Difficulties in teaching english speaking skills to the tenth form students at van canh high school

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGESAND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS TO T

NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY

DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING ENGLISH

SPEAKING SKILLS TO THE TENTH FORM STUDENTS

AT VAN CANH HIGH SCHOOL

(Những khó khăn trong việc dạy kĩ năng nói cho học sinh lớp 10

trường THPT Vân Canh)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field : Code :

Hanoi, 2011

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES

AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY

DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS TO THE TENTH FORM STUDENTS AT VAN

CANH HIGH SCHOOL

(Những khó khăn trong việc dạy kĩ năng nói cho học sinh lớp 10 trường

THPT Vân Canh) M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Supervisor: Prof Dr Hoàng Văn Vân

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Students‟ level of language learning 16

Table 2: Students‟ motivation for learning English 16

Table 3a: The frequency of using techniques 20

Table 3b: Students‟ opinions towards teachers‟ teaching speaking techniques 21

Table 4: Students‟ difficulties in speaking lessons 22

Table 5: Factors affecting students‟ participating in English classroom activities 23

Table 6: Students‟ expectation from the teachers 23

Table 7: The teachers‟ age and their teaching experience 24

Table 8: Teachers‟ difficulties in teaching English speaking skills 26

Table 9: Teachers‟ solutions to the problems 27

Table 10: Teachers‟ suggestions to overcome the difficulties 28

Figure 1: Students‟ attitudes towards English speaking skills 17

Figure 2: Students‟ opinions on the speaking topics in the textbooks 18

Figure 3: Frequency of students‟ speaking participation 18

Figure 4: Opportunities to use English outside classroom 19

Figure 5: Students‟ self-improvement of speaking skills 19

Figure 6: Teachers‟ attitude towards speaking skills 25

Figure 7: Teachers‟ techniques of teaching speaking skills 26

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract …iii

List of tables and figures iv

List of abbreviations v

Table of contents vi

Part A: Introduction 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims and significance of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Research questions 2

