalsymbols, in a variety of contexts" This definition mainly covers some factors related todifferent ways of exchanging information in different communicative contexts.Therefore, in speaking process, learners are also required to know not only how toproduce specific points of language such as grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary butalso when, why and in what ways language is produced

Besides, Gower et al.(1995, pp.99-100) state the two main aspects of thespeaking skill including “accuracy” and “fluency” It is said that accuracy involves the

correct use of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation and describe fluency as “the

ability to keep going when speaking spontaneously”.

From some definitions above I choose to refer to speaking in this thesis as theprocess of exchange opinions, ideas, thoughts, and feelings between two or morelearners to support with each other on the basis of their cooperation

1.1.2 Teaching Speaking skill

It is undeniable that the speaking ability is a good source of motivation for moststudents because of its significance in their life Therefore they view learning thelanguage as learning how to speak the language According to Nunan (1991), success ismeasured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the target language

Today's world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improvestudents' communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can expressthemselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in eachcommunicative circumstance The arrival of communicative language teaching (CLT)

in the late 1960s can be one of some choices for this goal CLT is based on real-lifesituations that require communication By using this method in ESL classes, studentswill have the opportunity of communicating with each other in the target language(Kayi, 2006) Byrne (1981, p.71) shows that the communicative approach allows manyinteractive oral activities in the classroom Learners participate in group work(including of more than two students), play their own roles to speak to others, whohave the same role Learners are introduced to clear targets by their teacher andteachers may create communicative conditions, go round, and participate in theactivities to help their students

Nunan (1989, p.94) also points out the approach which consists of aspectscommon to some definitions of CLT: CLT review language as a system for theexpression of meaning Activities involve oral communication, carrying out meaningtasks and using language, which is meaningful to the learners Objectives reflect theneeds of the learners They consist of functional skills as well as linguistic objectives.The learners' role is as a negotiator and integrator The teacher' role is as a facilitator ofthe communication process

1.1.3 Classroom speaking activities

Speaking skills should be taught in attractive and interesting activities Manyresearchers discuss classroom activities and a lot of activities are designed based on thetheory and characteristics of CLT

Harmer (2001, pp.348-352) mentions six classroom speaking activities Theyare acting from script, communication games, discussion, prepared talks,questionnaires, simulation, and role play Richards and Rodgers (1986, p.165) state thatthe range of exercise types and activities with a communicative approach is unlimited,provided that such exercises and activities enable learners to attain the communicativeobjectives of the curriculum, engage learners in communication and require the use ofsuch communicative processes as information sharing, negotiation of meaning, andinteraction Gagne (1985) indicates that students’ motivation to participate in activities

is one of important types of motivation, it is essential to consider what kind ofactivities can enhance students’ motivation on learning language At the same time,Lawtie (2004, p.1) also strongly believes in the important role of the right activities inspeaking class when arguing that “if the right activities are taught in the right way,speaking in class can be a lot of fun, raising general learner motivation and making theEnglish language classroom a fun and dynamic place to be”

In order to clarify that communicative activities are effective and motivating, Ur(1996, p.120) lists out some necessary characteristics of them First, “learners talk alot” which means as much as possible of period of time allotted to the activity is in factoccupied by learners’ talk Second, “participation is even” In other words, classroomdiscussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative students: all get a chance tospeak, and contributions are evenly distributed Next, “motivation is high” which can

be understood that learners are eager to speak because they are interested in the topicsand have something new to say about it, or because they want to contribute toachieving a task objective Finally, “language is of an acceptable level”

From the theories on speaking activities above, it can be inferred that it isnecessary to adopt appropriate speaking activities which can help learners develop

speaking skill As a result, the teacher can help students practice what they have learnt,find ways to achieve communicative objectives.

