Factors affecting the first year non english major students’ participation in oral activities

Tsui 1996, after carrying a research in Hong Kong, lists five principle factors affecting the reluctance of students’ participation in classroom speaking lessons: students’ perceived low

NGUYỄN ANH QUỲNH

FACTORS AFFECTING THE FIRST YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR

STUDENTS’ PARTICIPATION IN ORAL ACTIVITIES:

A SURVEY AT THAI NGUYEN COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

(NHỮNG NHÂN TỐ ẢNH HƯỞNG ĐẾN SỰ THAM GIA VÀO CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG

NÓI CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT :

NGHIÊN CỨU KHẢO SÁT TẠI TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG SƯ PHẠM THÁI NGUYÊN)

M.A MINOR THESIS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES viii

Part A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of problem and rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Significance of the study 2

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Research methods 3

6 Organization of the study 3

Part B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Theoretical background of speaking 5

1.1.1 Concept of speaking 5

1.1.2 The role of speaking in foreign language teaching 6

1.1.3 Approaches in teaching speaking 6

1.2 Students’ participation in oral activities 8

1.2.1 Concept of students’ participation 8

1.2.2 Factors affecting students’ participation in oral activities 8

1.2.2.1 Students’ factors 8

1.2.2.1.1 Students’ language proficiency level 8

1.2.2.1.2 Students’ personally factors 9

1.2.2.1.3 Students’ attitude and motivation 10

1.2.2.2 Teachers’ factors 11

1.2.2.2.1 Teachers’ teaching method 11

1.2.2.2.2 Teachers’ knowledge and characteristics 12

1.2.2.3 Classroom factors 12

1.2.2.3.1 Classroom size 12

1.2.2.3.2 Classroom atmosphere 13

1.2.2.3.3 Classroom physical conditions 13

1.3 Relevance of this study 14

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 15

2.1 Background of the study 15

2.1.1 An overview of Thai Nguyen College of Education 15

2.1.2 The teachers 15

2.1.3 The students 15

2.1.4 The materials and syllabus 16

2.1.5 Classroom facilities 16

2.2 Research questions 17

2.3 The participants 17

2.4 Data collections instruments 17

2.4.1 Survey questionnaires 17

2.4.2 Interviews 18

2.5 Data collection procedures 18

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 19

3.1 Data analysis 19

3.1.1 Results of students’ survey questionnaire 19

3.1.2 Results of teachers’ survey questionnaire 26

3.1.3 Result from interviews with teachers 31

3.2 Findings and discussion 34

3.1.1 Students’ low level of participation in oral activities 34

3.2.2 Students’ factors 35

3.2.3 Teachers’ factors 35

3.2.4 Classroom factors 36

3.2.5 Material factors 36

3.3 Conclusion 37

CHAPTER 4: IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 38

4.1 The students 38

4.2 The teachers 38

4.3 The classroom 40

Part C: CONCLUSION 41

1 Summary of the study 41

2 Limitation and suggestions for further study 42

REFERENCES 43 APPENDICES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

TNCE: Thai Nguyen College of Education

CLT: Communicative Language Teaching

EFL: English as Foreign Language

ESL: English as Second Language

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1 19

Figure 2 20

Figure 3 21

Figure 4 21

Table 1 19

Table 2 22

Table 3 23

Table 4 24

Table 5 24

Table 6 25

Table 7 26

Table 8 27

Table 9 28

Table 10 29

Table 11 30

Part A: INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of problem and rationale

Undeniably, in learning English, the four skills namely reading, writing, speaking, listening are very important but speaking seems to be the most significant Any learners of English want to achieve this skill However, speaking is generally considered the most demanding of the four skills (Bailey and Savage, 1994: vii) For this reason, being aware of the necessity of speaking, English teachers though trying

to improve all four skills, always pay much attention on speaking for their students However, the teaching and learning of English speaking skill in Vietnam has encountered many difficulties For Vietnamese learners, speaking is a very difficult skill It takes learners lots of time practicing if they want to be skillful at it In fact although most of Vietnamese learners pay much attention to grammatical structures and vocabulary, they are often reluctant in speaking skill

