The major factors affecting speaking skill of first year english major students at vinh university and some suggested solutions tions improve their communicative competence

ABSTRACT This thesis is written on the topic: The major factors affecting speaking skillthe first year English major students at Vinh University and some suggested solutions to improve t

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Những yếu tố chính ảnh hưởng đến kỹ năng nói của sinh viên năm nhất chuyên ngành tiếng anh tại đại học Vinh và một số biên pháp

tăng khả năng giao tiếp

Master Thesis in Education

Vinh, 2011

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Những yếu tố chính ảnh hưởng đến kỹ năng nói của sinh viên năm nhất chuyên ngành tiếng anh tại đại học Vinh và một số biên pháp

tăng khả năng giao tiếp

Field: Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching

Code: 60.14.10

Master thesis in Education

Supervisor: ng« h÷u hoµng

Vinh, 2011

My thanks also go to my family as well as my classmates who haveenthusiastically helped and encouraged me during the time I conducted this work.

To everyone, thank you very much

Vinh, June 2011

Le Thi Huong

ABSTRACT

This thesis is written on the topic: The major factors affecting speaking skillthe first year English major students at Vinh University and some suggested solutions

to improve their communicative competence

The paper is divided into five main chapters: Chapter 1 is the generalintroduction of the thesis In this chapter, the information about the aims, scopes andthe research methods of the study are mentioned

The second chapter is named Theoretical background In this chapter, thetheory basement of the study is given and developed

Chapter 3 is named Research Methodologies This chapter is about all themethods that are used to conduct this paper

The fourth chapter is the analysis of the data from the survey conducted by theobjects of the paper In this chapter, the author works on the statistics collected fromthe survey and put it into evaluations

The last chapter is recommendations and conclusion In this chapter, theauthor gives some suggested solutions to improve students’ communicativecompetence Besides, she also gives the conclusion and suggests the furtherresearches

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1: Communication strategies based on Faerch and Kasper’ classification(1983)

Figure 2: Learning strategies based on Wedden and Rubin’s classification (1987)Figure 3: Students’ personalities

Table 2: Students’ strategies to speak English

Table 3: Students’ opinions about speaking topics

Table 4: Students’ favorite topics

Table 5: Students’ difficulty in creating sentences

Table 6: Students’ listening comprehension

Table 70: Students’ opinion about teachers’ teaching methods

Table 81: Teachers’ teaching methods in pre-speaking phase

Table 92: Teachers’ methods in speaking practice phase

Table 10: Students’ motivation to learn English

Table 11: Students’ recognition about the role of the target language

Table 12: Students’ recognition about the role of English

Table 13: Students’ interest in learning English

Table 14: Students’ interest in speaking English

Table 15: Students’ feelings when speaking English

ABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Problem statement……… 7

1.1 Rationale of the study ……… 7

1.2 Aims of the thesis……… 7

1.3 Scope of the study……… 8

1.4 Research questions……… 9

2 Structure of the thesis……… 9

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Skills ……… 10

2.1.1 Skills definition……… ……… 11

2.1.2 Speaking skill……… 12

2.1.2.1 Characteristics of speaking skill……… 14

2.1.2.2 Micro skills……….15

2.1.2.3 Learning speaking skill……… ……….15

2.1.2.4 Teaching speaking skill……….……….16

2.2 Strategies……… ………… 17

2.2.1 Definition………18

2.2.2 Learning strategies……… 20

2.2.3 Communication strategies……… ………….21

2.2.3.1 Avoidance strategies ……… 23

2.2.3.1.1 Phonological avoidance………24

2.2.3.1.2 Morphological strategies……….……….26

2.2.3.1.3 Syntactic avoidance……… 27

2.2.3.1.4 Lexical avoidance……….………28

2.2.3.1.5 Topic avoidance……… ……… 29

2.2.3.1.6 Message abandonment……… …….…… 30

2.2.3.1.7 Meaning replacement……….…… 31

2.2.3.2. Compensatory strategies……….………… 32

2.2.3.2.1 Code switching……….….… …….33

2.2.3.2.2 Intralingua transfer……….….… …….34

2.2.3.2.2.1 Paraphrasing/ Circumlocution……….……….……… 35

2.2.3.2.2.2 Generalization……….….……… 37

2.2.3.2.2.3 Word coinage……….… ……… 38

2.2.3.2.2.4 Restructing……….…….…… 39

2.2.3.2.2.5 Non-linguistic strategies……….…… 40

2.3. Communicative competence……… … 41

2.3.1 Communicative competence……… … 42

2.3.2 Components of communicative competence……… …… …… 43

2.3.2.1. Grammatical competence……… … …… 45

2.3.2.2. Social linguistic competence……….….……46

2.3.2.3 Strategic competence……… 47

2.3.2.4 Discourse competence……… 48

CHAPTER 3: METHODS OF THE STUDY 3.1 Questionnaires……… 50

3.2 Observation ……… 51

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Overview of the survey……… … 52

4.1.1 Aims of the survey……… 53

4.1.2 Informant and settings……… 54

4.2 Description of questionnaires……… 55

4.3 Results and discussion……… 57

4.3.1 Objective factors……… 59

4.3.1.1 Age ………60

4.3.1.2 Gender……… 60

4.3.1.3 Speaking strategies……… 62

4.3.1.4 Speaking topic……… 63

4.3.1.5 Language knowledge……… 64

4.3.1.6 Listening comprehension……… 65

4.3.1.7 Teachers’ teaching methods……… 65

4.3.2 Subjective factors……… 66

4.3.2.1 Motivation……… 66

4.3.2.2 Interest……… 67

4.3.2.3 Self-confidence……… 68

4.3.2.4 Personality……… 69

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 5.1 Teaching Implications……… 70

