LIST OF TABLESTable 2.1 : Work arrangement used in the speaking lessons Table 2.2 : Opportunities for the students in class 10A1 to participate infive lessons Table 2.3 : Opportunities f
Trang 1VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT
==========
VÕ THỊ KIM CÚC
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PARTICIPATION
OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN SPEAKING
LESSONS
(KHẢO SÁT VỀ SỰ THAM GIA CỦA HỌC SINH TRONG GIỜ HỌC
NÓI TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT)
GRADUATION THESIS
FIELD: METHODOLOGY
Trang 2I must be grateful to the teachers of Foreign Languages Department,Vinh University who supply me with good conditions to conduct thisthesis.
My thanks also go to 100 students and 5 Vietnamese teachers ofEnglish at Tran Phu high school for their participation in my surveyquestionnaires and semi-structured interviews
Finally yet importantly, I am greatly indebted to my family and myfriends for their encouragement and support to my process of writing thethesis
Vinh, May, 2009
Võ Thị Kim Cúc
Trang 3LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ALM : Audio Lingual Method
CLT : Communicative Language Teaching
Trang 4LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1 : Work arrangement used in the speaking lessons
Table 2.2 : Opportunities for the students in class 10A1 to participate infive lessons
Table 2.3 : Opportunities for the students in class 10A3 to participate infive lessons
Table 2.4 : Frequency of activities in the speaking lessons
Table 2.5 : Results of survey questionnaires
Trang 5TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ii
LIST OF TABLES iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
PART I: INTRODUCTION 1
1 Rationale of the Study 1
2 Aims of the Study 2
3 Scope of the Study 3
4 Methods of the Study 3
5 Design of the Study 3
PART II: CONTENTS 5
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5
1.1 Nature of Speaking and Speaking Sub-skills 5
1.1.1 Nature of Speaking 5
1.1.2 Speaking Sub-skills 6
1.2 Teaching Speaking in Communicative Language Teaching 7
1.2.1 Communicative Language Teaching 7
1.2.2 Principles of Teaching Speaking in Communicative Language Teaching 8
1.2.2.1 Principles for the Beginning Levels 9
Trang 61.3 Speaking Activities 10
1.3.1 Characteristics of a Successful Speaking Activity 10
1.3.2 Problems with Speaking Activities 11
1.3.3 Solutions of the Problems with Speaking Activities 12
1.4 Classroom Communicative Tasks 13
1.5 Types of Communicative Activities in Speaking Classes 15
1.5.1 Oral Drills 16
1.5.2 Information Gap 16
1.5.3 Communication Games 17
1.5.4 Discussions 18
1.5.5 Questionnaires 19
1.5.6 Simulation and role-play 20
1.5.7 Problem-solving activities 22
1.5.8 Talking about yourself 22
CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 24
2.1 Research questions 24
2.2 Research setting 24
2.3 Description of subjects 24
2.4 Description of data collection instruments 25
2.4.1 Classroom observations 25
2.4.2 Interviews with the teachers 26
2.4.3 Survey questionnaires 27
2.5 Procedure 27
2.6 Preliminary results and data analysis 29
2.6.1 Results of classroom observations 29
2.6.1.1 Work arrangement used in the speaking lessons 29
2.6.1.2 A fair opportunity for the students 29
Trang 72.6.2 Results of interviews 33
2.6.3 Results of survey questionnaires 35
CHAPTER 3: MAJOR FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 38
3.1 Major findings 38
3.1.1 Students' language anxiety and low self-esteem 38
3.1.2 An unfair opportunity for the students 39
3.1.3 Frequently using guided oral practice activities and the limitation of communicative activities used in the lessons 39
3.2 Limitations of the thesis and suggestions for further studies 40
PART III: CONCLUSION 42 REFERENCES
APPENDIX I
APPENDIX II
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1 Rationale of the Study
English has become the language of international trade and transport Most planes traveling from one country to another used it to talk with airports All ships sailing on the oceans call for help by radio in it It has been said that 60 percent of the world’s radio broadcasts and 70 percent of the world’s mail are in English An international sport meets, at meeting of
Trang 8commonly used and most widely understood English has in fact becomethe language of international cooperation in science and technology Themost advanced results in space, nuclear and computer research arepublished in it A scientist who speaks and writes English is in closer touchwith the scientists in other countries than one who does not.