In recent years, English teachers have changed their teaching methods and focused their teaching on speaking to the students One top concern of almost all teachers is students’ ineffective participation in speaking lessons The reasons for that are various Tsui (1996), after carrying a research in Hong Kong, lists five principle factors affecting the reluctance of students’ participation in classroom speaking lessons: students’ perceived low proficiency in English, students’ fear of making mistakes and derision, teachers’ intolerance of silence, uneven allocation of turns, incomprehensible input (as cited in Nunan, 1999: 234)

In Vietnam, Phung (2006) conducts an experiment about techniques to overcome factors affecting the participation in classroom oral activities at College of Social Sciences and Humanities The findings shows that factors affecting his students’ participation includes students’ learning styles, motivation, language level, gender differences, teachers’ teaching techniques, characteristics, teachers’ knowledge, implementation of teachers’ role in speaking activities, the available facilities and classroom atmosphere

Nguyen (2010) suggests strategies to increase the participation in communicative activities of students at Dong Do high school, Hanoi She also concludes that the factors affecting her students’ participation in communicative activities are students’

poor background knowledge, lack of confidence, lack of motivation and passive learning style

Although there have been many studies about factors affecting students’ participation in oral activities, it is consider ed new in the EFL context of Thai Nguyen College of Education (TNCE) As a teacher at this college, the researcher sees that most of her students do not often enjoy speaking period, and they do not actively contribute the speaking lessons They always keep quiet, passively take note, some listen to better students speaking but do nothing, and some

hard-working students discuss in Vietnamese The study entitled “ Factors

affecting the first year non-English major students’ participation in oral activities:

a survey at Thai Nguyen College of Education” is an attempt to find out the reasons

for above problems, and give some suggestions to increase students’ participation in oral activities

2 Objectives of the study

The study was conducted to (1) investigate the current teaching and learning of speaking skill of the students at TNCE, (2) identify the factors affecting the first year non-English major students’ participation in oral activities, then (3) give some recommendations for teachers and students to increase students’ participation in oral activities

3 Significance of the study

Theoretically, it is hoped that this study can be used as a reference for other researchers who want to conduct the study related to teaching and learning speaking

in general and factors affecting students’ participation in oral speaking activities in particular The result of the study can be useful for English teachers to implement suitable teaching method to their students

Practically, the study will hopefully better the researcher and her colleagues’ teaching, help the students be aware of their problems in learning and solve these problems The researcher also hopes that this study will benefit both the teaching and learning of English speaking

4 Scope of the study

The current research mainly covers the possible factors affecting the students’

participation in oral activities including students’ language proficiency level,

attitude and motivation, personality, teacher’ s teaching methods, characteristics,

classroom size, atmosphere, and materials The subjects of the study are 6 teachers

of English and 160 first year non-major English students at TNCE

5 Research methods

To conduct the study, quantitative and qualitative methods were used To collect information and evidence for the study, survey questionnaires for both teachers and students and interviews for teachers were used All comments, remarks, recommendations and conclusion provided in the study based on the data analysis

6 Organization of the study

This minor thesis is composed of three parts:

Part A, Introduction, presents the statement of problem and rationale, aims of the

study, significance of the study, scope of the study, research methods, and organization of the study

Part B, Development, including the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Literature review, presents the theoretical background of speaking in

which concept of speaking, the role of speaking in foreign language teaching and learning, approaches in teaching speaking are considered, issues of students’ participation in oral activities including concept of students’ participation and factors affecting students’ participation in oral activities

Chapter 2, Methodology, includes background of the study, research questions, the

participants, data collection instruments, and data collection procedures

Chapter 3, The results and discussions, presents data analysis of the study, findings

and discussions which discover factors affecting both students and teachers in oral activities

Chapter 4, Implications and Recommendations, gives some suggestions to increase

students’ participation in oral activities

Part C, Conclusion, summarizes all the key issues of the study as well as the

limitations of the study and suggestions for further study

Part B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter consists of three sections The first section reviews the theoretical background of speaking which includes the concept of speaking, the role of speaking in foreign language teaching and learning, approaches in teaching speaking The second section deals with the issues of students’ participation in oral activities The last section is the relevance of this study