5 Research methods 2

6 Design of study 3

Part B: The study 4

Chapter 1: Literature review 4

1.1 Communicative approach to language teaching 4

1.1.1 What is meant by communication? 4

1.1.2 Communicative language teaching 4

1.1.2.1 Nature of communicative language teaching 4

1.1.2.2 The techniques of communicative language teaching 5

1.2 Overview of speaking activities 6

1.2.1 What is meant by speaking skills? 6

1.2.2 Theories of teaching speaking skills 7

1.2.2.1 Functions of spoken Language 7

1.2.2.2 The role of speaking skills in communication approach 7

1.2.3 Characteristics of a successful speaking activity 7

1.2.4 Principles in teaching speaking in CLT 8

1.2.5 Problems with speaking activities 9

1.2.6 Factors affecting English speaking skills 9

1.2.6.1 Aptitude 10

1.2.6.2 Motivation 10

1.2.6 3 Learning strategies 12

1.2.6.4 Anxiety 12

Chapter 2: The study 13

2.1 Context of the study 13

2.1.1 An overview of the research site 13

2.1.2 Description of the students at Van Canh High School 13

2.1.3 Description of the teachers at Van Canh High School 14

2.1.4 Description of physical setting 14

2.2 Methodology 14

2.2.1 Participants 14

2.2.2 Research instruments 15

2.2.3 Data analysis 15

2.3 Presentation of statistical results 15

2.3.1 Results and discussions from the questionnaires for the students 15

2.3.2 Results and discussions from the questionnaires for the teachers 24

Chapter 3: Findings 29

3.1 Difficulties from the students 29

3.1.1 Lack of motivation 29

3.1.2 Anxiety or lack of confidence 29

3.1.3 Lack of vocabularies, structures 30

3.1.4 Lack of opportunities to use English in real life 30

3.1.5 Low linguistic competence and low communicative competence 31

3.1.6 Using mother tongue problem 31

3.1.7 Pronunciation problems 31

3.2 Difficulties from the teachers 31

3.3 Other difficulties 32

3.3.1 Large class size 32

3.3.2 Time constraint 32

3.3.3 Lack of reference materials 32

3.3.4 Lack of facilities 33

Part C: Conclusion 34

1 Summary of the study 34

2 Suggestions 34

2.1 Motivate students to participate in the speaking skills lessons 35

2.1.1 Create a warm class atmosphere 35

2.1.2 Vary the teaching techniques 36

2.1.3 Provide more interesting topics to motivate students‟ participation 37

2.1.4 Encourage students to participate in the speaking activities 37

2.1.5 Equip teaching facilities 38

2.2 Help students to be confident 38

2.3 Help students overcome pronunciation problems 39

2.4 Overcome time constraint problem 39

2.5 Improve students‟ linguistic competence 39

2.6 Overcome the using mother tongue problem 40

2.7 Create opportunities for students to use English in real life 40

3 Limitations of the study 41

4 Suggestions for the further study 41

References 42 Appendix 1a I

Appendix 1b V Appendix 2 IX

Appendix 3 XIII

PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

One of the main tasks assigned to foreign language teaching at school is that of trainingstudents to be communicatively competent Speaking is "the process of building and sharingmeaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney,1998: 13) In any second language teaching and learning, speaking is always believed to be themost vital skill Learning a target language makes no sense if you cannot communicate in itsuccessfully For many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English teachershave continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues.However, with the rapid progress of globalization, English speaking skill is thought to be thekey to one‟s success in his career The goal of teaching speaking should improve students'communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and learnhow to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in each communicative circumstance.Classroom activities that develop learners‟ ability to express themselves through speechwould therefore seem an important component of a language course

However, due to some objective and subjective reasons, teaching and learning English ingeneral and teaching and learning speaking in particular does not come up to the study goals

A great deal of researches has shown that students are often hesitant and anxious aboutspeaking the target language in class Despite teachers‟ efforts to provide students withopportunities to develop their communicative skills, how to teach and learn speaking skillseffectively is still a challenging question to both teachers and students to many high schools inVietnam

At Van Canh High School, the situation is the same For most students, they findspeaking especially important yet challenging one What can we, as teachers, do to help ourlearners overcome their problems and take advantage of opportunities to practice speaking?For me, as a teacher, mastering methodology is very important Especially, I am interested

in teaching speaking skills But how to conduct an effective speaking lesson is very difficult.Therefore, I hope that the study will help to facilitate my teaching

All the above mentioned reasons have inspired the writer to conduct a research titled

“Difficulties in teaching English speaking skills to the tenth form students at Van Canh HighSchool.”

2 Aims and significance of the study

This study is aimed at finding out the difficulties in teaching and learning Englishspeaking skills that 10th form students and English teachers at Van Canh High School haveencountered Also it is expected to investigate the causes of those difficulties Through thissome solutions to solve these problems will be suggested

The study is carried out with the hope to be of some help to improve the effectiveness ofEnglish learning and teaching at van Canh High School

3 Scope of the study

The study only focuses on the difficulties that 10th form students and English teachers atVan Canh High school have encountered in speaking skills

4 Research questions

(1) What are the difficulties encountered by the English teachers and the 10th form students

in teaching and learning English speaking skills at Van Canh High School?

(2) What are the causes of those difficulties and how to solve them?

- The second one is carried out on 9 English teachers of Van Canh High School

All comments, remarks, recommendations, assumptions and conclusions provided in thestudy based on the analysis of the statistics from the survey questionnaires conducted with the

10th form students and English teachers of Van Canh High School

6 Design of study

This study consists of 3 parts:

Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, the aims, scope, the method and design of the

study The research questions are also mentioned in this part Part B: The study consists of 3

chapters:

Chapter 1: Literature Review reviews the theory about CLT and speaking skills.

Chapter 2: The study – The study setting is presented in this chapter Data collection and

analysis are also presented in this chapter

Chapter 3: Findings focuses on the difficulties facing the English teachers at Van Canh High

School and their students in teaching English speaking skills

Part C: Conclusion summarizes all the key issues of the study and suggests some techniques

for the English teachers to teach speaking skills more effectively The limitations of the studyand some suggestions for further study are also mentioned in this part

PART B THE STUDY CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Communicative approach to language teaching

1.1.1 What is meant by communication?

In Thompson‟s book (2003: 9) “Communication and Language”, he considers that

“Communication is such a well-integrated part of our day- to- day existence that we tend totake it for granted rarely pausing to consider what it involves or just how important it is to us”.Before he expressed to his own ideas about communication, he mentioned some of Fiske‟sideas:

“Communication is one of those human activities that everyone recognizes but few candefinite satisfactorily.” (Fiske, 1990: 1)

“Communication is too often taken for granted when it should be taken to pieces.” (Fiske,1994: 8)

Thompson noticed “I quickly recognized that communication is used in a number ofsenses and at a number of levels to indicate the transmission of information or even, as in thetransport networks example, the transmission of goods and people.” (Thompson, 2003: 10).However, he completely agreed with Fiske‟s ideas that “the most relevant definition ofcommunication for present purposes is social interaction through messages” (Thompson,2003: 10) There are two related aspects that we should consider when talking about definition

of communication is “social” and “interaction”

1.1.2 Communicative language teaching

1.1.2.1 Nature of communicative language teaching

Communicative language teaching means little more than an integration of grammaticaland functional teaching Littlewood (1981: 1) states, “One of the most characteristic features

of communicative language teaching is that it pays systematic attention to functional as well asstructural aspects of language”

Communicative language teaching stresses the importance of providing the learners withopportunities to use English for communicative purposes and attempts to integrate suchactivities into a wider program of language teaching.

