Encouraging grade 10 students to take advantage of multimedia resources in improving their speaking skills at nong cong II high school

On the other hand, speaking is the skill that students of English or any other language are meant to master first, as it is essential for communication.. Teaching the speaking skill is t

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1 RATIONALE OF THE STUDY

English is considered the world language; the one that dominates the world

as no other language does Several authors have affirmed that its dominance is superior to any other language as never before, and currently an important portion

of the world’s population is able to use English to communicate in some degree at least On the other hand, speaking is the skill that students of English or any other language are meant to master first, as it is essential for communication This generates concern, due to the fact that it will not be able to achieve without the appropriate practice and dedication, and as a consequence, its acquisition can be hard Teaching the speaking skill is then a very important part of teaching English

as a foreign language, due mainly to the fact that nowadays there are more learners that want to use this language spontaneously to communicate

The technological revolution has changed the world and education, and makes easier to teach and learn any foreign language Traditional classes can be improved with the application of multimedia-based programs that turned a classroom based session into a face to face online session, proving to be a powerful teaching medium (Hartsell, 2016) It is possible to believe then that the use of multimedia-based programs in traditional ESL and EFL classes is a successful technological medium to increase students’ motivation to learn It cannot be denied that multimedia has changed teachers’ practices and the way students learn (Rossi,

P & Fedeli, L., 2017)

Students nowadays are likely to be addicted to social network and other technological applications Hence, it sounds a great idea to stimulate students to take advantges of technology in developing their study

Therefore, in this study I present some guides involving taking advantages

of multimedia resources to help students of grade 10 improve their language

speaking skills

2 AIMS OF THE STUDY

I do this research to investigate how students at Nong Cong II high school use the language knowledge they have learnt to speak, as well as to find out whether using technology can help them improve their speaking skills So I decide to name my

research as “Encouraging grade 10 students to take advantages of multimedia resources in improving their speaking skills at Nong Cong II High School.”

3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This paper investigates the following questions:

First, the extent to which technological applications, especially multimedia such as the Internet and its products (Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok…) affect students' speaking skill

Second, how can these multimedia resources be helpful for students to improve their speaking?

These questions are addressed to two classes (10 A1 and 10A7) I am teaching to find out the effect of using technology to improve students’ oral skills

4 METHODS OF THE STUDY

- Teaching experience method

- Collecting and studying relating documents

- Questionnaires

- Assessing students’ speaking products

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 OVERVIEW OF SPEAKING SKILLS

Speaking is defined as the action of furnishing information or expressing one’s feelings in speech According to Nunan (2003, p.48), speaking is a productive verbal skill or, in other words, a skill of producing language which consists of constructing systematic verbal utterances to convey meaning While Brown (2004, p.140) points out that “speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information” Speaking is also considered as a complex process that combines phonetics, lexical knowledge, grammar and strategies of communication In

Methodology in Language Teaching, Richards and Willy claims that speaking a

language is especially difficult for foreign language learners because of the fact that effective oral communication requires the ability to use the total language appropriately in social situations Jones (1996) also comments “In speaking and listening we tend to be getting something done, exploring ideas, working out some aspect of the world”

Speaking a foreign language is not an easy skill to be mastered by learners because it needs great courage as well as preparation to speak Regarding this, Brown (2004, p.172) says speaking has five components namely: grammar, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency and pronunciation Students have to be aware

of these components Before they speak, they should know what they will say, therefore, they need to have ideas in their mind In addition, students must be able

to use correct pronunciation; otherwise, it will be difficult for listeners to understand them Moreover, in order to be able to speak fluently and correctly, they must have sufficient vocabulary and arrange their sentences so that they can

be understood If all these things are done well, students surely will be able to speak well and their listeners will get the massage easily

In reality, the competency of high school students in speaking English is still

a matter of concern The recent curriculum objective is to enable students to understand and use the language appropriately in accordance with the appropriate situations However, many high school students lack the capability to express ideas, thoughts and feelings clearly They surely face difficulties that hinder them

to be competent at speaking; such as lack of vocabulary, poor or unusual pronunciation and poor grammar (according to Heriansyah, 2012, p.31) In fact, the class atmosphere which consists of only a few interesting activities or games is not favorable one for oral activities and students are not motivated to speak

Besides, the time spent by the students to learn these skills is thought not to be long enough and students do not have proper learning strategies to develop their speaking skills