5.1.1 Preparing lesson plan……… 71

5.1.2.1 Suitable topics……… 71

5.1.2.2 Audio aids……… 73

5.1.2.3 Listening in motion……… 74

5.1.2.3 Repeating hard work……… 74

5.1.2.4 Supplying students with speaking strategies…… 75

5.1.2.5 Knowledge foundation……… 76

5.1.2.6 Watching videos……… 77

5.2.3.1 Discussions……… 78

5.1.3.2 Role-play……… 79

5.1.3.3 Simulations ……… 81

5.1.3.4 Information Gap……… 81

5.1.3.5 Brainstorming……… 82

5.1.3.6 Storytelling……… 82

5.1.3.7 Interview……… 84

5.1.3.8 Story completion……… 86

5.1.3.9 Reporting……… 86

5.1.3.10 Playing cards……… 88

5.1.3.11 Using Pictures……… 88

5.1.2 Giving feedbacks and correcting……… 90

5.2 Recapitulation……… 91

5.3 Suggestions for further researches……… … 92

REFERENCES

APPENDIX

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Problem statement

1.1 Rationale of the study

In the process of teaching and learning English, it is acknowledged that one

of the most important skills in learning English as well as other languages is speakingskill Speaking not only helps students improve their communicative competence butalso enables them to develop language skills such as listening, writing, and reading.Thus, it is extremely important in teaching language especially teachingcommunicative English

Besides, in teaching reality, many teachers find it difficult to teach first yearstudents with speaking skill for the reason that they can hardly have chance topractice this skill at lower levels This fact is true at Vinh University in the progress

of helping students with accessing to direct communication and improving theircommunicative competence at the very first stage

To some extend, I try to conduct the study entitled “The factors affecting

speaking skill of first year students at Vinh University and some suggested solutions to improve their speaking skill.” The author hopes that her study will be a

useful material that helps teachers improve their first year students with speakingskill

1.2 Aims of the thesis

The aims of the study are as follows:

1 To investigate the factors affecting speaking skill of the first year students

at Vinh University

2 To investigate the working mechanism of these factors on the studentsthrough which the implications are introduced

3 To provide implications in English Language Teaching and make acontribution to teaching materials.

1.3 Scope of the study

The study deals with the problems that first year students at Vinh Universitystudents usually have when they speak English in the classrooms These problems arecaused by certain factors that affect students’ speaking skill

 What strategies should be used to improve their speaking skill?

 What are the solutions to improve students’ speaking ability?

2 Structure of the thesis

The thesis consists of five chapters as following:

 Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter deals with the author’s reasons for choosing the topic of thestudy, the aims, scope and the structure of the study

 Chapter 2: Literature review

This part contains chapters:

This chapter gives an overview on skills focusing on speaking skill, strategiesand theories on communicative competence

 Chapter 3: Methods

This chapter aims at stating the methods that the author applies to do thestudy

 Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion

This chapter is entitled “Findings and discussions” which analyzes the results

of the questionnaires and gives the assessment on the factors affecting students’speaking skill

 Chapter 5: Conclusion

The last chapter has the title of “Suggestions”, this chapter provides somesuggested solutions to help students overcome the difficulties in speaking lessons and

to improve their communicative competence

Also, this part is about the summary of the main points presented in the study.Additionally, the suggestions for further study are also mentioned in this chapter ofthe thesis

The study ends with the “References” which lists all the materials and sources

of the information used in the study and the “Appendix” in which the questionnairesdesigned for students are mentioned

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1.2 Skill features

In the book named “Strategies and Skill in Learning a Foreign Language”,Steven H and Mac Donough (p 34) claims that skills contain six general features asfollowing:

a Performance: skills are about doing things This is simple to see that a skill is

a capacity of performing a learned action such as singing with very high notes

or running with very rapid speed

b Specific application: one can be skilled at particular kinds of performances ornot others By saying this, the author means that each person has his ownability to do a particular things while other people can not do as well as hedoes Additionally, he himself only has the ability to do particular kinds ofactions whereas he cannot perform all the actions with this extreme ability.For example, a singer can sing very well at very high notes or low ones, this is

a special ability that not many people can However, he cannot run at thespeed of 20 miles per hour as a professional runner

Also, Steven’s theory mentions different kinds of performance Theyare: Physical performance such as sports; psychomotor such as motor racing,flying parachutes or sky diving; Intel lecture performances such as problemsolving, imagination; interpersonal performances such as persuading,socializing, convincing people or informational performances such as readingcomprehension

c Learnable: the skills are amenable to learning and possibly instruction It isclear to see that people can learn to perform the special ability in daily life bypracticing Many singers loved by their sweet voice must learn from theinstruction of the singing coach or practicing again and again

d Alternative from people to people: There are individual differences in levels ofachievements It is easy to explain this feature of the term Each person has hisown ability and level of the achievement among people who have the sameability differs after the same time of learning and practicing For example, twosingers in the same course, with the same teachers and the same period oftraining have different achievements after the course

e Performance is smooth, sensitive to feedback, integrated in time This featureshows the complicatedness of the performance After a period of training, theperformance of the people become professional and it should be sensitive tofeedback because it depends on the understandability or the ideas of differentpeople

f Most of the time, skills lead to success This feature is nearly taken for grantedbecause nearly everybody agrees that skills can bring people advantages inworking, learning, etc

There may be various modes of language performance as skill such as thefour-skill approach of Audio-Lingualism such as listening, reading, speaking andwriting However, Steven thinks that “such terms are very general and not quite

consonant with the use of ordinary language and the literature on skill acquisitionwithin psychology or “skill” in specific applications” Steven takes Nuttal’stheory (1982) as a brilliant example that uses the division between word attackskill and text attack skill in the discussion of teaching foreign language.