1.1.2.2 The techniques of communicative language teaching

The techniques of communicative language teaching are described by features

Nunan (1991a: 279) gives five features to characterize CLT:

+ An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language

+ The introduction of authentic texts in to the learning situation

+ The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the learning process itself

+ An enhancement of the learner‟s own personal experiences as important contributing

elements to classroom learning

+ An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the

classroom

According to Richards and Rodgers (1986: 170), communicative principles can be applied

to the teaching of any skills and at any levels Because of the wide variety of classroomactivities and exercise types discussed in the literature on communicative language teaching,description of typical classroom procedures used in a lesson based on CLT principle is notfeasible Savignon (1984) discusses techniques and class management procedures associatedwith a number of CLT classroom procedure (e.g group activities, language games, role plays),but neither these activities nor the ways in which they are used are exclusive to CLTclassrooms

Johnson and Johnson (1989) offer five core characteristics that underlie current

applications of communicative methodology:

+ Appropriateness: Language use reflects the situations of its use and must be appropriate tothat situation depending on the setting, the roles of the participants and the purpose of thecommunication, for example Thus learners may need to be able to use formal as well ascasual styles of speaking

+ Message focus: Learners need to be able to create and understand messages, that is, real meanings Hence the focus on information sharing and information transfer in CLT activities.

+ Psycholinguistic processing: CLT activities seek to engage learners in the use of cognitive and other processes that are important factors in second language acquisition

+Risk taking: Learners are encouraged to make guesses and learn from their errors By goingbeyond what they have been taught, they are encouraged to employ a variety ofcommunication strategies

+ Free practice: CLT encourages the use of “holistic practice” involving the

simultaneous use

of a variety of sub-skills, rather than practising individual skills one piece at a time

To sum up, communicative language teaching is best considered an approach rather than amethod It refers to a diverse set of principles that reflect a communicative view of languageand language learning and that can be used to support a wide variety of classroom procedures

1.2 Overview of speaking activities

1.2.1 What is meant by speaking skills?

Speaking is very important for the whole learning process The term “speaking” catchesmuch attention of linguistics Therefore, many definitions have been offered to this term.Kathleen M Bailey (2005: 2) defined: “speaking is the productive, oral skill”

Nguyen and Nguyen (2001) suggested that speaking is meant under two aspects: accuracyand fluency: “Accuracy involves the correct use of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation”.Whereas, “Fluency can be thought of as the ability to keep going when speakingspontaneously” When speaking fluently, language learners should be able to get messageacross whatever resources and abilities what they‟ve got, regardless of grammatical and othermistakes Meanwhile, many educators believe that in a communicative class that it is notnecessary to teach conversational features or put students to communicate accurately and thatfluency can be developed by simply providing students with lots of conversational practice.Therefore, the requirements of language fluency and accuracy may differ variably due to eachstage of language learning

Bygate (1987: 3) suggested a more comprehensive discussion of the nature of speaking It

is shown that “in order to be able to speak a foreign language, it is necessary to know a certain

amount of grammar and vocabulary Part of a language course is therefore generally devoted

to this objective.”

1.2.2 Theories of teaching speaking skills

1.2.2.1 Functions of spoken language

Brown & Yule (1983a: 1-3; 1983b: 11-16) mention that language can be seen as havingtwo functions: transferring information (transactional function) and establishing/maintainingsocial relationships (interactional function) Interactional spoken language is characterized byshifts of topic and short turns The accuracy and clarity of information is not of primaryimportance, and facts/views are not normally questioned or challenged In transactionalspoken language longer turns are the norm and there is a clear topic Since the effectivetransference of information is the goal, interlocutors are actively engaged in the negotiation ofmeaning Brown & Yule summarise the above stating that interactional language is "listeneroriented", transactional language is "message oriented"

1.2.2.2 The role of speaking skills in communication approach

In my opinion, those who think the major objective of the students is reading notspeaking have ignored some obvious pedagogical facts:

Firstly, people have the notion that learning English has something to do with oralEnglish When one says some students are good at English, people will naturally think he orshe can speak English well

Secondly, oral English can be very useful for the development of reading and writingskills Rivers points out: “when we read and write, we call upon what we know of thelanguage orally” (Rivers, 1968: 20) He goes on to say that there must be a connectionbetween reading and speaking If the students are reading, and then they are using their oralEnglish, too If a student has poor English, his reading ability may also be poor Similarly,Rivers (1968) argues that writing involves oral ability as well

1.2.3 Characteristics of a successful speaking activity

There are some characteristics of a successful speaking activity which are introduced by

Ur (1996: 120) as follows:

+ Learners talk a lot: As much as possible of the period of time allotted to the activities is infact occupied by learner talk This may seem obvious, but often most time is taken up withteacher talk or pause.