Language is a useful tool for human beings to communicate with oneanother Thus, learning a language means learning how to use language tocommunicate successfully For most people, the ability to speak a language
is synonymous with knowing that language since speech is the most basicmeans of human communication The Communicative Approach teachingrequires developing language learners' four skills: speaking, listening,
reading and writing However, "speaking in a second or foreign language has often been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills" (Bailey and Savage (1994:7)) And Bailey and Savage also suggest that: "speaking is also an activity requiring the integration of many subsystems…all these factors continue to make speaking a second or foreign language a formidable task for language learners…Yet for many people, speaking is seen as the center skill" For that reason, we would like to carry out this
particular study to help teachers to develop their students' speaking skills Certainly that there are many ways to develop learners' speakingskill, but it is still discussing to choose an appropriate way to teach Today,
we are trying to teach English in a communicative way followed center instruction; communicative activities certainly become a necessarypart in language teaching, however, they have not been exploited by theteachers so far In addition, although the frequency of different kinds ofwork arrangements used affects the participation of the students in speakingclass, the teachers at high school seem not to know how to apply them the
Trang 9learner-specific research into the participation of the students in speaking lessons,
we think that we can make use of work arrangement as well ascommunicative activities applied in speaking classes because they caninvolve students in and make them more active and confident when usingEnglish to communicate in class For this reason, they are useful andhelpful for teachers at high school to teach their students' speaking skill
For the reasons above, we decided to choose the topic: "An Investigation into the Participation of High School Students in Speaking Lessons".
2 Aims of the Study
The Study reported in this thesis aims to:
Investigate the reasons why students are passive and lack ofconfidence in speaking English in classroom
Study different kinds of work arrangements that can be used in aspeaking class
Make some suggestions for teaching and learning English speakingskill at high school
3 Scope of the Study
The Study only covers speaking skill That does not mean that theother skills are not concerned about In fact, the oral ability of the students
is one prominent problem that makes the teachers take into consideration.Especially, the students' passiveness and their lack of confidence are themost common factors that contribute to their inability to communicate inEnglish It is the fact that the students usually feel embarrassed and nervouswhen interacting with other people Furthermore, they usually keep quite,
Trang 10take a passive role or speak so softly that no one can hear in oral practice.Therefore, this Study only focuses on identifying the causes of the above-mentioned problems.
4 Methods of the Study
There are varieties of measures that are available for the research.However, in the narrow scope of the Study, we only use some of them.They are:
Descriptive method
Qualitative method
Quantitative method
Analysis method
5 Design of the Study
Except for the acknowledgements and the table of contents, theStudy consists of three main parts, a list of references and appendices
Part I: Introduction
The Introduction deals with the rationale, aims, methods, scope and
design of the Study
Part II: Contents
This part consists of three chapters Chapter 1 deals with theoreticalbackground that includes nature of speaking and speaking sub-skills,teaching speaking in communicative language teaching, speaking activities,classroom communicative tasks and types of communicative activities inspeaking classes Chapter 2, the study, presents the methodology adopted to
Trang 11research setting, description of subjects, descriptions of data collectioninstruments, procedure and preliminary results and data analysis Chapter 3describes the major findings and discussions.
Part III: Conclusion
This is the final part of the thesis It summarizes what have beenpresented in the thesis
The study ends up with “References”, with a list of sources ofmaterials and “Appendices”, with the questionnaires of the survey
PART II: CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1 Nature of Speaking and Speaking Sub-skills
Trang 12Speaking involves language production and is therefore oftenreferred to as productive skills Moreover, according to Byrne (1976:8)
says that "speaking is a two-way process between speaker(s) and listener(s) involving the productive skills of understanding" Byrne (1995:10) gives
the following diagram to show what happens in a speech situation andincidentally, therefore, what is involved in oral ability:
InitiateSpeak
Listen
In some situations, one person may do all the speaking, so thespeaker initiates and simply keeps up the flow of speech, for examplegiving a lecture, instructions or directions Normally, however, as in aconversation although one person initiates, the speaker and the listener areconstantly changing the roles and consequently speaking involves
Trang 13responding to what has been regarded In this case, speaking is an integralpart of listening So speaking belongs to integrated skills.