1.1 Theoretical background of speaking

1.1.1 Concept of speaking

In language teaching, speaking can be regarded as the productive skill Different linguists have different concepts of speaking According to Chaney and Burk (1998:13), speaking is “the process of building and sharing meaning through the use

of verbal and non-verbal symbols in a variety of contexts” As stated by Burn and Joyce (1997), speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information Moreover, speaking,

as Bygate (1987) defines, involves not only the use of the right sounds in the patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also the choice of words and inflections in the right order to convey the right meaning

In the study of Brown and Yule (1983), spoken language consists of short, fragmentary utterances in a range of pronunciation Besides, speaking is known to have two main types of conversation namely dialogue and monologue In monologue, you give uninterrupted oral presentation while in dialogue you interact with one or more other speakers for transactional and international purposes

From the above definitions, speaking is making use words, knowing and being able

to use language; expressing in words and making speech Therefore, we can infer that speaking is the ability to make use of words or a language to express oneself in actual communication

1.1.2 The role of speaking in foreign language teaching and learning

It has been accepted for many years that communication is the proper aim for language teaching According to Hymes (1972) “ The goal of language teaching is to develop communicative competence” (as cited in Larseen-Freeman, 1986) That means we learn a language to communicate well in that language In the study of Ur (1996), speaking seems intuitively the most important of all four skills Speaking is

regarded as the first step to confirm who knows or does not know a language Abbot (1981) remarks that just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so the proof of language-learning lies in the learner's ability to perform, communicate in the foreign language Pattison (1992) shared the same opinion that when people mention knowing or learning a language, they actually mean that they are able to speak the language

For that reason, speaking skill plays an important role in foreign language teaching because effective speaking ability helps learners not only to acquire the language better but also to communicate successfully In the language classroom, speaking skill should be paid great attention to

1.1.3 Approaches in teaching speaking

There are several approaches in teaching English speaking such as Translation Method, Direct Method, Audio-Lingual Approach, and a more modern approach, namely Communicative Language Teaching Approach (CLT) However,

Grammar-in recent decades, CLT mostly employ on the belief that helps to develop the learners’ communicative language ability Therefore, in this section, the researcher only discuss on CLT as an approach for teaching speaking skill

Many researchers say that CLT has prevailed over traditional methods such as grammar translation method or the audio-lingual method This is due to several reasons According to Mitchell (1994), CLT covers the four skills of the language which are listening, reading, speaking, and writing (receptive and productive skills), which can be lacking in certain methods like grammar translation method or the audio-lingual method Today, communicative language teaching is viewed as the most effective and widely used approach in EFL/ESL teaching, most modern methods and techniques emphasize it (Kumaravadivelu 1993; Savignon 2000), and most materials and textbooks are designed for it

Moreover, Savignon (2000: 126-128) says that the essence of CLT is the engagement of learners in communication to allow them to develop their communicative competence He also emphasized that the focus of CLT is to promote the development of functional language ability through learner participation in communicative events A further definition of CLT is explicitly characterized by Li (1998:679) as follows: A focus on communicative function; A focus on meaning tasks rather than on language per se (e.g grammar or vocabulary study); Efforts to make tasks and language relevant to a target group of learners

through an analysis of genuine, realistic situation; the use of authentic, from life materials; the use of group activities; and the attempt to create a secure, non threatening atmosphere

CLT is learner-centered and emphasizes communication and real-life situations Therefore, the role of the teacher and the students in CLT is quite different from traditional teaching methods In the traditional classroom, the teacher is in charge and "controls" the students In CLT the teacher serves as more of a facilitator, allowing students to be in charge of their own learning According to Larsen-Freeman (1986), teachers in communicative classroom talk less and listen more The teachers set up the exercise, then step back and observe, sometimes act as a monitor In contrast, the students do most of the speaking Because of the increased responsibility to participate in communicative activities, students may find they gain confidence in using the target language in general Students are more responsible managers of their own learning

In conclusion, among some approaches of the language teaching methods, CLT is the most appropriate way to teach students to communicate Therefore, the researcher decides to choose CLT as an approach for teaching speaking skill and considers it as one of the bases of the study