+ Participation is even: Classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative participants: all get a chance to speak, and contributions are fairly evenly distributed

+Motivation is high: Learners are eager to speak: because they are interested in the topic andhave something new to say about it, or because they want to contribute to achieving a taskobjective

+ Language is of an acceptable level: Learners express themselves in utterances that arerelevant, easily comprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of language accuracy

1.2.4 Principles in teaching speaking in CLT

Language educators and teachers have made great efforts to find out the main principles

of teaching speaking

According to Larsen Freeman:(1986: 77; 84; 115) “… the challenge for the teacher is tocreate a classroom environment which does not look like a normal classroom” so “…theteacher should try to provide as relaxed and comfortable an environment as possible” Because

he believed that “Language learning is more effective when it is fun” and “learning is

facilitated in a relaxed, comfortable environment”

Ur (1996) also set some principles as follows:

+ Take account of the student as a person

+ Reduce anxiety by moving from easy to less easy

+ Maintain a carefully balance between fluency and accuracy

+ Provide good model for students to imitate

+ Provide appropriate stimuli for eliciting speech

+ Vary classroom interaction modes

+ Give clear instructions

+ Monitor student activity continuously

+ Prepare well for the class

+ Handle errors sensitively and effectively

1.2.5 Problems with speaking activities

According to Ur (1996: 121), there still exist some problems with speaking activities as follows:

+Inhibition: Speaking requires some degree of real time exposure to an audience Learners areoften inhibited about trying to say things in a foreign language in the classroom: Worriedabout making mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face, or simply shy of the attention thattheir speech attracts

+ Nothing to say: Even if they are not inhibited, you often hear learners complain that theycannot think of anything to say: They have no motive to express themselves beyond the guiltyfeeling that they should be speaking

+ Low or uneven participation: Only one participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be heard; and in a large group this means that each one will have only very little talking time +Mother tongue use: In classes where all, or a number of, the learners share the same mother tongue, they may tend to use it: because it is easier, because it feels unnatural to speak to oneanother in a foreign language, and because they feel less “exposed” if they are speakingmother tongue

1.2.6 Factors affecting English speaking skills

There are both positive and negative affective factors for foreign language achievement.Some of the positive factors can be listed as: the student‟s positive attitude towards learningthe new language, the teacher‟s motivational attitude, and discipline during the learningprocess, proficiency in the student‟s first language, and the student‟s discovery andapplication of similarities between the first and the foreign language Some of the negativefactors can be listed as: a poor attitude towards learning a new language, lack of motivation,lack of discipline, negative influence of teachers, and the habit by some students to constantlyresort to concentrating on translating literally from his or her first language The social andcultural contexts of the new language can also affect language learners Language learnerscome from different backgrounds and have different needs and goals they also have differentstyles of learning Teachers of foreign languages should consider these among the affectivefactors for second language acquisition

1.2.6.1 Aptitude

These were reported to have a profound effect on the strategies learners choose, withnegative attitudes and beliefs often cause poor strategy use or lack of orchestration ofstrategies “Aptitude refers to the special ability involved in second language learning.”(Douglous et al 1995) The relationship between aptitude and foreign language learningsuccess is a very important one and various studies, such as Gardner & Lambert (1972),Gardner (1980) and Skehan (1989) have reported that aptitude is a major factor determiningthe level of success of second language learning (Douglous et al 1995) Students can have agood aptitude for learning This can infer various things, such as:

+ The understanding of the function of words in sentences

+ The ability to understand and use grammatical rules

+ Memory of key words, what they mean and how to use them

An important point regarding aptitude and foreign language learning is that successfullearners may not be strong in all the components of aptitude and can still succeed at learning aforeign language For example, some individuals may have strong memories but only averageabilities in the other components of aptitude Teachers cannot influence language aptitude, theycan only measure it There are specific tests that can measure aptitude, however it is importantthat the teacher recognizes and understands that aptitude can be in everyone, just in differentforms

1.2.6.2 Motivation

As a foreign language teacher, it is important that you should adopt strategies to motivatethe students to learn Van Lier (1996: 98) accepted that motivation “is a very important, if notthe most important factor in language learning” Nunan (1999: 233) also quoted Gardner(1985: 10)