1.1.2 Speaking Sub-skills
In order to use language skills, competent use of a language need anumber of sub-skills Bygate (1987:6) suggests that speaking consists offour sub-skills that are:
to general knowledge of the interaction, which relates to social-linguistic
competence Bygate (1987:7) claims that: "Interaction skills include using knowledge and the basic motor perceptive skills to achieve communication and they involve making decision about communication" Compensatory
strategies are concerned with strategic competence and the skill to producewhat speakers want to say with considering discourse is called productionskill in speaking
The four sub-skills above have a very close and subsidiaryrelationship, which makes up the complete speaking skill Lewis and Hill(1992) also indicate that language skills, both receptive and productive,need to be broken into sub-skills and teaching needs to build from smallunits to larger, not leap from a detail to the whole
1.2 Teaching Speaking in Communicative Language Teaching
Trang 141.2.1 Communicative Language Teaching
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is an approach to the
teaching of second and foreign languages that emphasizes interaction asboth the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language It is alsoreferred to as “communicative approach to the teaching of foreignlanguages” or simply the “Communicative Approach”
As an extension of the notional-functional syllabus, CLT also placesgreat emphasis on helping students use the target language in a variety ofcontexts and places great emphasis on learning language functions Unlikethe Audio Lingual Method (ALM), its primary focus is on helping learnerscreate meaning rather than helping them develop perfectly grammaticalstructures or acquire native-like pronunciation This means thatsuccessfully learning a foreign language is assessed in terms of how welllearners have developed their communicative competence, which canloosely be defined as their ability to apply knowledge of both formal and
sociolinguistic aspects of a language with adequate proficiency tocommunicate
CLT is usually characterized as a broad approach to teaching, rather than as a teaching method with a clearly defined set of classroom practices.
As such, it is most often defined as a list of general principles or features.One of the most recognized of these lists is David Nunan’s (1991) fivefeatures of CLT:
1 An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction inthe target language
2 The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation
3 The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only onlanguage but also on the Learning Management process
Trang 154 An enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences asimportant contributing elements to classroom learning.
5 An attempt to link classroom language learning with languageactivities outside the classroom
These five features are claimed by practitioners of CLT to show thatthey are very interested in the needs and desires of their learners as well asthe connection between the language as it is taught in their class and as itused outside the classroom Under this broad umbrella definition, anyteaching practice that helps students develop their communicative
competence in an authentic context is deemed an acceptable and beneficialform of instruction Thus, in the classroom CLT often takes the form ofpair and group work requiring negotiation and cooperation betweenlearners, fluency-based activities that encourage learners to develop theirconfidence, role-plays in which students practice and develop languagefunctions, as well as judicious use of grammar and pronunciation focusedactivities
1.2.2 Principles of Teaching Speaking in Communicative Language Teaching
It is important to remember that the goal in language use is naturalcommunication in which real information is transferred through speech.According to Forseth, et.al (1996:35) divide the principles into two groups:principle for the beginning levels and the ones for the immediate andadvanced levels
1.2.2.1 Principles for the Beginning Levels
Trang 16First of all, the teacher should limit the objectives to avoid makingstudents confused It means that the teacher should provide the studentswith enough structured practice so they can begin interacting at a basiclevel This will reduce students’ fear and encourage more speaking Later,more free production can come after structured practice.