2.2. Speaking skill

2.2.1 Speaking Skill definition

Speaking is “the process of building and sharing meaning through the use ofverbal and non-verbal symbol, in a variety of contexts” (Chaney, 1998, p 13) It issaid that speaking is a crucial part of second language learning and teaching.According to Carol J Orwig, speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode Likethe other skills, it is more complicated than it seems at first and involves more thanjust pronouncing words For this skill, pronunciation is only a component amongwhich make the success of the conversation The essential components ensuring thesuccess of the communication probably are pronunciation, intonation, accent, etc

Speaking skill is considered the art of communications, it is a productive skillthat helps the speakers express their ideas A person who has good speaking skills isthe one who can generate words that can be understood by listeners and for that goodspeaking skill is a useful mean to make the utterances clear and informative

The book “Language Teaching Techniques” published by English languageinstitute Victoria University of Wellington, a helpful book for the teachers teachingEnglish especially for those who focus on speaking skill, especially considers theclassroom situation The book is a rally from the previous researches by Sharan(1980), Johnson et al (1981) and Hill (1982) In the book, the view of speaking skill

is clarified in the classroom situations The book says: “Speaking activities are veryoften used to master content matter Group work in most school classes is used notfor the language activities it provides, but because through trying to understanding

texts, experiencing activities, producing material, or problem solving activities,learners master the content matter of the subject they are studying” It is possible toclaim that in the classroom, speaking skill can be effectively proved by the activitiesrelating to the tasks for a group of people such as discussion or group-work, pair-wok.

In addition, there are three ways that speaking activities can work to help thelearning of content matter mentioned in the book

Firstly, the speaking activity involves the active processing of the content Asimple version of this type of activity might involve learners working together toanswer a set of questions based on a given text or to solve a puzzle

Secondly, the speaking activity requires previous mastery of the content.Some jigsaw activities require learners to master material which they then teach toothers in the group Each learner has a different piece of material to master and thenteach All the pieces go together to make up a complete unit

Last but not least, the speaking activity gives rise to the content which comesmainly from the learners’ own experiences This is particularly true where speakingactivities are used as a means to develop cultural awareness through the use ofhumanistic techniques

2.2.2 Characteristics of speaking skill

One of the researchers who have paid much attention on this oral skill isBygate To show the characteristic of speaking skill, he investigates thecharacteristics of spoken language In his point of view, it seems that speaking skillhas not been identified as a research area as willingly as for example reading orwriting In other words speaking is not completely accepted as a separate area(Bygate, 1998:20) This idea may be supported by the above theory that speakingskill is the rally of different components According to him, speech is more

commonly unplanned, contextualized, informal and reciprocal than writing It is clear

to see that speakers usually have very little time to prepare their utterances in aconversation Bygate claims: “oral language can be identified by certain featureswhich are more prototypical of speech than of writing” Among these features, one ofthe most typical one is that speech is organized by clauses, phrases and spokenutterances while writing is generally organized according to whole sentences Inhuman’s daily dialogues, people do not have much time to think of what they aregoing to mention or to plan how the information should be sorted and this is thereason why they often have the common spoken utterances that are usually short andexpressive such as “really?”, “I don’t know”, etc In addition, spoken language is less

formal in relation to vocabulary and grammar than written language and it features

words such as but , and that join words, phrases and clauses whereas writtenlanguage is characterized by subordination of clauses Also, spoken language ischaracterized by repetition of utterances, close relation to the context in question andfeatures of correcting speech

Since speaking skill is the ability to start and to maintain a conversation, itclosely relates to the performance of the participants in a conversation As Turner(1998) writes: “If speaking is considered as a communicative performance, itsassessment should be based on scales and criteria which have been derived from theperformance of the speakers”

According to Jack C Richard, there are three speaking situations that peoplecan find themselves, they are interactive, partially interactive, and non-interactive.Interactive situation is created when more than one speaker are involved in thedialogue for example a group of people talking together in a cafeteria after the work.The interactive situation may be face-to-face or not; face-to-face conversations occurregularly in daily life, however phone calls can be seen as interactive situationalthough the speaker and the listener are not speaking face-to-face Another situation

of speaking is partially interactive; the typical situation is the act of teaching in the

classroom, teacher may explain the items for the students and then the teacher mayask the students to implement some certain tasks to illustrate the item just explained.The last type of speaking situation is non interactive This situation is usually themono-dialogue when the speaker has no interaction with the listeners for example the

TV speaker speaks on the screen, he simply supplies the information without anyinteraction with the audience

2.2.3 Speaking subskills

The speaking skill is a complicated skill that contains a set of micro skills thatpeople should master if they wish to have a good speaking skill These micro skillsare the subordinated skills that can be ministerial to the speaker’s oral skill