1.2 Student’ s participation in oral activities

1.2.1 Concept of students’ participation

Students’ participation can be understood as students’ involvement in classroom activities and in this case, oral activities According to Howard, Short, and Clark (1996: 8-24) participation is the student’ s active engagement in the classroom to promote effective learning The student’ s activities may include reciting in class, having conversations with the instructor or their classmates, doing written outputs, and sharing ideas with others It means a participative learner is one that is not passive Moreover, Sylvelyn, Judith and Paulin (2009) define participation as students who actively engage in classroom discussions, rather than be passive learners who simply take in knowledge They affirm that in a classroom-based learning, participation can be a positive feedback given by students to either the lesson or the teacher which can lead to possible ways in the development of an improved classroom learning experience

1.2.2 Factors affecting students’ participation in oral activities

Students’ participation in oral activities can be affected by a variety of factors originating from students, teachers and classroom In the following sections, some

of the major factors will be discussed

1.2.2.1 Students’ factors

1.2.2.1.1 Students’ language proficiency level

It is undeniable that students’ language proficiency is one important factor affecting students’ participation in oral activities According to Rod (1985) proficiency consists of the learners’ knowledge of target language; it can be synonymous with

“competence” Proficiency can be viewed as linguistic competence or communicative competence Second language proficiency is usually measured in relation to native speaker proficiency Moreover, Stern (1992) defines proficiency

in terms of objectives or standards These can serve as criteria by which to assess proficiency as an empirical fact that is the actual performance of given individual learners or group of learners

Language proficiency ranges from Beginning to Fully-English Proficient However, historically, few students achieve Fully-English Proficient

In fact, in a class if students’ language proficiency is rather low, they will not be confident to participate in speaking lesson Moreover, if students’ language proficiency level are low or students are of different language proficiency levels, teachers may cope difficulties choosing a suitable teaching method, and activities used in class

To conclude, the limitation in the students’ language proficiency levels can directly affect their participation, how much they like the activities Thus, in order to develop their second language proficiency, students should try their best to overcome all their difficulties, practice English as mush as possible and teachers should choose the topics and activities of students’ levels to encourage their participation

1.2.2.1.2 Students’ personality factors

It is obvious that personality has a great influence on students’ participation in speaking lesson Participation usually means students speaking in class: answer and ask questions, make comments, and join in discussions, etc Students who do not participate in those ways mentioned above are often considered to be passive and are generally penalized when participation is graded Brown (2000) argues that personality is one of the affective factors that are equally important for explaining

differential success among second language learners Personality may be divided into extroversion and introversion While extroversion is associated with risk-taking, introversion is subsumed under the concept of self-esteem

A study conducted by Galvan and Fukada (1997/1998: 29-49) finds that students who are outgoing participated more than introverts The study also determine that participants who self-reported as having passive personalities are least likely to initiate a question or volunteer an answer to teacher’ s question Additionally, knowledge of personal preferences can help teachers and administrators understand and predict student performance so they can restructure the situation to facilitate more students’ participation Moreover, as stated by Barrett and Connot (1986: 39-

45), introverted students are least involved in school activities and have lower academic achievement As Carskadon (1978: 140-142) states, extroverts generally produce more action with fewer thoughts whereas introverts produce numerous thoughts with little action

To sum up, in a class students with different personality characteristics may result in different level of participation in lessons and different of level of success as well Understanding of students’ personality will help teachers choose the suitable method to involve all students in oral activities

1.2.2.1.3 Students’ attitude and motivation

Besides, students’ attitude and motivation is also a very important factor Gardner (1985:10) defined that “ motivation in the present context refers to the combination

of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language plus favorable attitudes towards learning the language” In other words, motivation can be defined

in terms of two factors: learners’ communicative need and their attitudes towards the second language community (Lightbrown and Spada, 1999:56) In language learning, motivation is considered as “ a key consideration in determining the preparedness of learners to communicate” (Gardner, 1985:10) He also indicates that the motivation of foreign language learning contains four aspects: a goal, effortful behavior, a desire to attain the goal and the attitude It can be understood that if students have strong learning motivation take positive attitude towards study and make great efforts to master English with clear goal and desire, they will gain better grade than those who have not acquired motivation

According to (Sass, 1989: 86-88) there are many factors affecting student's motivation to work and to learn: interest in the subject matter, perception of its usefulness, general desire to achieve, self-confidence and self-esteem, as well as patience and persistence And, of course, not all students are motivated by the same values, needs, desires, or wants Some students will be motivated by the approval of others, some by overcoming challenges