“Motivation is a key consideration in determining the preparedness of learners tocommunicate …… Motivation to learn a second language is seen as referring to the extent towhich the individual works or strives to learn the language because of a desire to do so and thesatisfaction experienced in this activity”

The social psychological factor of motivation has been proven to account for differentialsuccess in second language learning A motivated student can be defined as someone who:

"Expends effort, is persistent and attentive to the tasks at hand, has goals, desires andaspirations, enjoys the activity, makes attributions concerning success or failure, is aroused andmakes use of strategies to aid in achieving goals (Dornyei, 2003: 173) It makes sense thatthose individuals who are motivated to learn the second language will learn faster and to agreater degree than those who are not Gass (1993) supported that “if the students‟ only reasonfor learning a second language is external pressure, a student‟s motivation may be minimaland result in lack of success” Furthermore, if students feel that they are not going to need thelanguage in their lives, students may not be motivated and attitudes toward leaning thatlanguage may be negative (Gass et al 1993)

Motivation is defined as the extent to which the individual works or strives to learn thelanguage because of a desire to learn the language and the satisfaction experienced in thisactivity A “motivated learner” is, therefore, defined as one who is: (a) eager to learn thelanguage, (b) willing to expend effort on the learning activity, and (c) willing to sustain thelearning activity (Gardner, 1985: 10) Motivation plays a significant role in three ways First, itmediates any relation between language attitudes and language achievement Second, it has acausal relationship with language anxiety Third, it has a direct role in the informal learningcontext, showing the voluntary nature of the motivated learners' participation in informalsecond language learning contexts

In his current model, Gardner (2000) focuses on motivation and language aptitude as thetwo most influential determinants of language achievement and shows how integrativemotivation affects language achievement Moreover, this model predicts that the secondlanguage learning situation could affect learners' attitudes and motivation

Harmer divides motivation into intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation Extrinsicmotivation is caused such outside factors In contrast, intrinsic motivation is caused by insidefactors like the enjoyment of learning process itself or by a desire to learn the target language.Through those concepts above, we clearly have to agree that motivation plays animportant role in language teaching and learning because if students are motivated, they will

learn the language the teachers are trying to deliver If they are not motivated, learning andteaching will stand still and the outputs are likely to be disappointing for both students andteachers In order to make students motivated in learning, we have to understand the sources

of motivation Thus, teachers should make learning activities reflect students‟ interests andneeds – then they will be motivated

1.2.6.3 Learning strategies

Learning strategies is a factor of foreign language learning One definition of learningstrategies is: “Steps or actions taken by learners to improve the development of their languageskills” (Gass et al 1993: 265) Different learning strategies work best for different peoplewhen learning a foreign language For example, one student may learn vocabulary throughwriting and practicing the vocabulary using cue cards, whereas another student may only readthe vocabulary and learn by that way Although it is clear that students can be more successful

in second language learning if they adopt particular learning strategies to suit them

To sum up, students with anxiety will have difficulty concentrating and processing input

in class and consequently the output of the language is negatively affected They tend towithdraw from voluntary participation and are unwilling to take risks When students arenervous, they tend to make more mistakes The more mistakes they make, the more nervousthey will be, and the less likely they are to perform well at speaking skills thus resulting in avicious circle The relationship between anxiety and speaking is not difficult to identify

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 2.1 Context of the study

2.1.1 An overview of the research site

Van Canh High School, which has been operated since 1985, is located in amountainous district in Binh Dinh province, where there are no good opportunities forstudying English Therefore, the teaching of English in general, and the teaching speakingEnglish in particular has encountered with a great deal of difficulties There are only 958students divided into 24 classes: 10 tenth-grade classes, 8 eleventh-grade classes and 6 twelve-grade classes English is now a compulsory subject in Van Canh High School The textbookchosen is English 10, 11, 12 (basic stream) by Hoang Van Van, Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, Do TuanMinh, Nguyen Thu Phuong, Nguyen Quoc Tuan, Nha Xuat Ban Giao Duc Each consists of 16lessons Each lesson is divided into 5 periods with the aim of giving the students basicknowledge of English and practising four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing skills.This series textbook is suitable for applying Communicative Language Teaching

2.1.2 Description of the students at Van Canh High School

The majority of students are aged from fifteen to nineteen from poor farming families andsome of them are ethnic minority Most of them live very far from school All of them havelearnt English at secondary school for four years Some of them had also learnt English atprimary school Comparing with the students in the past, now they are more aware of theimportance of learning English, more intelligent, more active and more motivated in learningEnglish However, their speaking skills are not quite good Only a few students wish to takeuniversity entrance exams in English, which means few students have real interest in learningEnglish In other words, not much attention is paid to English by the majority of the students.The learning of speaking is far worse As the students grow older, they become more reluctant

to speak the target language To answer the teacher's questions, the students usually useVietnamese when they do not know the words in English or when they wish to ask questionsbut cannot express themselves with confident in English It means they do not try to useEnglish as much as possible