Firstly, speaker should try to make the distinctive sounds of a language clearlyenough so that people can distinguish them This includes making tonal distinctions.Pronunciation is a very important component to help listeners understand what thespeaker really wants to express, listeners can only decode the meaning byrecognizing the sounds, so that the best way to make the speech easy to understand ismaking sounds that are easy to recognize

Secondly, to help to make learner’s speaking skill better, they also should usestress and rhythmic patterns, and intonation patterns of the language clearly enough

so that people can understand what is said Rhythm, stress and intonation areimportant factors to express speaker’s ideas; a good speaker is a person who knowshow to use rhythmic patterns and intonation appropriately

Besides, using the correct forms of words is another good way to improvelearner’s speaking skill This may mean, for example, changes in the tense, case, orgender For example, to indicate singular form of the noun “girl”, it can be said “She

is a beautiful girl”; however, it is not accepted when people say “they are beautiful

girl” but “they are beautiful girls” The plural form of the noun “girl” must be “girl”,this is commonly forgot by the students

Additionally, syntax is an essential element to remind, speakers shouldremember to put words together in correct word order to make the utterancesgrammatically correct For example, Vietnamese speakers always say “she is a girlbeautiful” instead of “she is a beautiful girl” due to the effect of their mother tongues’system

For the oral skill, vocabulary is very important to transmit speaker’s ideas tothe listeners and this is the reason why speakers should be careful when usingvocabulary Using a wide range of words can be a signal that the speaker has a goodvocabulary source so that he can use the glossary appropriately Following that,various vocabularies can make the utterances flexible and expressive

However, vocabulary should be used in an appropriate way; speakers shoulduse the register or language variety that is appropriate to the situation and therelationship to the conversation partner Before speaking, speakers should determinethe style of the conversation: formal or informal and based on that, they can useacceptable words in the situation

Another micro skill that can help people speak better is making clear to thelisteners the main sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, object, by whatevermeans the language uses A grammatical sentence is taken for granted easier tounderstand than a sentence that is hard for listeners to determine its parts The place

of the part of speech can emphasize what the speaker wants to focus There aredefinitely some differences between these two sample sentences: “I want a house”and “A house is what I want” In the first sentence, “A house” is placed at the back ofthe sentence; however, it is placed initially in the second one, the place can show the

emphasis of the speaker In the second sentence, “A house” is emphasized so that thespeaker does not say in the normal way as in the first sentence.

Following the above micro skill, this micro one is to make the main ideasstand out from supporting ideas or information This is to focus on the main ideas ofthe conversation Leading listeners to the key content of the conversation is verynecessary if the speaker wishes to achieve the goal of the conversation

The conversation is like a river, it should have the flow to connect the ideas sothat listeners can follow the conversation That is why speakers should have the skill

to make the discourse hang together so that people can follow what they are saying.The connectors in this case are very useful means to make the separated utteranceslinked and to make the conversation logical and easy to recognize the main contents

Obviously, the micro skills are very important to contribute to the success ofspeaking skill To ensure the success of the conversation, mastering the set of microskill is considered a very good preparation From the teaching reality, most of theteachers advise their students to practice as separated one and combine the them inthe set

2.2.4 Learning speaking skill

Speaking skill is an integrated skill that combines many different aspects such

as pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc so that not many students are good atthis skill The fact of teaching shows that it is very important in daily communicatinghowever speaking is sometimes undervalued or, in some circles, taken for granted.According to Jo Mac Donough (1995: 151) “speaking is often thought of as

“colloquial”, which helps to accounts for its lower priority in some teaching context”.This is common fact in many countries including Vietnam Students always focus onother skills while paying very little time on this oral skill or even ignore it However,

Jo Mac Donough says that this fact has changed since the globalization process

enables people to interact directly more often in English language Agreeing withJo’s view on the importance of speaking skill, Grace Stovall Burkart (1998) claimsthat it is necessary to supply students with the basic aspects of the skill According tothe author, language learners need to recognize that speaking involves three areas ofknowledge: They are Mechanics, Functions and Social and cultural rules and norms

Mechanics including pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary is the basicaspect of speaking skill that are the basements to develop speaking skill This aspecthelp students use the right words in the right order with the correct pronunciation.This aspect focuses on the surface of the talk in terms of how the ideas are arranged,how words are used and pronounced

The second aspect of speaking skill that students are acquired to recognize isfunctions It includes transaction, interaction and performance This aspect helpsstudents determine the type of the talk with certain criteria and purposes This meansthat knowing when clarity of message is essential if the talk is transaction orinformation exchange and when precise understanding is not required if it isinteraction or relationship building or when there is no interaction if the talk isperformances

Another aspect that is not less important than the others is the social andcultural rules and norms such as turn-taking, rate of speech, length of pauses betweenspeakers, relative roles of participants This aspect supplies students with thebackground knowledge to help them understand how to take into account who isspeaking to whom, in what circumstances, about what, and for what reason It isuseful for them in the choice of words, structures, etc

In the communicative model of language teaching, teachers should help theirstudents develop this body of knowledge by providing authentic practice thatprepares students for real-life communication situations They help their students

develop the ability to produce grammatically correct, logically connected sentencesthat are appropriate to specific contexts, and also the sound forms of these sentencesare expressed in acceptable pronunciation

2.2.5 Teaching speaking skill

Speaking skill is such an important skill that many people consider speakingability the measure of knowing a language Many people define fluency as the ability

to converse with others, much more than the ability to read, write, or comprehendoral language They regard speaking as the most important skill they can acquire, andthey assess their progress in terms of their accomplishments in spokencommunication Hence, teaching speaking is very important but very hard work