Dornyei (2001), Oxford and Shearin (1994: 19) suggests some ways that teachers can do to increase students’ motivation in English speaking activities: capitalize on students’ existing needs, help students set achievable goals, give clear explanation, create a comfortable atmosphere, vary teaching activities and methods, make learning visual, increase students’ self-confidence, promote co-operative learning, make students active participants in speaking activities, respond to students’ work and reward success

In brief, motivation plays a very important role in teaching and learning as “ positive attitudes and motivation are related to success in second language learning” (Gardner, 1985) Whatever factors affecting students’ motivation, it is a duty for each language teacher to increase students’ motivation in speaking lesson

1.2.2.2 Teachers’ factors

1.2.2.2.1 Teachers’ teaching method

Teachers’ teaching methods refer to a set of techniques or activities used to get students involved in learning to achieve a goal It means that teachers’ teaching techniques or activities can either motivate or demotivate students to learn

Harmer (1991:12) finds that classes in which the teachers present a variety of activities are far more likely to ensure students’ continuing interest and involvement

in learning, whereas classes in which the teachers continually give the same activities are not likely to engage students’ interest Furthermore, students considerably vary in personality, preferences and beliefs The activity that is particularly appropriate for one student may not be ideal for another Thus, a particular teaching method cannot satisfy the needs or the interests of all students

To summarize, there is no single teaching method that is suitable for all learners All these teaching and learning methods are to be used interchangeably According to

Le (2000) Vietnamese students’ passiveness in learning is the product of traditional teaching Therefore, teachers should use a variety of teaching and learning methods

in a single period so as to provide a great variability of activities in the teaching and learning process to increase students’ involvement

1.2.2.2.2 Teachers’ knowledge and characteristics

Teachers’ knowledge and characteristics are widely believed to impact on students’ involvement in the lessons In the study “ What makes a good teacher” , Breach (2005: 30-37) points out that most students believe that the teacher is the fountain of knowledge and their main responsibility is to pass on that knowledge to students A good teacher of English is a person who is supposed to have language ability, specialist knowledge and general knowledge of an English speaking country

Moreover, teachers should have some key characteristics that they need to excel in their job Barry (1993) mentions that teachers should be natural, warm, pleasant, approachable, tolerant This means that teachers should create close relationship with their students This relationship has a great value in creating pleasant atmosphere in class reducing students’ anxiety and stress in learning and enhancing students’ participation in the activities

In summary, not all teachers have all those factors However, teachers should try to renovate their teaching method, improve knowledge, and create a close relationship with students to encourage students to participate in speaking activities

1.2.2.3 Classroom factors

1.2.2.3.1 Classroom size

The number of students is an important factor in foreign language classes In Hayes’ definition (1997), any class with over 40 students can be considered a large class Teaching large classes is difficult for both teachers and students in many reasons First, teaching large classes requires more work for the teacher as there are more learners to assist Then, it is not easy for teachers to motivate all students, make all

of them concentrated, to have them involved, and to get them promptly responded Moreover, large classes are often more difficult to control because of the number of learners Noise is greater, and discipline problems are more likely to become uncontrollable Next, many of techniques and materials we use in smaller classes are difficult to use with larger classes because of students’ different learning preferences, different English proficiency level If there is little classroom space, for example, arranging seats in groups can be difficult or impossible

In short, large classes cause problems for both teachers and students Therefore both teachers and students have responsible to reduce those problems to have effective

lessons Students should actively participate in the lessons Teachers should choose suitable method or techniques to involve all students, such as group work, pair work, etc

1.2.2.3.2 Classroom atmosphere

Many teachers do not take the atmosphere of a classroom into consideration when they conduct their classes, but the atmosphere is an essential part of learning in a classroom Creating a positive and engaging classroom atmosphere is one of the most powerful tools teachers can use to encourage students’ learning and prevent problem behaviors from occurring Language learning is considered one of the most face-threatening school subjects Language anxiety has been found to be a powerful factor that hinders students’ participation in oral activities In order to get learners more involved in class, especially in speaking activities, a favorable classroom atmosphere is considered indispensable According to Underwood (1987:34-44), both teachers and students should create a pleasant teaching and learning atmosphere

In brief, as a teacher, it is important to make sure the classroom atmosphere is comfortable in order to ensure productivity