2.1.3 Description of the teachers at Van Canh High School

If students are the most important factor in the learning process, teachers are the mostimportant factor in the teaching process There are 9 teachers of English language aged from

24 to 38 All of them have obtained B.A and have been trained at Qui Nhon University Theyare energetic and willing to devote their time and energy to teaching However, they areinexperienced and are not well-trained so they have to face with many difficulties

2.1.4 Description of physical setting

The term « physical setting » refers to the place where the lessons take place, the number

of students in an English class, the equipment and different types of materials available forteachers and students in teaching and learning English

In Van Canh High School, English teaching and learning activities are mostly carried outinside the classrooms which are designed for lecture lessons with the only classroomequipment such as: a blackboard, and desks The only type of teaching aid that the Englishgroup has is some cassette recorders In term of class size, the number of students in anEnglish class is quite large, from 45 to 50 This large number causes a great deal of difficultiesfor the teaching and learning

The materials for reference and self-study are not available for teachers and students Inthe school library, there are only some English books but they are not really helpful forteachers and students The problem is not very bad for the teachers since they can go out tofind their own references but it is very difficult for the students to do so themselves

In the field of language teaching, the computer network technology offers languageteacher a significant advantage However, at Van Canh High School, where I have beenworking as an English teacher, there is only one computer-furnished room for all subjects Due

to this limitation, only approximately 50% of teachers here sometimes apply ICT in teachingand most of them are young teachers Moreover, the effectiveness of applying ICT in languageteaching doesn‟t meet the learners‟ satisfactory because of their inexperience in this field

2.2 Methodology

2.2.1 Participants

In total, 107 tenth form students at Van Canh High School and 9 English teachersparticipated in this study The students are chosen randomly from 3 classes of 10th form;consist of 63 female and 44 male students at the age from 16 to 17 All of them come from therural areas They have learnt English for at least 4 years The teachers are aged from 24 to 38.All of them are B.A and none of them have been to English speaking countries The youngesthas been teaching for one year and the oldest has been teaching for 15 years.

2.2.2 Research instruments

In order to get the data for the study, the researcher used two questionnaires: one for theteachers and the other for the students The students‟ questionnaire has twelve questionswritten in both languages English and Vietnamese in order to help the students avoidmisunderstanding The questionnaire for the teachers has thirteen questions Some of them aremultiple choice questions but some of them were designed to elicit the participants‟ ideas Themain purpose of the questionnaires is used for exploiting teacher‟s and students‟ difficulties,their experience, and their attitude toward English speaking skills

2.2.3 Data analysis

Data analysis is the process by which the researcher interprets the data collected from thesurvey questionnaires They were analyzed quantitatively and presented in tables and charts

2.3 Presentation of statistical results

107 sheets of questionnaire were delivered to the students in three 10th form classestaught by different teachers Students were chosen freely in order to have different abilities ofEnglish study with different attitudes They are of course both sexes

2.3.1 Results and discussions from the questionnaires for the students

The data collected by means of questionnaire for the students at Van Canh High Schoolare analyzed and discussed on the following categories:

● Students’ English background

The statistics from the personal information show that students‟ learning time is different.60% of the students started studying English at secondary school 13% of them startedstudying English when they were at the 3rd form 8% of them have studied English since theywere at the forth form and the rest of them started studying English when they were at the 5th

form This leads to multi-level classes at the beginning of the school year making it difficultfor the teachers to find suitable techniques to teach Table 1 below shows us the students‟study results of the previous term (After 4 months studying at High School).

Number

107

Table 1: Students’ level of language learning

From Table 1, we can see that students‟ linguistic competence is very low Only 15.9% ofthem are good There are no excellent students and the numbers of bad and very bad studentsare very high (30%) This is because of many negative factors and difficulties that will bepresented in the next parts of the research

● Students’ motivation for learning English

Motivation for learning English

A compulsory subject

English is interesting

For entertainment

Widen the society, culture and language knowledge

To get a good job in the future

To communicate with the foreigners

English is the most important mean of communication

Table 2: Students’ motivation for learning English

It cannot be denied that motivation is closely related to success in foreign languagelearning However, the success is a long term goal In order to gain a success in a foreignlanguage, or in this case in order to improve speaking skills, learners must take part inspeaking activities conducted in the classroom Therefore, it can be said that motivation is alsoclosely related to the learners‟ participation in speaking activities But from Table 2, which isthe result of the statistics of question 3 in the survey questionnaire, we can see that the majornumber of students (65.4%) study English because it is a compulsory subject Only 12.1% ofthem study English because they found it interesting About half of the participants study

English because they thought English would be needed for them in the future jobs 29% ofthem study English for entertainment and 41.1% of them study English to improve theirsociety, culture and language knowledge, which doesn‟t need the speaking skills at all.Generally speaking, Van Canh High School students have low motivation of learning English,especially speaking skills.

