Problems facing 10th form students in english speaking classes

51.2.2 The Position of Speaking Skill among Four Language Skills 51.2.3 Characteristics of a Successful Speaking Activity 51.2.4 Principles to Teach Speaking in Communicative Approach 61

Vinh university

Foreign languages department

-*** -l÷ thÞ thu thñy

students in english Speaking classes and some suggested

me to finish it

Secondly, I would like to extend grateful and deep thanks to mysupervisor, M.A Nguyen Thi Van Lam, whose useful instructions and advices,

as well as detail critical comments and encouragements help me a great dealfrom the beginning to the end of the thesis writing process

My greatest debt is to Miss Sandy, who has enthusiastically helped memuch with useful instructions and precious sources of materials

I also would like to express my special thanks to the teachers of Englishand students in Duc Tho high school who have helped me to carry out thesurveys for my thesis

Finally, I am really thankful to my beloved family, my friends for theirhelp and encouragement during the time I write the thesis

Although the study has been done with all my attempts, my limitations ofability and knowledge may cause mistakes in the thesis Therefore, it is mysole responsibility for any shortcomings that the thesis may be considered tohave

3 The Scope of the Study 2

1.2.1 What is Speaking ? 51.2.2 The Position of Speaking Skill among Four Language Skills 51.2.3 Characteristics of a Successful Speaking Activity 51.2.4 Principles to Teach Speaking in Communicative Approach 61.2.4.1 Principles for Beginning Levels 61.2.4.2 Principles for Intermediate and Advanced Levels 7

Chapter 3: Suggested Solutions to the Problems Facing

10 th Form Students in Speaking Classes 22

3.1 General Solutions to the Problems Facing Students 22

3.1.3 Make a Careful Choice of Topic and Task to Stimulate Interest 223.1.4 Give Some Instruction or Training in Discussion Skills 233.1.5 Keep Students Speaking the Target Language 23

3.2.1.2 The Procedures of the Activity 243.2.1.3 Some Specific Suggested Group Work Activities 26

3.2.2.3 Some Specific Suggested Role-play Activities 28

3.2.3.3 Some Specific Suggested Games 32

3.2.4.2 The Procedures of the Activity 36

Part I: Introduction

1 The Justification of the Study

No one can deny the importance of English in life English has becomethe vital device for communication in all fields It makes all differentcountries in the world closer Being studied English is the wish andopportunity of many people, especially students in all levels of educationalsystem The greatest purpose of studying English is to master incommunicating this language And among four basic language skills:listening, speaking, reading and writing, speaking is seen as the central skill toachieve that purpose It has often been viewed as the most demanding of thefour skills

However, in fact, at schools, especially at high schools, speaking is notpaid much attention to Students find it difficult, even uninteresting, or theyare not really aware of the importance of speaking English To have studentsconcentrate on learning speaking is not easy Therefore, the author conductsthis study

Besides the above objective reason, the most important one for choosingthe study is that the author likes speaking English, and she desires to master it.She regrets that she did not pay much attention to speaking when being at highschool

Furthermore, in the near future she will be a teacher of English, so herwish is that through the thesis she could find out some problems that students,especially 10th form students, encounter in speaking classes and give usefulsuggested solutions to help students achieve more success in speakingEnglish.

In fact, there have been many people writing about the thesisconcerning with speaking However, the author hopes that her study

“Problems facing 10th form students in English speaking classes and somesuggested solutions” is to be applied in high schools in Viet Nam because ofits reality and easy practice

2 The Aims of the Thesis

For the reasons mentioned above, the thesis is to be done in the hopethat it may contribute to the improvement in teaching and learning English ingeneral and teaching and learning speaking skills in particular The thesisaims to:

- Help teachers and students be aware of the importance of speakingEnglish

- Provide an overview on the Communicative Approach and the nature ofthe speaking skills

- Present information about problems in the speaking classes and realisticproblems 10th form students face with in speaking classes

- Suggest useful solutions to those problems

3 The Scope of Study

Improving speaking is too great a term to talk about It is impossible tocover all the matters concerning speaking skills Several techniques can beused to upgrade students’ ability and no technique is better than others In thispaper, the author would like to focus on some problems that 10th form students

in Duc Tho commonly face in speaking classes with some suggested solutionsfor those

4 The Methods of the Study

In the course of writing this paper, the author bases herself oninformation associated with speaking skills collected from different sources:references, books and Internet

The set of the survey questionnaire is to be conducted and sent tostudents in the 10th form of Duc Tho high School to bring about the analysis

that will help her research to have a deep, clear, genuine look into theproblems.