1.2.2.3.3 Classroom physical conditions

Classroom physical conditions refer the lightness/ brightness, the temperature and fresh air, the acoustics, the lines of vision, the layout of the desks or tables, the possibility of moving desks or tables, the other furniture, and the facilities for displaying pictures, charts, etc (Unnderwood, 1987) Classroom physical conditions also have great impact on students’ learning as well as their attitude towards the subject matter These conditions affect students’ motivation either positively or negatively

L2 teachers should be reminded that the classroom is not only a psychological environment but also a physical condition The decoration: posters, flowers, funny objects influence strongly the classroom atmosphere More importantly, teachers should create the ownership of the class among students (Dornyei, 2001:42) stated

“Personalizing the classroom can be seen as students exercising increasing control over their environment”

1.3 Relevance of this study

The above mentioned discussion of related study serves to demonstrate how the present research could fit into the existing literature So far, a number of studies have elaborated various factors that affect students from participating in oral activities With the hope to find out the factors affecting the participation of students

in oral activities, the researcher will consider some main factors to see if they affect her students’ participation in oral activities Those factors are students’ language proficiency level, personality, attitude and motivation, teachers’ teaching method, characteristics, classroom size, atmosphere, physical conditions and materials

This chapter has provided both selected theoretical background of speaking, and issues of students’ participation in oral activities, accompanied by the relevance of the present study The research methodology employed in the present study will be presented in the next chapter

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the methods for carrying out the study will be discussed These include background of the study, research questions, the participants, data collection instruments and data collection procedures

2.1 Background of the study

2.1.1 An overview of Thai Nguyen College of Education

Thai Nguyen College of Education, established in 1968, is one of the leading colleges in Thai Nguyen It is famous for its tradition of good teaching and learning Thousands of primary, lower secondary teachers are trained every year to meet the need of human resources for Thai Nguyen province and some others provinces in the north of Vietnam The college has about 2000 students and more than 200 officials and teachers of all subjects

2.1.2 The teachers

There are 6 English teachers at TNCE, who are all enthusiastic to devote their time and energy to teaching All of them graduated from Thai Nguyen Teacher Training University Four of them have acquired an M.A degree and two of them are following an M.A course at Hanoi University of Foreign Languages and International Studies They are all young with the age ranging from 28 to 38 and have at least 4 years of experience in teaching English Half of them get the award for one of the best teachers in Thai Nguyen in many years They are so well-aware

of the important role of the ability to communicate in English Therefore, they pay much attention to form students’ ability of speaking and they always try to find out effective teaching methods to increase teaching and learning quality

2.1.3 The students

Most of the students at TNCE have been learning English since they were at grade

6, even at grade 3 However, when they come to college, they know very little English The main training fields at TNCE are primary, lower secondary school teachers of all subjects except English Therefore, English, as a non-major subject,

is not paid proper attention They do not devote themselves to study English Many students do not have an obvious communicative need All they need is to get enough knowledge of grammar and vocabulary to pass the written exam Generally, most of the students are passive in learning English, especially in speaking lessons English

is a very difficult subject for them Thus, it would be hard to create, and involve students in a communicative activity

2.1.4 The materials and syllabus

The English book used for all students at TNCE is “ Lifelines Elementary” (Tom Hutchinson, Oxford University Press, 2002) There are 14 units lasting 150 periods divided in three terms Each week students have 3 or 4 English periods and they continuously learn in 15 weeks The book provides students with general knowledge classified into 5 main parts: grammar, vocabulary, reading and writing, listening and speaking, and pronunciation The aim of the book is to enable the students communicate in the target language However, at TNCE, the tests and examinations are in written form So the teachers and students focus most of activities on grammar, and reading comprehension to help students pass the exam

2.1.5 Classroom facilities

At TNCE, English teaching and learning are mostly carried out inside the classrooms, which are designed for lectures All the seats are arranged in fixed rows and classroom equipment is just a chalkboard Besides, each English teacher is provided with a cassette player to support the listening lessons There are 8 classrooms which are equipped with projectors for all teachers at TNCE The numbers of such classrooms do not meet the demand of all teachers in the college There are not enough rooms if many classes want to use them at the same time At TNCE, there is no language lab Besides, equipments and facilities are inadequate such as lack of TV set, videotape, laboratory, headphone/microphone and projector The materials for reference and self-study are not enough In the library, English books, newspapers and magazines, which are good sources of current target language, are not available This is a big disadvantage for both teachers and students who want to seek for reference materials for further study