2 TYPICAL STUDENTS’ PROBLEMS IN SPEAKING.

Most of students consider speaking skills challenging tasks In fact, there is a combination of different problems in students’ speaking English To begin with, students feel nervous and are afraid of making a mistake while speaking, in other words, there is a problem in students’ confidence Students are not self- confident with their poor pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar that prevents them from producing natural sentences and speaking As a result, students often talks too long

to compose utterances and speak slowly Hence, they can’t participate actively in conversations and their language does not sound natural The second problem is that students have a limited amount of vocabulary Sometimes when students are speaking, they have a sentence in mind, but they are missing two or three important words or they can’t pronounce a word correctly, then it becomes difficult

to say what they are thinking In addition, students have difficulties in pronouncing

a word, a phrase or a sentence correctly, which makes listeners unable to understand what they are speaking When speaking English, students have to consider not only the pronunciation of the individual words, but also the connection between the words in the sentences There are also the rhythm and intonation of the sentences to consider, which makes them confused In brief, to improve students’ speaking skills, the teachers have to use specific tips to deal with each of the above problems

3 TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS AND SPEAKING SKILLS

Among the previous studies that have covered the use of multimedia in

language teaching, Bahadolfar and Omidvar’s (2014), highlights the importance of the use of technology in practising speaking skill For them, technology is the vehicle to modernity and a resource that cannot be avoid in educational sectors (p 9) In addition, Navas (2006) states that “any language programs with a

communicative goal should focus on appropriate audio-visual equipment and the quality of the input and output skill tasks, based on authentic materials” (p 1)

Contreras, Charry & Castro (2016) examined the way multimedia resources foster the speaking skill development in student In this work the authors stress the difficulties teachers face in the development of students’ speaking skills due to the context, which leads to the need of improving their classroom practices This paper proposes the use of podcasts, videos and Power Point Presentations in order to develop learners’ pronunciation, vocabulary and fluency in English language Butler-Pascoe & Wiburg (cited by Contreras et al., 2016), affirm that interaction

increases with the application of technology, and presents students’ language in a graphically and linguistically enhanced manner” (p 3) In this way, Contreras et al also affirm that applying multimedia is a great source of motivation that can

improve students’ performance, and at the same time develop their speaking (2016,

pp 3-4)

Multimedia resources include a great variety of elements that can be used in the educational field Besides the resources mentioned in the studies above, a research study carried out by Felix Castellanos, titled “The use of gamification and videogames in second 4 language learning”, suggests a new trend in the use of multimedia to teach a language: gamification (2016) The main objective of his work is to explore the way in which multimedia, in the form of videogames,

influences the development of language skills, among them, the speaking skill Undoubtedly, with more extensive access to native speakers of English, social media were seen by others as stages where non-native English speakers are offered chances to increase more extensive access for association and correspondence It was seen that these advances interface them to native English speakers or language specialists in all pieces of the world Social media additionally cleared to route for the lead of online training or classes Furthermore, language students

are probably going to mirror or get how the individuals they "follow" talk and compose through video online journals, tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram

inscriptions, digital recordings, music sounds and recordings, and significantly more For them, Social media give chances to language students to cooperate with specialists over all fields or intrigue and get the ideal information that they look for

CHAPTER 2: PRACTICAL SITUATIONS

1 METHODS OF THE STUDY

This research study was conducted at Nongcong 2 high school The subjects

of this study were students at two classes 10A1 and 10A7 In order to collect data needed for this study, documents and questionnaires were the main instruments used

2 THE REALITY OF TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS AT NONGCONG 2 HIGH SCHOOL

Survey no.1 Practical Situation of learning English speaking Skills at Nongcong 2 High School.

1 Which of these four

following English language

skills do you think the most

important to learn?

Reading 26%

Speaking 36%

Listening 18%

Writing 20%

2 What is your idea about

improving your English

speaking skills?

Very essential 58%

Essential 34%

Not very essential 6%

Not essential at all 2%

3 How often do you use

smart phones or computers?

Very often 72%

Often 18%

Sometimes 9%

Never 1%

4 How often do you access

to social media and other

technological apps.

(Facebook, Zalo, Tiktok,

Youtube…)

Very often 72%

Often 18%

Sometimes 9%

Never 1%

4 How do you think of roles

of the apps in improving

your English, especially

speaking skills?