1.1.4 Problems with speaking activities

According to Ur (1996, p.121), teachers often come across the followingproblems The first is “inhibition” Unlike reading, writing and listening activities,speaking requires some degree of real-time exposure to an audience Learners are ofteninhabited about trying to say something in a foreign language in the classroom becausethey are worried about making mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face, or simplyshy of the attention that their speech attracts

Having nothing to say is the second problem Teachers often hear learnerscomplain they can not think of anything to say They may have no motivation toexpress themselves beyond the guilty feeling that they should be speaking Theproblem is also mentioned by Lawtie (2004) and it is necessary to be tackled

Moreover, uneven or low participation is among the teachers’ obstacles Onlyone participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be heard In a large group, this meansthat each one has only very little time for talking This problem is compounded by thetendency of some learners to dominate the group, while the others speak very little ornot at all

Last but not least, mother-tongue use is also problematic When all, or anumber of the learners share the same mother tongue, they may tend to use it Thishappens because it is easier, because it is unnatural to speak to one another in a foreignlanguage and because or because learners feel less ‘exposed’ if they are speaking theirmother tongue Lawtie (2003, p.2) also states that the problem would happen if the task

or activity is not “pitched at the right level for the students” If the language is pitched

too high they may revert to their first language, likewise if the task is too easy theymay get bored and revert to the first language, too.

To deal with the problems, Lawtie (2004) believes that as a teacher maybe it isnecessary to take a closer look at the type of speaking activities in order to make theactivities interesting enough to capture students’ interest and create a real need forcommunication

In a word, overcoming these obstacles in speaking class to create successfulspeaking activities where learners talk a lot, participation is even and motivation ishigh certainly requires a lot of teachers’ efforts in designing and carrying out speakingactivities

1.2 Group work

1.2.1 Definition of group work

Based on research purposes, each researcher has their own definition Here aresome definitions about group work

Doff (1988, p.137) defines group work as a process that “the teacher divides theclass into small groups to work together (usually four or five students in each group),all the groups work at the same time.”

In addition, group work is defined by Johnson and Smith (1991, p.15) as "groupwork, in language class, is a co- operative activity, during which students share aimsand responsibilities to complete a task assigned by the teacher in groups or in pairs"

According to Richards (1983, p.189), group work is an essential activitybecause the kind of interactions produced in group activities has been shown to be

quantitatively as well as qualitatively different form that which goes on in the dominated lessons.

teacher-From these above definitions, it can be inferred that group work described inthis study is the process in which students work together in small groups (of fourstudents) so that they can share aims and responsibilities equally to complete someassigned tasks

1.2.2 Benefits of group work

There have been some authors which showed their positive opinions about theuse of group work in language learning Here are some main benefits

Firstly, students' responsibility and autonomy are promoted through group workactivities All students work together, share their ideas, and always want to reach thegoal in group activities In addition, one of their main tasks is being in charge of theirgroup activities Every learner is in charge of his own and each others' speaking.According to Doff (1998) group work and pair work encourage students to share ideasknowledge such as “in a reading activity, students can help each other to explore themeaning of a text, in a discussion activity; students can give each other new ideas".Brown (2001) also states that the whole-class activities often give students a lot of time

to relax even in a small class of fifteen or twenty students but when they participate ingroup work, group members’ responsibilities become equal

Secondly, learners' participation, talking time and oral fluency are improvedthrough group As for Ur (1996, p.232), students can have a learning task during smallinteraction in group work and it is considered as a kind of their activation and is veryvaluable for practicing of fluency in speaking There are five groups in a class; studentscan get five times as some chance to speak as in a big class

Thirdly, the students' motivation is improved through group work activities .Group-work activity can allow participants to use the language Moreover, it is one ofthe most effective ways to motivate participants to become more involved Richardsand Loc Khart (1994) point out that, students not only play more active roles in thelearning process but also get the benefits of sharing ideas with their team memberthrough taking part in groups Doff (1988, p.141) states " students feel less anxietywhen they are privately than when they are on shown in front of the whole class Pairwork and group-work can help shy students, who would never say anything in a wholeclass activity"

In general, group work offers many chances for co-operation, through whichstudents share responsibilities, support each other, learn to negotiate and listen todifferent opinions They feel equal to participate in group work and confident to sharetheir ideas However, group activities still have got many problems when somestudents control the group a lot and make others uncomfortable, so how to organizegroup work effectively is the big question for educators and language teachers

1.2.3 The implementation of group work in the classroom

It is clear that effective group work in the classroom does not occurautomatically Therefore, group work requires teachers’ careful preparation so thattheir implementation can be successful According to Brown (2001), if group work isnot carefully planned, well executed, monitored thoroughly and followed up on insome ways, it can go wrong The following are practical steps suggested by him to take

to carry out successful group work in the classroom

1.2.3.1 The selection of appropriate group techniques

The first step in promoting successful group work is to select an appropriate

follows The first task is game A game could be any activities that formalize a

technique into units that can be score in some way Guessing games are common

language classroom activities The second one is role-play which minimally involves

giving a role to one or more members of a group and assigning an objective or purposethat participants must accomplish A group role-play might involve a discussion of apolitical issue, with each person assigned to represent a particular political point of

view The third one is drama which is a more formalized form of role-play, with a

pre-planned story line and script Sometimes small groups may prepare their own shortdramatization of some event, writing the script and rehearsing the scene as a group