2.2 Research questions

This study determined the factors affecting the first year non-English major students’ participation in oral activities at Thai Nguyen College of Education and gives some solutions to in crease students’ participation The research was implemented to answer these questions:

1 How do the students participate in oral activities?

2 What are the factors affecting the first year non - English major students’ participation in oral activities?

3 What should be done to increase students’ participation in oral activities?

2.3 Participants

The participants of the study were 160 first-year non-English major students and six English teachers at TNCE These students were from four classes: office-management K3, chemistry-biology K17, literature-geography K17, mathematic-physics K17, where the researcher was working as a lecturer of English Each of these classes has the total number of forty students The research was conducted in the second term of the school year All the participants took part in the survey questionnaires by answering all the given questions

2.4 Data collection instruments

The instruments of the study were two questionnaires: one administered to 160 students and the other administered to 6 teachers and interviews for 3 teachers

2.4.1 Survey questionnaires

Questionnaires were used because they helped collect large amount of information without consuming too much time (Nunan, 1992) As a result, a set of survey questionnaire was designed for students and teachers including both open-ended and closed-ended questions

The questionnaire for students consists of 10 questions with the aims of finding out students’ opinions toward English speaking lessons, their difficulties in learning speaking, their participation in speaking activities, the teaching methods used by their teachers and their suggested solutions to increase students’ involvement in oral activities The respondents were all introduced how to complete the questionnaire carefully first, and also expected to complete every question To ensure the reliability of the questionnaire, the researcher asked them not to discuss when they finished the questionnaire

The questionnaire for teachers consists of 8 questions, the purpose of which is to find out teachers’ current teaching methods, their opinions about factors affecting students’ participation in oral activities, and their suggestions to increase students’ participation in speaking class

2.4.2 Interviews

Besides survey questionnaires, the researcher used semi-structured interviews for teachers as a supplementary data collection method Semi-structured interviews were employed for reasons that they could bring the interviewer great flexibility to focus more on remarkable points (Nunan, 1992) Three teachers were invited to the interview and kindly requested to answer the interviewer’ s questions The writer took notes right at the place of the interview Each interview included three questions so that the researcher could base on to keep track with the objectives of the study during the interviews However, as the interviews went along, possible relevant questions would be added to generate more useful details

2.5 Data collection procedure

The researcher delivered the questionnaires to 166 participants, 6 English teachers and 160 students The participants were asked to complete at class in 30 minutes Each participant completed the questionnaire without discussion with the others After collecting the information from the questionnaires, she started interviews with three teachers to get further information

In this chapter, the background of the study, the research questions, participants, instruments and data collection procedure are presented In the best attempt to build a scientific methodology, the researcher hopes to achieve a reliable and valid data of the study

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This section analyzes the data collected for this study and discusses its findings The main source of data is derived from the answers of the two questionnaires for students and teachers After that, interviews were used to add further data In this section, the following results will be discussed:

3.1 Data analysis

3.1.1 Results of students’ survey questionnaire

3.1.1.1 Students’ attitude and motivation to English speaking

Question 1 and 2 are about students’ attitude towards learning the speaking skill The result is illustrated in the following figure:

Figure 1: Students’ attitudes towards speaking skill

From the result collected in figure 1, it can be recognized that 47.5% of students considered that speaking skill was important even very important skill in the English learning and none of them thought that speaking was not importance at all The other 25% was left for valuing speaking as the little important one

This result indicates that students at TNCE are all fully aware of the crucial role of speaking skill in foreign language learning

Q2

Why do you learn English speaking?