● Students’ attitudes towards learning English speaking skills

Question 2 is about the students‟ attitudes towards English speaking skills

writing 21%

Figure 1: Students’ attitudes towards English speaking skills

Only 15% of the participants think the most difficult skill is speaking and the samenumber thinks reading is Whereas, the majority of the participants (49%) said that listening isthe most difficult skill for them to master 21% of them believed that the most difficult skill forthem to practice is writing Through the statistics in Figure 1, we can see that althoughspeaking is not the most difficult skills for the students to practice, the results of practicing donot achieve the desired goals

● Students’ opinions on the speaking topics in the textbooks

With regard to the textbook, the results collected in Figure 2 showed that students havedifferent ideas on the topics introduced in the textbooks Most of them (56.1%) think thosetopics are suitable for them and interesting as well Only 36.3% think the topics are difficultand 12.1% think the topics are boring for them to practice (some of the topics are boring) Thiscan be reported that the speaking topics in the textbook are suitable and interesting Theydon‟t have much trouble to students‟ practicing in speaking lessons

Figure 2: Students’ opinions on the speaking topics in the

textbooks ● Frequency of students’ speaking participation

About 16.9 % of the participants admitted that they had never participated in Englishspeaking activities accepted the teacher asked them to do as we can see in Figure 3 And aboutthe same number (12.1%) answered that they usually joined in speaking activities frequently.Only 0.9% of the students said they always participated in English speaking activities Morethan half of them sometimes took part in these activities From these statistics showed thatvery few students were willing to participate in the speaking activities

Always ( 0.9% ) usually (12.1% ) sometimes ( 70.1 % ) never (16.9% )

Figure 3: Frequency of students’ speaking participation

● Opportunities to use English outside classroom

As mentioned in the study context that Van Canh High School is located in a

mountainous district in Binh Dinh province, where there are no good opportunities for

studying English Look at the chart below (Figure 4), we are not surprised why only 1.9%students have opportunities to practice English outside the classroom More than half of thestudents (50.4%) have never practiced speaking English outside the classroom andapproximately half of them (47.7%) sometimes have chance to use English outside theclassroom This can be reported that most of the students have not enough opportunities to useEnglish in real life Therefore, their linguistics competence is rather low.

many opportunities ( 1.9% )

sometimes ( 47.7% ) never ( 50.4% )

Figure 4: Opportunities to use English outside classroom

● Students’ self-improvement of speaking skills

100

50

0

Always usually sometimes never

Figure 5: Students’ self- improvement of speaking skills

A: Try to participate in English speaking activities whenever you can

B: Take part in English speaking club at your school

C: Listen and repeat through CD tapes or from the Internet.

D: Participate in group practicing inside and outside the classroom

E: Talk to foreigners

The statistics from the chart above (Figure 5) indicate that students do not try to improvespeaking skills themselves in real life A great number of informants (53.3%) sometimes try totake part in the English speaking skills They never join the school English speaking club(87.9%) Moreover, 33.6% never listen to the tapes or the internet With 37.4% of the studentsnever participate in group works inside as well as outside the classroom We are not surprisedthat about 72.9% never have chance to talk to foreigners, because there are no foreigners inVan Canh district It can be announced that the students‟ reality of self-improvement like thiswill have great influence on the practice of speaking skills

● Students’ attitude towards the teachers’ techniques of teaching speaking skills

Table 3b: Students’ opinions towards teachers’ teaching speaking techniques

The results of the student survey from Table 3a and Table 3b show that, although theEnglish teachers at Van Canh High School usually vary their teaching techniques, sometechniques do not suit the students‟ interest Students are highly interested in informationtechnology (88.8%) The second rank is games which can be considered a strong motivatingfactor because students can talk naturally, have more opportunities to take part in the speakingactivities Using real objects and pictures is also having the same place The other majority ofstudents enjoy working in small groups or pairs and that they find it an effective way ofimproving their speaking skills They can improve their interaction skills through group work

or pair work involving a motivating topic Because students are afraid of making mistakes,they don‟t like the techniques which they have to present the language alone such aspresentation, story telling, etc…