According to Hayirie Kaky, “teaching speaking” is a technical term thatrequires learners a set of items to study So what is meant by “teaching”? As far as hestated in his theory, teaching speaking skill is to teach learners to:

- Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns: Pronunciation is avery important part in learning any languages including English

- Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and rhythm of the secondlanguage:

- Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper socialsetting, audience, situation and subject matter

- Organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence

- Use language as a means of expressing values and judgments

- Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses,which is called as fluency

Jack Richards is a very famous professor at Cambridge University for hislectures on Teaching Speaking Theory and Methodologies According to his theory,when teaching speaking skill, teachers should determine a set of the goals that thecourse should be required to meet And the course is only regarded to be successfulone when it satisfies a certain number of the set Due to Jack’s theory, the firstcriterion that a speaking class should have is that the activities address specific aspect

of oral skills Oral skills contains three aspects, it may be interaction, transaction orperformance A talk is considered interactions when it have the followingcharacteristics Above all, that talk can create social interactions among people Andthen, the talk can address the face needs of participants Every one has his own socialimage that he wants to save and improve in front of the public; interaction talk is theone that may address this social image of the people involved in the conversation.Besides, an interaction talk has to focus on participants and their social needs such asgreeting, asking for permission, etc In these circumstances, the social needs of theparticipants are mentioned and become the main content of the conversation.Meanwhile, a talk is a transaction when it simply gives or obtains information or getsgoods or services Instead of focusing on people’s social needs, it focuses on themessage that the participants wants to transmit Lastly, a talk is performance whenthere is audience and speaker, the speaker must be single so that there is nointeraction in the talk and of course, the speaker must create a “product”, here, it may

be a welcome speech, class talk or business presentation, etc

Coming back to the set of goals by Jack Richards, beside that the talk mustshow the characteristics of one of three aspects mentioned above, the speaking classshould have sufficient language and other supports for the tasks such as supportingvocabulary or structures that are useful for the topic A speaking class usuallyconsists of three main phases: pre speaking, speaking and tasks; sufficient languageand other supports are supplied in the first phase The pre speaking phase is to give

students necessary supplies in terms of vocabulary, structures as well as culture andsocial knowledge

Jack’s set of goals also highly promotes the balance of accuracy and fluencyactivities There are various activities in the class designed to develop students’separated skill; Jack gives equal care to the accuracy of the content and the fluency oftechnical speaking Normally, accuracy is the content of the talk or the conversationand the fluency is the way students present their ideas It is clear that Jack wishes tokeep the balance between the content and the form of the talk or the conversation Ifteachers control the activities well, the students may avoid the mistake that the talk istoo long but the content is too poor and vice verse, students only list the main ideaswithout developing the supporting ones that makes the talk boring and hard tounderstand

To ensure the balance of the time for each sub skill, teacher should model theactivities This is the essential preparation to help students develop their speakingskill in terms of form and content Besides, the activities designed must be suitablefor students of different proficiency levels The quality of the students in a class israrely similar, they may have different achievements although they are taught in thesame environment For this reason, the activities for speaking skill must be veryflexible to apply for different proficiency levels

The next criterion of a good speaking class is that students have samplespeaking time Learning a language that is not their mother tongue, students may find

it difficult to express their ideas That is the reason why teachers should give themsome samples to make it easier to understand Moreover, speaking skill is aproductive skill then students need as much practice as possible; they really need tohave time to practice speaking samples Practicing time may help them makeacquaintance with new structures, sounds and words

Students need both time for speaking samples and the opportunities forpersonalization This means it is also very useful if students have chances to practice

in their own way Each person has his own way to express, giving students chances

to express the ideas on their own way would make students remember the termsgiven longer and understand them more quickly Following this, students mayexpress themselves and experience success They can see how well they practice andsee their improvement by teachers’ peering This could be a motivation for thestudents

Teaching speaking skill is really difficult because it is a challenge for everyteacher who wants to raise students’ interest Only by interested by the activities,students participate in the class actively And this is also a criterion to evaluate thequality of the speaking class In fact, many teachers fail to make their studentsconcentrate on the lessons and implement the tasks willingly Teaching speaking skill

is somehow an art of getting students’ involvement in the activities

After giving students time to practice, teachers should have some feedbacks tohelp them evaluate their achievements Therefore, a successful speaking class is one

in which the grammar and pronunciation errors are addressed appropriately In thiscase, teacher should notice the differences between the mistakes and the errors Somemistakes that students unawarely make can be ignored; however, the error systemmust be addressed and corrected so that students can avoid these errors later It ispossible to say giving feedback is an art; teacher must address both the good and thebad of the students and the thing that students have not done well yet can becorrected smoothly to save their face By giving feedback, teachers may havepositive or negative effects on students’ attitudes

All the teachers teaching English wish to have successful language class,designing speaking class is a challenging task for all of them Jack’s set of criteria for

evaluating a successful speaking class is a useful system to help the teachers improvetheir students’ speaking skill.

2.3 Strategies

2.3.1 Definition

As it is said in Wikipedia, strategy refers to a plan of action designed toachieve a particular goal According to Ekwensi, Moranski, & Townsend-Sweet(2006), learning strategies or instructional strategies determine the approach forachieving thelearning objectives and are included in the pre-instructional activities,information presentation, learner activities, testing, and follow-through And theyclaimed that learning strategies are usually tied to the needs and interests of students

to enhance learning and are based on types of learning styles

Speaking strategy is a type of learning strategies, it refers to students’ ways tocontinue and develop their conversation in any speaking class or real situations.These strategies for speaking can be using minimal responses and recognizingscripts

As it is mentioned above, speaking strategies are the set of the strategieswhich help students achieve success in a speaking class To be successful in aconversation, “hard skill” such as mechanics (grammar, pronunciation andvocabulary) is not enough Social and cultural background knowledge is an essential

component to make the utterances appropriate, logical and successful.