The fourth one is projects Mainly for young learners who can greatly benefit from

hands-on approaches to language, certain projects can be rewarding indeed The fifth

one is interview It is a popular activity for pair work, but also suitable for group work, interviews are useful at all level of proficiency The sixth is brainstorming which is

often put to excellent use in preparing students to discuss a complex issue It is atechnique whose purpose is to initiate some sort of thinking process Brainstorminginvolves students in a rapid-fire, free-association listing of concepts or ideas or facts or

feelings relevant to some topic or context The seventh is information gap This

technique is one of the easiest and most interesting forms of communicative activity inthe speaking lesson Information-gap activities include a tremendous variety oftechniques in which the objectives is to convey or to request information The

information that students seek can range from simple to complex The eighth is opinion

exchange which is a difficult technique for students to deal with at the beginning levels

of proficiency, but by the intermediate level, certain techniques can effectively includethe exchange of various opinions Sometimes, opinions are appropriate; sometimes

they are not The last ones are problem solving and decision making Problem-solving

is also popular in speaking lesson of major students Problem-solving group techniques

focus on the group’s solution of a specified

problem The problem might be relatively simple (such as giving directions on a map),moderately complex (such as working out an itinerary from train, plane, and busschedules), or quite complex (such as solving a mystery in a “crime story”) Decision-making techniques are simply one kind of problem-solving where the ultimate goal isfor students to make a decision.

In this thesis, role-play and decision making are used in three speaking lessonsbecause of some reasons First, they are appropriate to the given requirements of threeactivities in the lifeline pre-intermediate) including role-play a conversation aboutordering a meal (unit 8), role-play a conversation about making reservation with thegiven information (unit 9), make suggestions for the given situations (unit 10) Second,these are simple tasks which are popular in speaking lessons of non-major Englishstudents

1.2.3.2 Group work planning

According to Brown (2001), after we have selected an appropriate type ofactivity, our group work planning should include the following seven rules for

implementing a group technique The first rule is to introduce the technique According

to Brown (2001), the introduction of the technique may simply be a brief explanationbut it can decide the success of group work’s results The introduction should alwaysinclude a statement of the ultimate purpose so that students can apply all other

directions to that objective The second one is to justify the use of small groups for the

technique Sometimes many students are reluctant to participate in group work, they do

not understand why group work is used for this task Therefore, in cases of necessity,the teachers tell them explicitly why the small group is important for accomplishing thetask At the same time, the teacher remind them that they will get an opportunity to

willing to speak up in front of the whole class, it is their chance to do so in the security

of a small group The third one is to model the technique It may be not necessary to

model simple techniques or the techniques that students have done before But for anew and complex task, it may be useful to make sure students know what they are

supposed to do The fourth one is to give explicit detailed instructions When students

have understood the purpose of the task and how their discussion might proceed,teacher will give them specific instructions on what they are to do They include: arestatement of the purpose, rules they are to follow, a time frame (time needed to

complete the task), assignment of roles to students The fifth is to divide the class into

groups There are many ways to divide the class into groups If teachers want to ensure

participation and control, they can pre-assign groups in order to account for one or two

of the following: proficiency levels; age or gender differences; personality types;cognitive preferences; interests; prior learning experience; target language goals The

sixth is to check for clarification Before students start moving into their groups, the

teacher can check whether students all understand their assignment by asking some ofthem to restate the purpose of this activity

Referring to the study, I implemented these above rules in the training session inorder to make sure my student know what they will do in the experiment lessons.These are described specifically in the procedure of the study

1.3 Review of the related studies

The use of group work in speaking lesson has been mentioned in many studies.Each researcher has their own ideas but sometimes to some extent they also havecommon things