In addition, observation will also take place in some classrooms duringspeaking lessons to get necessary information for my work

5 The Design of the Study

The thesis consists of three main parts:

Part I entitled “Introduction” outlines the background of the study In this part,information about the reasons for choosing the thesis, the aims, the scope, themethod and the design of the study are provided

Part II, with the title “Investigation”, comprises 3 chapters:

Chapter 1 entitled “The Theoretical Background” provides all conceptsrelated to the study

Chapter 2 is about “Situation Analysis” which is dealt with the factualsituation of learning speaking and the problems of learning speaking at DucTho high school in Ha Tinh

Chapter 3 discusses some suggested solutions to solve the problemsfacing 10th form students in speaking classes

Part III is the “Conclusion” which presents a brief overview on theachievement of the thesis and suggests some extensive topics relating to thethesis

The study ends up with “References” including a list of sources ofmaterials and “Appendix” with the questionnaires of the survey

Part ii: investigation Chapter 1: Theoretical background

This chapter deals with the theoretical concepts closely related to thestudy

1.1 An Overview on Communicative Approach

Among the approaches and methods in learning and teaching, theCommunicative Approach is considered the most communicative one and hasbeen used most in teaching and learning According to Celce-Murcia (1979:9)the purpose of language is communication She combines many differentlinguists’ view and gives specific features of the Communicative Approach

a It is assumed that the goal of language teaching is learner ability tocommunicate in the target language

b It is assumed that the content of a language course will includesemantic notions and social functions, not just linguistic structures

c Students regularly work in groups or pairs to transfer meaning insituations in which one person has information that the others lack

d Students often engage in role play or dramatization to adjust their use ofthe target language to different social contexts

e Classroom materials and activities are often authentic to reflect real-lifesituations and demands

f Skills are integrated from the beginning; a given activity might involvereading, speaking, listening, and also writing

g The teacher’s role is primarily to facilitate communication and onlysecondarily to correct errors

h The teacher should be able to use the target language fluently andappropriately

In addition, Carter and Nunan (2001:15) claim that the CommunicativeApproach is developed in two ways First, a notional-functional approachattempt to extend the teaching of grammar to include the teaching ofinteractional notions Second, a learner-centred approach emerges toemphasize the importance for learning the meanings learners want tocommunicate, and working out how to express them

The Communicative Approach aims to make communicativecompetence Students’ communicative competence is their ability to uselanguage correctly and appropriately in any particular circumstance ofcommunication It is this ability that helps students to communicatesuccessfully in real life

1.2 Speaking Skills

1.2.1 What is Speaking?

Speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involvesproducing and receiving, and processing information Its form and meaningare dependent on the context in which it occurs, including the participants

themselves, their collective experiences, the physical environment and thepurpose for speaking.

1.2.2 The Position of Speaking Skill among Four Language Skills.

It is difficult to say which skill is the most important among fourlanguage skills However, speaking seems intuitively the most important andthe closest to the goal of language teaching: communicative competence.People say that who know a language are referred to as "speakers" of thatlanguage, as if speaking includes all other kinds of knowing and many, if notmost, foreign language learners are primarily interested in learning to speak.However, speaking in a second or foreign language has often been viewed as

“the most demanding of four skills" (Bailey and Savage 1994, P.7)