2.3.2. Learning strategies

The term learning strategies has been defined as “the higher order skills whichcontrol and regulate the more task-specific or more practical skills” (Nisbet andShucksmith, 1986) This is that learning strategies can cause the effects on to theother practical skills to make the change in the strategies of the learners BesidesIsbet and Shucksmith, Weden and Rubin (1987) have another view of learningstrategies; they focus on the classification of the learning strategies based on the

strategies’ mechanism The following figure can clearly show the sub-strategies oflearning strategies and the aspects each sub-strategy deals with.

Figure 1: Weden and Rubin’s classification of learning strategies

According to Weden and Rubin, learning strategies can be classified intocognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies As it is stated in Weden andRubin’s theory, students use cognitive strategies when they “deal with steps,operations or problem solving that require direct analysis, transformation or synthesis

of learning materials” On the other hand, metacognitive strategies are used when thelearners deal with knowledge about cognitive process and the regulation of cognition

Communication strategies

Communication is simply defined as a process in which a message is sentfrom the senders to the receivers In a technical description, it is said that the senderencodes a message and the receivers decode it Communication problems occur whenthe encoded message sent is not the message received In other words, the massagesent is not the message received For example, the mother implies that the daughtershould bring her some water when she says to the daughter “I am very thirsty!”; thenthe encoded message is “bring me some water” However, the daughter does notunderstand her mother’s implication so that she does not bring any water but says “I

am thirsty, too” In this circumstance, the encoded message is not decoded.Sometimes, communication problems may occur when the encoded message isincorrectly decoded For example, the mother says to her boy: “children should notwatch films!” when she cognizes that her son is watching a film at the time he should

be doing his homework The encoded message is “turn off television and do your

homework” The problem may happen when the son does not turn off the televisionbut changes the channel into another program The boy misunderstands his mother’simplication that causes the problem in communication

Thao Le (2005) claims that the development of sociolinguistics has shifted theattention of research from the nature of the mechanic aspect of transmission to thesignificance of communication in its social context Hence, social linguistics focuses

on social determinants of language use instead of treating grammatical knowledge asprimary communication In fact, it can be realized in the changes of the curriculums:beforehand, people tried to learn the grammar, vocabulary to fulfill the task of thetests However, the curriculums now require learners not only mechanic aspect butalso Functions and Social and cultural rules and norms These aspect supply studentswith “soft skill” to help them interact better in real situations The social fact hasaffected the way people learn the skill, instead of learning academic language aspeople did in the past, students now focus on the practical language that can helpthem much in the real life

Since communication takes a very important role in the people’s success,many researchers have paid much attention on this aspect Following that, there is agreat deal of definitions about communication strategies Rubin (1987) considerscommunication strategies as those strategies which are used by a learner to promoteand continue communication with others rather than abandon it Brown (2000)suggests that communication strategies pertain to the employment of verbal ornonverbal mechanisms for the productive communication of information Besides, Inthe book named “Communication strategies”, Bialystok (1990) quotes Coder’sdefinition about communication strategies: “a systematic technique employed by aspeaker to express his ideas when faced with some difficulties”

Additionally, Faerch and Kasper (1983) consider communication strategiesthe “potential conscious plans for solving what to an individual present itself as a

problem in reaching a particular communicative goal” Faerch’s classification ofcommunication strategies is a standard classification that is approved by many otherauthors.

2 Morphological 2 Message abandonment 2 Intralingua transfer

c Word coinage3.Non-linguisticstrategies

Figure 2: Faerch and Kasper’s classification of communication strategies

Faerch and Kasper suggest that communication strategies are divided into twocategories: avoidance behavior and achievement behavior Each of them is classified

or comprised of other subcategories The avoidance behavior consists of formalreduction and functional reduction The formal reduction can be phonological,morphological, syntactic and lexical The functional reduction consists of reduction

of speech act modality and reduction of the propositional context The reduction ofthe propositional context can be topic avoidance, message abandonment and meaningreplacement The achievement behavior is divided into subclasses such as codeswitching, intralingua transfer, cooperative strategies and non-linguistic strategies.The intralingua transfers can generalization, paraphrasing, word coinage andrestructing

2.2.3.1 Reduction strategies

Avoidance strategies involve the tactics and techniques people use when the

do not want to be influenced by the other participants of a conversation AvoidanceStrategies or avoidance behavior is also called reduction strategies These strategiesare used when people come across difficulties in their communication caused by theirlack of adequate knowledge of the language The avoidance strategies include thefollowing strategies:

2.2.3.1.1 Formal Reduction

2.3.2.1.1. 1 Phonological avoidance

Phonological avoidance is a strategy used when people have difficulty inpronouncing words Usually, people try to avoid using the words that they are notsure with the pronunciation, instead of using these words; they try to use other onesthat have similar meaning to replace

For example, instead of saying the word “breeze” because people cannot makesure whether it is pronounced /bri:z/ or /brεz/, they find another words that can bez/, they find another words that can beaccepted in the situation such as “wind” Obviously, phonological strategy is really

helpful to make the utterances clear to the listeners This strategy can help speakerslimit the phonological errors in the conversation.