Very useful 28%

Useful 66%

Not very useful 6%

Not very useful at all 0%

5 Do you make use of these

sources in developing your

English speaking and other

skills

Always 10%

Sometime s 26%

Rarely 40%

Never 24%

It can be seen from the survey that speaking is considered one of the most important skills at Nongcong 2 High School Over 70 percent of students usually use smart phones, computers as well as social media and other technological applications in their daily life Although most of them realize the importance of improving their ability to speak English, only few students constantly or sometimes take adavantages of technological advances to better their speaking There are a lot of students who never have any ideas for their learning improvement despite the fact that they access to various sources of useful English everyday

CHAPTER 3: RECOMMENDATIONS

TO IMPROVE THE STUDENTS’ ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS

1 RECOMMENDATIONS

From the result of the questionnaires above, we can see the fact that a combination of modern technological advances applied by students themselves to study at home are essential in order to improve students’ oral ability The expectable result can’t come only from the teacher or students’ effort If the teacher knows how to stimulate students in using multimedia effectively, speaking ability of students will be surely improved day by day

Therefore, I suggest making use of technological applications to improve students’ speaking skills.

Students feel positive about self-study outside the classroom when their teacher provides motivational tools Furthermore, students do not feel pressure from other students in a negative way to participate in self-study activities outside the classroom

2 PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS

The solutions to all problems of students’ poor speaking come from both teachers and students Hence, teachers play the role of the guiders, who provides students with useful sources and encourage them to take advantage

2.1 Sources of useful websites

Facebook, Youtube and Google have a huge variety of pages Here are just a few

of the great pages and groups on Facebook that you can use to learn English

- IELTS Face-Off

The first educational IELTS Show in Vietnam broadcast in VTV7 Students can see the talk show and learn the way to answer questions in IELTS tests as well as experience outstanding people’s natural speaking Students can see videos on Youtube channel or Facebook page

- Learn English

This Australian Facebook account shares some excellent articles and videos about English and language learning It posts explanations about everyday phrases, commonly confused word pairs and pronunciation issues Best of all, there are lots of comments on each post so students can get some reading practice or even join the conversation!

BBC Learning English

It’s a public service broadcaster, which means it runs British programs and TV shows thanks to donations The BBC also has a huge collection

of online English learning tools Their Facebook page challenges English learners

to answer questions and write their opinions about current events

Practice English with real world examples through audio clips, podcasts and news articles Remember: This is British English so some words will be spelled

differently than they are in American English, like colour (British) versus color (American)

VOA Learning English

This page, run by Voice Of America, is similar to the BBC’s English learning page, but it uses American English The language is a bit harder to

understand but the idea is the same: Students can learn English by reading about and discussing things that are happening in the world right now VOA also has some fun grammar videos, tips, new words and much more

Learn English—British Council

Here’s another excellent place to learn through just talking about things Instead of using current events as the topic of discussion, the British

Council page uses more casual things like short stories and popular TV shows The

operators of the page are always happy to help in the comments, too Watch out for British spelling again!

Learn English Online Community

The Learn English Online page shares many blog posts and YouTube videos of different kinds of teachers giving English classes, like Fluency

MC, the teacher who raps about English grammar When watching or reading, students can always come back to the page and leave their thoughts or questions

Practice English Everyday

Practice English Everyday is a great place to meet a practice buddy It’s a very friendly group where people ask each other questions about English and share great English lessons they found They also practice together and test each other on their English knowledge

Students can post their own questions or get involved by responding to posts from other members of the group Join the group and introduce themselves—students will get some warm welcomes and immediately (right away) feel more confident about posting

ESL Team

Some pages post questions and just let followers have their own conversations in the comments The ESL Team joins the conversation instead, asking questions and responding to others in the comments, turning a conversation into a deeper discussion It’s a small page for now, which makes it a great place to have a discussion with a small group of people (including the “teacher”)

English Vocabulary

A lot of the pages mentioned here use text to explain English This

page posts pictures and worksheets so you students can see what new English

words and phrases mean Everything is organized and visual (you can see it), and the level ranges from very basic vocabulary to more complicated concepts like prepositions

2.2 Channels or Vlogs of famous people specialized in English

The Dang Vlog

Đặng Trần Tùng – one of the 5 Vietnameses getting IELTS band 9.0 Visiting his Facebook or Youtube, you will be shared numerous videos about the way to pronounce correctly, speak naturally and answer tough questions in IELTS speaking tests

Khanh Vy Official

Khánh Vy – a hotgirl with a video of speaking 7 languages She gratuated from Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam Her videos on Youtube or Facebook mainly share her own personal English learning, how to accumulate vocabulary and develop speaking in various topics of daily life

3 SOME PRACTICAL EXAMPLES OF STUDENTS’ APPLYING TECHNOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS IN DEVELOPING THEIR SPEKING SKILLS

(I enclose some students’ videos with this study)

Some images are taken from videos made by students when they talk about the topics in English 10 textbook

1 Recording

a video

\ Phuong Anh –a student of class 10A7 recorded a video introducing about herself at the beginning of school year

Linh Phuong - –a student of class 10A7 recorded a video