Secondly, the teacher should mix the speaking activities withcomprehension work The teacher should have students listen to the teacher
or each other before they speak When students listen before they speak, itleads to speech that is more natural Also, comprehension work fosters aninteraction between speaking and listening
The third principle is that the teacher should provide activities thatinvolve dialogue and functional use of the language Language use should
be focused on rather than knowledge about language Functions involve afocus of meaning Dialogues are more concrete and controlled than lessstructured drills
Another principle is that the teacher should not emphasize thesignificance of mistakes because this encourages students to speak withoutfear of correction and this increases the focus on meaning andcommunication rather than grammatical correctness The correction shouldespecially focus on problems affecting clear communication or languagealready taught to the students
One more principle is to state the purpose or goal of the activity tothe students that provide a context or focus to help comprehension andallows the learners to concentrate on the task and understand why theydoing it
Trang 171.2.2.2 Principles for the Intermediate and Advanced Levels
The first principle is to focus on and work toward real, spontaneousspeech The teacher should avoid giving students form-based drills(repetitious or grammar-based exercises) and should remember real speech
is most often unrehearsed and practiced in order to reach that kind ofspeech
The second principle is to design activities that encourage naturalinteraction between speakers Human speech most often involvesinteraction which integrates speaking and listening
Next, the teacher should place students in pairs, triads or smallgroups Smaller groups, triads and pairs are student-centered Thisincreases the quantity of speech spoken by the students and relieves theiranxiety
Then, the teacher also should provide topics of interest to thestudents This fosters a focus on meaning and interesting topics increasestudent motivation Yet, it is good to ask students what they are mostinterested in
The last principle is that at the advanced level, especially in freeproduction, the teacher should allow only speech in the target language.This greatly increases the amount of English spoken Students may dislikethis but should be discouraged from using their own language without theteacher’s permission
1.3 Speaking Activities
1.3.1 Characteristics of a Successful Speaking Activity
Classroom activities that develop learner's ability to expressthemselves through speech would therefore seem an important component
of a language course Successful speaking activities in class can result in
Trang 18great improvement of students' speaking skills The teacher should try todesign and administer such activities As is discussed in Ur (1996:120),they have four characteristics
Firstly, students talk a lot As much as possible of the period of timeallotted to the activity is in fact occupied by student talk This may seemobvious, but often most time is taken up with teacher talk or pauses
Secondly, participation is even Classroom discussion is notdominated by a minority of talkative participants; all get a chance to speak,and contributions are fairly evenly distributed
Thirdly, motivation is high Students are eager to speak because theyare interested in the topic and have something new to say about it, orbecause they want to contribute to achieving a task objective
Finally, language is of an acceptable level Students expressthemselves in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to eachother, and of an acceptable level of language accuracy
In conclusion, if we want to have successful speaking activity or if
we want to get students talking, we need to meet all these above criteria
1.3.2 Problems with Speaking Activities
In spite of knowing the criteria to reach a successful speakingactivity, the teacher often encounters many problems in getting students totalk in the classroom Ur (1996:121) discusses some following commonproblems
Inhibition is one of the problems with speaking activities Unlikereading, writing and listening activities, speaking requires some degree ofreal-time exposure to an audience Students are often inhibited about trying
to say things in a foreign language in the classroom: worried about making
Trang 19mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face, or simply shy of the attentionthat their speech attracts.
Furthermore, students have nothing to say Even if they are notinhibited, you often hear learners complain that they can not think of anything to say: they have no motive to express themselves beyond the guiltyfeeling that they should be speaking
One more problem is low or uneven participation Only oneparticipant can talk at a time if he or she is to be heard; and in a largegroup, this means that each one will have only very little talking time Thisproblem is compounded by the tendency of some learners to dominatewhile others speak very little or not at all
Mother tongue use is also a problem happening in speaking class Inclasses, where all, or a number of, the learners share the same mothertongue, they may end to use it because it is easier; and they feel less
"exposed" if they are speaking their mother tongue If they are talking insmall groups, it can be quite difficult to get some classes; particularly theless disciplined or motivated ones-to keep to the target language
1.3.3 Solutions of the Problems with Speaking Activities
Ur (1996:121) provides some suggested solutions to the problemsabove The first solution is using group work This increases the sheeramount of student talk going on in a limited period of time and also lowersthe inhibitions of the students who are unwilling to speak in front of the fullclass It is true that group work means the teacher can not supervise allstudent speech, so that not all utterances will be correct, and students mayoccasionally slip into their native language; nevertheless, even taking intoconsideration occasional mistakes and mother tongue use, the amount of
Trang 20time remaining for positive, useful oral practice is still likely to be far morethan in the full-class set-up.