2.3.2.1.2. Morphological strategies

Morphological strategies or morphological reduction is the strategy used whenthe speaker reduces the morphemes of some complicated words that he is not sure

For example: This area’s develop brings a lot of benefits to the locality

In the above example, the speaker is not sure about the noun form of

“develop”, thus he decides to reduce the morpheme of the word and uses it in the rootform to avoid errors

2.3.2.1.3. Syntactic avoidance

Syntactic avoidance strategy is used when the speaker finds it difficult toexpress an idea in a foreign language, he cannot find the equivalent structure with hismother tongue in the second language r he fails to express his ideas by using aninappropriate structure

For example:

A (L2 learner): I lost my road

B: (native speaker): What? You lost your road? (Rising voice and emphasizing

“road”)

A (L2 learner): I got lost

It can be clearly seen from the example that the leaner A tries to express hisideas; however, his utterance is not acceptable so that it does not make sense to the

listener B (the native speaker), to avoid the error in using structure, the leanerchanges another structure that is understandable.

2.3.2.1.4. Lexical avoidance

Learners use this strategy when they have lack of vocabulary, instead of usingthe correct word, they may try to find out the words that have the same meaning Forexample, instead of using the word “hippopotamus”, students may use the word

“buffalo” In many circumstances, this strategy is very useful to maintain the talkbecause people can not stop talking to look up in the dictionary

For example: My father is the president of the local hospital and my uncle isthe president of the primary school in which I studied grade 1 and grade 2

In this example, the speaker uses the word “president” twice: “the president ofthe local hospital” and the president of the primary school” At the first place,

“president” is used to replace “the manager” and in the second place, it replaces “theprincipal”

2.2.3.1.2 Functional Reduction

2.3.2.1.5. Topic avoidance

This strategy is applied by the learners when they want to avoid the topic areas

or concepts that may pose language difficulties for them According to Corder(1978), topic avoidance “occurs when the learner does not talk about concepts (ortopic) for which the vocabulary is nor known” He suggests that there may happentwo cases: in extreme case, this may result in no communication at all and in lessextreme cases, the learner directs his conversation away from the troublesome topic.There are three ways to avoid the topic: people can pretend not to understand thespeaker, change the topic or avoid responding the speaker

For example:

A: My account is out of money.

B: Really?

(A and B are friends)

Speaker A tries to send a message of borrowing money when he mentions theempty account; however, his message is not decoded awarely by speaker B when shepretends not to understand A’s message

Another way to avoid the topic that people do not feel confident or interested

to talk about is changing the topic For example:

A: Your boss is really crazy!

B: Where did you buy this shirt?

At first, B’s response may seem not to fit A’s utterance; however, B changesthe topic on purpose because she does not want to continue A’s topic about her boss

Besides, keeping silence is also a good way to avoid the unfamiliar oruninterested topics For example:

A: Do you agree with me that her style is so eery!

B: (Silence)

For the reason of avoiding the topic, B keeps silence to show her corporation with A This is a typical signal to avoid the topic when people areparticipating in a conversation

conversation” There are at least two messages sent in the utterance; however, thefirst message is not developed but it can be changed into the second one.

For example: “A man is coming out of a er it’s a stone-aged man”(Palmberg, 1979)

The topic is started by “a man is coming out of ”; the listener is waiting forsomething (places, things) preceding the idea; however, the topic is changedsuddenly because after a short pause, the speaker focuses on the description of theman: “it’s a stone-aged man”

More examples:

A: Uhm why is it called Los Angeles?

B: Why called?

A: Why is it called Los Angeles?

B: Ah I’m not sure but the maybe in the past Los Angelesmay mean er i don’t know how to explain to you (laugh)

In B’s answer to A’s question, it is clearly that A can get no information;however, B avoids answering A’s question by giving some utterances with very littleinformation relating to A’s question At least, in this circumstance avoidance strategycan help B continue the conversation because normally, A would not ask B thisquestion again

that the speaker does not omit the topic; however, it is not expanded as the speakerwishes that it should have been By preserving the topic, the speaker has to avoiddeveloping his ideas.

For example: The man is coming out of his home (Palmberg: 1979)

The speaker intends to say something that is expected to be more specific than

“his home”; however, to avoid unexpected mistakes, the speaker deliberately chooses

a safe and simple choice

2.3.2.2. Compensatory strategies

According to Oxford (1990), compensatory strategies are those that “enablelearners to use the new language for either comprehension or production despitelimitations in knowledge” It is too hard for the learners to maintain a conversation in

a foreign language Thus, they use a set of strategies to compensate for their lack ofthe language knowledge These compensatory strategies include code switching,intralingua transfer, cooperative strategies and non-linguistic strategies Thesubclasses of intralingua transfer contain paraphrasing or circumlocution,generalization, word coinage and restructing

Although it is an unconscious behavior, research shows that it is not just arandom phenomenon Li Wei (1998) attests:

Sociolinguists who have studied code switching draw attention to extra-linguistic factors such as topic, setting, relationships between participants, community norms and values, and societal, political and ideological developments influencing speakers’ choice of language in conversation.

Thus, code switching is a strategy used in a community in which people sharemore than one language The choice of code switching is possible only when theparticipants of the conversation have the ability to decode the encoded message bythe speaker in another language

For example:

A: Ước gì tớ có thể speak English hay như Mr Phương nhỉ?