There have been a few researches on the process of implementing group work inspeaking lessons (Thuy, 2008; Rob Watkins, 2005) Thuy (2008) investigated the

procedures of organizing group work activity in the speaking lesson of 1st-year majorstudents She identified strategies used by teachers to stimulate students’ use of English

in group work and the factors bringing about difficulties for the teachers and students

in their application of group work Rob Watkins (2005) suggested that the effectiveness

of group work depends on the types of motivation the teacher use in the class and theway they design group work activity

These studies have touched upon a domain which has been much concernedlately: the implementation process of group work However, these studies have havenot made clear about interaction process in group work, learner-learner interactionduring small group activity, strategies to involve students in group work activity.Moreover, these studies have mainly focused on the process of group workimplementation in speaking lesson of English-majored students

Besides, a number of other studies have found that group work helps developstudents’ speaking ability and increase the effectiveness of a speaking lesson Linh(2008) found that when applying group work activities in speaking lesson, majority ofthe students are interested in discussion Through group work, students haveopportunities to help each other as well as exchange experience to find a good way toimprove on their own communication problems After doing an action research, Thuy(2010) indicated that the use of group work had good effect on students’ participation,for instance, student-initiated interactions increased and contributions by students whowere shy increased Donough (2004) also reports clear positive effects that small groupactivities had on improvement of production of the target forms Adams (1976) andCastanos (1985) found out that students not only talked more, but also used a widerrange of speech acts in the small group work context

The studies mentioned above have firmly asserted the important roles of groupwork activities in improving learners’ speaking skill Firstly, group work helped toincrease students’ participation in communicative activities in large classes (Thuy,2010) Secondly, group work maximized the opportunities for students to communicateand exchange the information with each other, (Linh, 2008) In addition, learner-learner interaction through group work activities was useful for practicing oralcommunication skills (McDonough, 2004).

In general, in these studies, the use of group work brings many benefits tostudents in speaking lessons However, I do not know whether these findings areworked well in my own context Therefore, I would like to do this thesis to investigatehow the implementation of group work affects students’ speaking

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGYThis chapter gives a thorough description of how the research was carried out.The first part is the description of the research setting and the participants involved inthe research The teaching cycle implemented in the program will be given in thesecond part The next part concerns the research methods employed to collect data forthe study The data collection procedure is followed The details are going to bepresented as follows.

2.1 Why action research?

This action research was carried out in an attempt to find out solutions to theimprovement of my students’ speaking skill It was carried out by myself - a teacher-researcher- with my own students in an intact class For these reasons, I believed anaction research design would fit well my purpose

2.2 Research setting

2.2.1 Overview

I have been working as a teacher of English at my university for four years.There are fourteen teachers aged from 25 to 47 in my English Department All theEnglish teachers are graduates from different institutions in Vietnam such as VietnamNational University, Hanoi University, The People’s Security Academy, HanoiUniversity of Technology Like students of other colleges and universities, all studentshave to pass a very challenging University Entrance Examination with other subjectsexcept for English My students come from all parts of the country: big cities,provinces and mountainous areas They do not have the same level of English languageproficiency Some of them have learned English for 11 years, some have learned

of class size, as a non-language major university, the number of students in an Englishclass is quite large, from 35 to 40 Especially, there are even classes with 50 students.This large number causes a great deal of difficulties for the teaching and learning.

2.2.2 Description of the English course

Like in some other universities, the English course is divided into two stages:one for general English; the other for English for specific purposes

The stage of general English lasts 225 periods and it is carried out in threesemesters Aiming at providing students with general knowledge of English grammar,vocabulary, phonology as well as developing students’ four language skills, the

textbooks Lifelines (Elementary and Pre-intermediate) are used The main objective of

the text book is to develop our students’ communicative competence Students arerequired to work in pairs, in groups to practise English in common situations At thisstage, two forms of tests are used: two written tests at the end of the first and thirdterm; an oral test at the end of the second The books were compiled following thetheme-based and task-based approaches The textbooks contain 28 units within 225periods in three terms There are five periods of English per week Each teaching unitconsists of eight-45 minute periods for basic stream: grammar, vocabulary, reading,speaking, listening, writing and pronunciation Like other skills, speaking skill is taught

in only one period, which makes students feel difficult to fulfill the speaking tasks.Students’ speaking chances are also limited The experiment conducted within sixweeks covered 3 units (Unit 8, 9, 10) in the third semester

2.2.3 Participants

36 students of my class were chosen for the research The students were in thesecond term of the second year at the University They are learnt in a large - sized class