Next, the second suggested solution is basing the activity on easylanguage In general, the level of language needed for a discussion should
be lower than that used in intensive language-learning activities in the sameclass: it should be easily recalled and produced by the participants, so thatthey can speak fluently with the minimum of hesitation It is a good idea toteach or review essential vocabulary before the activity starts
Moreover, the teacher should make a careful choice and task tostimulate interest On the whole, the clearer the purpose of the discussion isthe more motivated participants will be
Another solution is giving some instruction or training in discussionskills If the task is based on group discussion, then include instructionsabout participation when introducing it For example, tell learners to makesure that everyone in the group contributes to the discussion; appoint achairperson to each group who will regulate participation
Finally yet importantly, the teacher should keep students speakingthe target language You might appoint one of the group members asmonitor, whose job is to remind participants to use the target language, andperhaps report later to the teacher how well the group managed to keep to
it Even if there is no actual penalty attached, the very awareness thatsomeone is monitoring such lapses helps participants to be more careful However, when all is said and done, the best way to keep studentsspeaking the target language is simply to be there yourself as much aspossible, reminding them and modeling the language use yourself: there is
no substitute for nagging
Trang 21Nunan (1989) argues that the concept of the communicative task canprovide a way of integrating the research on language learning and use aswell as give practical effect to the research at the level of pedagogicalaction It is described as:
"A piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing and interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form The task should also have a sense of completeness, being able to stand alone
as a communicative act in its own right".
(Nunan (1989:10))
Hedge (2000:61) sees communicative tasks as an "essential ingredient in a program but as part of a balance diet of accuracy and fluency work" It means a series of tasks can usefully provide the basic of a
program, in which case their selection, organization and sequencing willneed to create opportunities for a focus on accuracy and input into theinterlanguage system as well as fluency
Harmer (1991:49) indicates two types of speaking tasks: one-wayinformation gap tasks in which the speaker has all the information, whichmust be conveyed to the listener, and two-way information gap tasks inwhich both participants must pool their information in order to completethe task successfully
Littlewood (1982:86) presents typical classroom activities used toteach speaking on the following diagram:
Structural activitiesPre-communicative activities
Quasi-communicative activities
Trang 22Functional communicative activitiesCommunicative activities
Social interaction activities
The diagram suggests a teaching procedure Littlewood divides thestages of learning into pre-communicative activities and communicativeactivities The pre-communicative activities train students in the languageforms through practice in which they learn to relate language form to theirpotential functional meanings and communicative activities give themopportunities to use language as effectively as they can with resourcesavailable, if their language is socially appropriate In other words, pre-communicative activities emphasize grammatical accuracy (the cognitiveaspect) and communicative activities emphasize social acceptability(behavioral aspect of language) The two major categories are each sub-divided Under pre-communicative activities, there are structural activities(similar to introducing new language) and quasi-communicative activities(similar to the practice stage) Structural activities consist of structuralexercises, focusing on grammatical system and on the ways in whichlinguistic items can be combined Quasi-communicative activities thatconsist of one or more typical conversation exchanges are intended to helpstudents relate forms and structures to three typical kinds of sentencemeanings: communicative function, specific meaning, and social context.The second major type of activities, communicative one is also of twokinds: functional communication activities and social interaction activities
In the case of functional communication activities, the main purpose is thatstudents should use the language they know in order to get meanings across
Trang 23as effectively as possible Social interaction activities, on the other hand,involve exploiting simulation and role-playing
1.5 Types of Communicative Activities used in Speaking Class
Speaking has different aspects They are accuracy and fluency.Accuracy involves the correct use of vocabulary, grammar andpronunciation According to Bailey and Savage (1994:34), fluency can be
thought of as: "the ability to keep going when speaking spontaneously".
With the natural of spoken language which has been pointed above, themain goal in speaking and learning speaking skills will be oral fluency:
"the main ability to express oneself intelligibly, accurately and without too much hesitation" (Byrne (1986:9)) Several checklists of fluency activities
have been published For example, Klippel (1988) offers interview,guessing games, jigsaw tasks, questioning activities, ranking exercises,discussion games, values classification techniques, thinking strategies,problem-solving activities, role-play and simulation Harmer (1991) andLittlewood (1982) provide similar lists but all of these are categorized indifferent ways
1.5.1 Oral Drills
Drills are widely used for accuracy practice of new items Oralaccuracy practice involves the repetition of a language pattern or patterns.Repetition in accuracy practice is based on the principle substitution in apattern Drill work is very useful because it provides opportunities forstudents to practice a new bit of language in the most controlled way Inother words, drill gives students the opportunity for safe practice; accuracycan be focused on as the students get a chance to rehearse language Mostdrills can be adapted for pair work and group work However, they are
Trang 24usually controlled and therefore, they have limited potential Because theyare repetitive and not very creative, they should not be used for too long ortoo frequently.