● Students’ difficulties in speaking lessons

As can be seen from Table 4, the main difficulties students face with are varied Thenumber of students who don‟t always understand the task requirements is very small (only0.9%) More than half of the students (57.9%) say they never have difficulty in understanding

the task requirements Lack of ideas is a problem with the students, 56.1% admitted havingdifficulty in finding the ideas to speak Lack of vocabularies and structures is a problem to themajority of students Only 23.4% of the informants say they have never encountered with thisproblem Being afraid of losing face is also one of obstacles that prevent most of students tospeak Only 16.8% of the informants are confident enough to speak out without being afraid ofmaking mistakes and only 3.7% say they never afraid of speaking in front of new friends.Having a chance of speaking and getting feedback from the teacher is also a factor that should

be taken into consideration More than half of the participants say they usually have problemhaving no opportunities to speak Pronunciation is also a problem that should be taken intoconsideration, too Because only 21.5% of the participants say they never have problems withpronunciation

Difficulties

Not understand the requirements

Lack of ideas

Lack of vocabularies and structures

Have no opportunities to speak

Afraid of making mistakes

New friends

Pronunciation problems

Lack of society knowledge

Table 4: Students’ difficulties in speaking lessons

●Factors affecting Van Canh students’ participating in English classroom activities

There of course exist many factors which cause the above difficulties to the students in alanguage lesson, especially in speaking skills In Van Canh High School the situation is thesame The results are presented in Table 5 below The highest rate is the students‟ lowcommunicative competence (66.4%) And the second rank is the students‟ shyness (47.7 %).The facilities and authentic materials are very important as well These factors lead too manydifficulties for the students in speaking lessons as presented above

The aims of study English is not for communicative

Boring topics

Teachers‟ techniques are boring

Lack of authentic materials

Table 5: Factors affecting Van Canh students’ participating in English classroom activities

● Students’ expectation from the teachers

Get angry and interrupt you to correctWait until you finish, point out the mistakes and correctWait until you finish, point out the mistakes and ask yourclassmates to correct

Give marks or add marks if you participate in thespeaking activities regularly

Praise you to the classIncrease the use of visual aidsIncrease the use of language gamesIncrease the use of information technology

Question 9 and question 12 from the questionnaire aim at finding out the students‟

expectations from the teachers The results from Table 6 indicate that the majority of the

students (68.2%) wish their teachers varied their teaching techniques more often The next one

is that the teachers should increase the use of language games as we know game is a strong

motivating factor in language learning As a compulsory subject, so we won‟t be surprised at

the third rank of the statistics, 56.1% of the informants say that they like giving marks when

they take part in the speaking activities frequently More than half of the participants expected

that they are not interrupted when they make the mistakes and the same number of the

participants (50.5%) like being praised to the class 46.7% of the students expect the teachers

should use more visual aids and information technology In the bottom of the statistics, 38.3%

of the students wish to take part in extra activities such as English speaking club, quizzes,

etc…

2.3.2 Results and discussions from the questionnaires for the teachers

9 copies of the questionnaire distributed to 9 English teachers at Van Canh High School

were responded and the data are analyzed in this part of the study

●The teachers’ age and their teaching experience

The teachers’ age

Table 7: The teachers’ age and their teaching experience

From the personal information analyzed in Table 7, we can see only 3 teachers have been

teaching for 10 years This means that the English teachers in Van Canh High School do not

have very good experience The results of question 1, question 2 and question 4 indicate that

all of them have been trained in CLT whether at the university or at workshops 100% of them

apply CLT in their teaching speaking skills All of them agreed that the aim of teachingspeaking is enable the students to communicate More than half of them (55.6%) agreed that toimprove students‟ vocabularies, to practice grammar structures, to practice pronunciation andintonation are also the aims of teaching speaking skills.

●Teachers’ attitude towards speaking skills

In comparison with other three skills, 100% of the teachers of Van Canh High Schoolagreed that speaking skills is as important as other skills They claimed that although the aim

of teaching English is to communicate, students are only examined reading and writing skills

others

Figure 6: Teachers’ attitude towards speaking skills

● Teachers’ opinions on the speaking topics in the textbooks

The purpose of question 5 is to find out the teachers‟ opinions on the speaking topics inthe textbook “Tieng Anh 10” As the students, Van Canh High School teachers highly greedthat the speaking topics in the textbook in general are suitable and interesting except someboring and difficult ones which become obstacles in teaching and learning in some speakinglessons

●Teachers’ techniques of teaching speaking skills

Look at the chart below (Figure 7); we can see that Van Canh High School teachersoften vary their techniques of teaching speaking skills Of course the frequency is depended onthe aims of the tasks in the textbook and the level of the students