A because it is a compulsory subject 52.5

B because it is interesting 13.75

D to have a good job in the future 15

E Others (please specify): ……… ………… 8.75

Table 1: Students’ motivation in speaking

In response to question 2, only 13.75% of the students stated that they learn English speaking because it was interesting, 10% studied English speaking for personal interest, 15 % believed that English speaking was necessary for their future job, while 52.5% claimed that they learned English speaking because it was compulsory

27.5%

25.0% 0.0%

47.5%

very important important little important not important

Some students gave other answers: to communicate with foreigners, to listen to songs, read books, magazines and watch movies in English, to go abroad after graduating and to have a good certificate in English These reasons presented for only 8.75%

This result reveals that a greater number of the students are not really motivated in learning English However, from the statistics we can see that an opposite trend that most of the students are aware of the importance of speaking, they have low motivation in learning speaking

3.1.1.2 Students’ assessment about their speaking abilities and their level of participation in speaking lessons

Figure 2: Students’ assessment of their speaking ability

The result revealed in figure 2 shows that there were no excellent students at speaking English The number of students with good level at speaking English skill only made up 8.75% while 32.5% of the participants assumed that their speaking was acceptable More than half of them were bad (43.75%) or very bad (15%) at speaking skill From the results, most of the students are at low English speaking level Therefore, they need to improve their English speaking skill

B I only speak if I like the topic

C I only speak when teacher orders me

D I rarely speak and often keep quiet in speaking lessons

Figure 3: Students’ level of participation in speaking activities

Very bad

It can be seen from figure 3 that only 12.5% of the students always spoke English in class, they actively took every chance to speak English 20% only spoke if they liked the topic, 35% only spoke if teacher ordered them One third of them (32.5%) rarely spoke in class We can see that this number is not small Many students often kept quiet and were passively in speaking lessons From the results shown in the figure, a conclusion can be drawn that levels of students’ participation in oral activities are very low Most of students are not active in oral activities

3.1.1.3 Students’ opinion about speaking lessons and speaking topics in their course book

15

47.5

27.5

10 0

A Boring Most of students are quiet

B Not very interesting Most of students do not want to speak

C All right Many students are very active and willing to speak

D Interesting Most of students participate in speaking lessons

Figure 4: Students’ assessment of their speaking lessons

The result in figure 4 reveals that the majority of the students found their speaking lessons were boring (15%) or not very interesting (47.5%) and they didn’ t participate in speaking 27.5 % answered that their speaking lessons were all right, many students were very active and willing to speak Only 10 % said their speaking lessons were interesting

In brief, from the above result, it can be seen that students’ participation is very limited Teachers should do something to improve students’ involvement in speaking lessons

Question 6 is students’ assessment of given speaking tasks in the book “ lifelines

elementary” that they study in the first and second term

Level of difficulty: 1 difficult 2 not very difficult 3 easy

Level of interest: 1 interesting 2 not very interesting 3 boring

6 Asking where something

Table 2: Students’ assessment of given speaking tasks

In term of level of difficulty, it can be seen from the table that 3 tasks were

perceived difficult including making arrangement (57.5%), asking where something

is (52.5%) and making travel arrangement (47.5%) 5 in 8 tasks were not very

difficult or even easy for students

In term of level of interest, the result reveals that the interesting tasks were making

conversation when you meet other people (58.75%), making conversation when you

go shopping (48.75%) and asking about times (47.5%) Some tasks were considered

boring to students including making arrangement (51.25%), responding (52.5%) and making travel arrangement (48.75%)

From the analysis, it can be concluded that some of tasks are difficult and boring This fact requires teachers’ investment in appropriate activities and tasks to raise students’ involvement in oral activities

3.1.1.4 Students’ difficulties in speaking lessons

Q7

What are your difficulties in speaking English?

(You can choose more than one option)

A I always feel shy and nervous when speaking in front of other people

D I do not have enough time to prepare 28.75

E I do not have chances because the better students talk first

35

F Others (please specify) ……… 7.5

Table 3: students’ difficulties in learning speaking

According to the statistics, psychological difficulties such as shyness and nervousness (45%), fear of making mistakes or losing face (40%) prevented many students from speaking English 67% agreed that the biggest problem for them was lack of vocabulary and knowledge to express their opinions 28.75% who were asked said that they did not have time to prepare 35% reported that they did not have chances because the better students talked first Twelve students said that they were not used to speaking English This made up only 7.5%

In a limited period, teachers cannot wait for all students, especially slow students Therefore, many students rarely speak, or do not have chances to speak

3.1.1.5 Factors affecting students’ participation in oral activities

Q8

Which factors affecting your participation in speaking activities?

(You can choose more than one option)

A Difficult or boring topics and activities 47.5

B Students’ lack of motivation 32.5

C Students’ low level of English proficiency 67.5

D Large class sizes 27.5