1.5.2 Information Gap
The term "Information Gap" is mentioned by Wright, Betteridge andBucky (1990:24) This term is widely used to describe features essential tocommunication in our daily life as Harmer (1983:95) states that
"Information gap is an ingredient in most real life communication" With
information gap activities, different students are given different partsinformation making up a whole Normally, there is worksheet A and B ofeverything Students will work in pairs; one will look at worksheet A whilethe other will look at worksheet B Because they have differentinformation, there is a "gap" between them and in order to complete thetask, they must share the information they have with each other by usingEnglish Communicative accuracy practice requires some forms ofinformation gap Information gap can be designed to provoke the practice
of more or less specific items of language In fact, it is not easy to organize
it, the teacher may lose control of the class since the students are so curiousthat they want to look at each other's paper before completing the task.Therefore, the teacher should be careful when choosing to use informationgap activities
1.5.3 Communication Games
Games which are designed to provoke communication betweenstudents frequently depend on an information gap so that one student has totalk to a partner in order to solve a puzzle, describe and draw (draw a
Trang 25differences (or similarities) between pictures, guess games Games oftenprovide good fluency activities Students are put into situations in whichthey have to use all or any of language they process to complete a game-like task.
Games are essential part of the teacher' equipment not only for thelanguage practice they provide but also for the therapeutic effect they have.They can be used at any stages of a lesson to provide amusing andchallenging atmosphere and are especially useful at the end of a long day tohelp students feel cheerful about their English class Moreover, games arealso very important activities in developing speaking skill for students inclass For example, for guessing game, the "knower" has an object such as
a small ball in the box; the "guesser" must find what the object in the box is
by asking only "Yes/No questions" For instance, "Is it round?" or "Is itblack?" The "knower" should limit the time and the number of questions tohelp improve tension and enjoyment Besides, the game usually needssimulating by some hints if it is rather difficult for students to guess inother games, different tricks or devices are used to make fluent speakingamusing
In order to process game, the teacher must know the rules, produceclear instructions and check them as well She/he should choose the gamesthat are suitable for students' level and popular for the backgroundknowledge so that they are motivated to use English in games According
to Rivers (1983), communicative games make the classroom enjoyable andnatural, and encourage the learners to focus on meaning rather than on form
of utterance
1.5.4 Discussions
Trang 26There are three types of discussion activity They are the buzz group,controversial topics and the debate Discussion activity can help the teacheravoid difficulties when the students are reluctant to give an opinion in front
of the whole class, particularly if they can not think of anything to say orare not confident of the language All it means that students have a chancefor quick discussions in small groups before some of them are asked tospeak And the stress level of that eventual whole-class performance isreduced because the students have a chance to think of ideas and thelanguage to express them with before being asked to talk in front of thewhole class
A successful discussion consists of "full participation and high motivation" (Ur (1981:4)) The discussion gets successful or not depends
on if the teacher knows how to manage the class The teacher should payattention to organizing discussions by using some techniques such as:putting students into group first, giving students a chance to speak and thengive them a task Before setting any group discussions, teacher needs toconsider for the best timing and the most appropriate topics Discussionactivities are an important part of many lessons The main thing toremember is that proper organization can ensure their success, lack of it canprovoke their failure Furthermore, this activity usually have studentsinvolved in, thus, the teacher must recognize when it should be stopped bygiving limited time for students
1.5.5 Questionnaires
Cross (1991:107) states that "questionnaires are a useful way of encouraging practice of specific item in an interesting and motivating way" In this activity, a student asks some other students in the group some
Trang 27Questionnaires are useful because by being planned, they ensure bothquestioner and respondent have something to talk to each other Dependingupon to how tightly designed they are, they may well encourage the naturaluse of certain repetitive language patterns and thus be situated in the middle
of our communication continuum Students can design questionnaires onany topic that is appropriate As they do, so the teacher can act as aresource, helping them in the design process The results obtained fromquestionnaires can then form the basis for written work or discussions