B: Cậu phải practice nhiều đấy! Tớ phải go to the market đây, hôm nay mother

đi vắng!

In the conversation, A and B is communicating in English; however, Bsuddenly switch the code from Vietnamese to English and following that, A stillunderstand B’s answer In this conversation, A and B have the common conventionthat they use English as the device to use in their conversation However, to applythis strategy, both speaker and hearers must have the common knowledge of theforeign language that they intend to use

2.3.2.2.2. Intralingua transfer

2.3.2.2.2.1 Paraphrasing/ Circumlocution

Paraphrasing or circumlocution is a strategy used when the speaker does notknow or temporarily forgets the words and he tries to find out the ways to continueexpressing his ideas To continue the talk without interruption to think of the word,

the speaker may “goes round” the word, it means he may explain or give thedescription of the words.

A: Yeah, right! A monastery I met her in the monastery

It can be seen clearly from the example that A use the compensatory strategy

to explain the word she forgot She “goes round” the word by giving a list of thedescription of the thing that she is trying to remember its linguistic form Thisstrategy can help people continue the conversation without any interruption or pausesbecause it sometimes can involve the listeners in speaker’s strategy (speaker givesthe definition and the explanation while listeners guess the word)

2.3.2.2.2.2. Generalization

Generalization strategy is applied when the speaker use the general word tostand for more specific words General word may be the bound word and thereplaced word can be the word is a field

For example: Last month, I had a very exciting holiday: I went to New York

by plane and then I went to a small island by boat

In the above example, the word “went” is used twice “Went” is the boundword and the speaker uses it to replace the subordinate words in the field.Respectively, “went by plane” should be “flied by plane” and “went byboat” should be “sailed by boat” The vocabulary field whose bound word is “go”contain subordinate words such as fly, sail, walk, run, etc.

2.3.2.2.2.3. Word coinage

Word coinage is the phenomenon of making new words in the process ofexpressing ideas The speaker wants to refer to something; however, he does notknow the words or temporarily forgets it, he may create new words to illustrate.These words may not exist in the target language’s vocabulary; however, listeners arestill able to understand what the speaker means

For example: During the trip, we visited many places At Grand Canyon, westayed for two days and a er a sleep day

Actually, the speaker is creating a new word “sleep day” when she cannotremember the word “night” In fact, this strategy is commonly used in dailyconversations and many words have been created such as “ice-box” to refer to

“fridge”, “air-ball” to refer to “balloon”, etc

2.3.2.2.2.4. Restructing

This strategy is used when the speaker wants to change the structure of theutterance to make it easier to understand For example:

A: what are you doing?

B: I am looking for my wallet

A: What does it look like?

B: It is a brand-new one and it’s more er it’s bigger than yours.Obviously, Speaker B changes the structure from comparison with longadjectives to comparison with short ones Initially, speaker B tries to describe thewallet with “more” and a long adjective is expected to appear but then he corrects thestructure into “bigger” to make the description clearer This phenomenon issometimes considered the self correction or addition

2.3.2.2.2.5. Non-linguistic strategies

Non-linguistic strategy can be gestures, facial expression or sound imitation.Real experiences show that this strategy is very useful to express their ideas Forexample, instead of saying “she is an athlete”, the speaker may say “she is ” andthen makes a gesture of running to help listeners understand

Besides, the facial expression is very helpful especially to express theadjectives for example, to indicate the word “surprising”, the speaker can make thesurprising face

Moreover, Sound imitation is a very good way to help people “survive” in theconversations for instance; speaker can imitate the sound of the animals or thevehicles such as “quack quack” to refer to the ducks, “ding ding” to refer to the bells,etc

People can apply different strategies to help them communicate better in theconversations, after a period of practicing, it may become the skill of communicating

2.4. Communicative competence

2.3.3. Communicative competence

For many people, communication is simply the talks that happen naturally indaily lives Actually, the fundamental problem with defining communication isnothing else but the fact that information exchange is only necessary but not asufficient condition for understanding the complex process of communication.

“Communicative competence” is comprised from two words which means

“competence to communicate” Communicative competence is a concept introduced

by Dell Hymes and further developed by many other authors Beside Dell Hymes,Lane, Canale and Swain and other researchers are also interested in the topic

Hymes, a sociolinguist as well as ethnographer of communication is the firstpeople introducing the idea of communicative competence in terms of the

“appropriateness of social cultural significance of the utterance” (Canale and Swain,1980) His theory is derived from Noam Chomsky’s distinction between competenceand performance According to Tatsuko Ohno, Chomsky’s competence is “the sharedknowledge of the ideal speaker-listener set in a completely homogeneous speechcommunity Such underlying knowledge enables a user of a language to produce andunderstand an infinite set of sentences out of a set of a finite set of rule” Followingthat, linguistic competence is the subconscious knowledge of grammar rules of his orher language following which the speaker can generate meaningful sentences.Turning back to Hymes’ view, he retains Chomsky’s idea of grammaticalcompetence and looks at contextual relevance as one of the crucial aspects ofpeople’s knowledge of language In his theory, Hymes affirms that meaning incommunication is determined by the speech community and actual communicativeevent which includes the following components: settings, participants, ends, actsequence, key and instrumentalities, norms of interaction and interpretation, andgenre These components are considered the speech context in which theconversation takes place This means only in real contexts, an utterance candetermine its meaning or function In different situations, an utterance has differentmeanings and performs different functions For example, “where are you going?” is a