1.2.3 Characteristics of a Successful Speaking Activity.

According to Ur (1996:12) there are 4 characteristics of a successfulspeaking activity Firstly, learners talk a lot There is a fact that often most oftime is taken up with teacher talk or pauses Learners always have to be thecentre of all speaking activities, teachers only play the role as guides.Secondly, the participation is even There will not be a successful speakingactivity if every classroom discussion is only dominated by a minority oftalkative participants All learners get a chance to speak, and contributions arefairly evenly distributed Thirdly, motivation is high Interesting topics andnew things attract learners to talk part in speaking activities They are eager tospeak and really want to express their feelings and opinions in order tocontribute to achieving a task objective The last characteristic is that language

is of an acceptable level Depending on learners' age and abilities, learners aregiven an acceptable level of language They express themselves in utterancesthat are relevant easily comprehensible to each other, and an acceptable level

of language accuracy

1.2.4 Principles to Teach Speaking in Communicative Approach

Forseth, R&C, et, al (1994:31) divide the principles into two groups:principles for beginning levels and principles for intermediate and advancedlevels

1.2.4.1 Principles for Beginning Levels.

The first principle is to limit the objectives to avoid making learnersconfused Teachers must show specific objectives in limit and provide learnerswith enough structured practice to help them determine the obvious goal ofspeaking activity and concentrate on what they should speak This avoids

making them confused, reduces learners' fear and encourages more speaking.After that more free production can come after structured practice to helplearners to develop their speaking For example, in order to have learnerspractice the simple past tense, the teacher can ask them the question "what didyou do last Sunday?"(structured practice), and the learner will response: "Istayed at home" Instead of that way the teacher can say: "please, retell whatyou did last Sunday"(non-structured practice) It is difficult for them to startspeaking.

Another principle is to mix the speaking activities with comprehensionwork To practice the speaking activities, first of all, the learners have to listen

to the teachers’ introduction and explanation After listening they understandand then response by speaking Comprehension work foster an interactionbetween speaking and listening

Moreover, it is to provide activities which involve dialogues andfunctional use of the language Concrete dialogues help students to focus onlanguage It is not necessary to have learners describe the structures and parts

of speech in a language According to the dialogues, they find out structures,functions and meaning of structures, then they use those to produce speech bythemselves

Next, not to emphasize the significance of mistakes is the fourthprinciple To correct mistakes is necessary but to emphasize too much thecorrection of mistakes is not good If the significance of mistakes is notemphasized it will encourage learners to speak without fear of makingmistakes The learners will focus on meaning and communication rather thangrammatical correction, and they will speak naturally The correction shouldonly focus on problems affecting clear communication or language alreadytaught to the learners

The last principle is to state the purpose / goal of the activity to thelearners This provides a context or focuses to help comprehension and allowsthe learners to concentrate on the task and understand why they are doing itand what they are doing

1.2.4.2 Principles for Intermediate and Advanced Levels

First of all, it is to focus on and work toward real, spontaneous speech.The purpose of learning speaking is that the learners themselves can makenatural speeches The teachers have the learners avoid form-based drills Thelearners can apply based drills or given models but they must turn them into

their own speeches The real speech is most often unrehearsed andunpracticed.

Then, the teachers have to design activities which encourage naturalinteraction between speakers The speakers interact each other and onestimulates another to speak The interaction integrates speaking and listening.That helps the learners to have more natural speeches

Besides that the teachers have to place students in pairs, triads or smallgroups If the learners work in pairs or in groups they will have much moreopportunities to speak and their speeches will be more spontaneous as well

In addition, topics of interest have to be provided to the learners.Interesting topics will increase the learner motivation and help them to focus

on meaning It is also good to ask students what they are most interested in,then, give them opportunities to express their ideas and feelings

One more principle is to allow only speech in the target language Atthe advanced level, especially in free production, if there is a lot of themother-tongue use interfering in speaking activities, those speaking activitiesare not successful The learners may dislike this but they should bediscouraged from using their mother tongue without the teacher's permissionbecause this is indeed helpful for the learners The amount of spoken Englishwill increase, the learners will be acquainted to using the target language

1.3 Problems with Learning Speaking Process

In English learning process, many problems have happened Weconsider them depending on our experiences as either learner or teacher Ur(1996:121) gives four problems with speaking activities The first problem isinhibition Unlike reading, writing and listening activities, speaking requiressome degree of real time exposure to an audience Learners are often inhibitedabout trying to say things in a foreign language in the classroom, worriedabout making mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face, or simply shy of theattention that their speech attracts In addition, Ur claims that learners oftenhave nothing to say Even if they are not inhibited, they cannot think ofanything to say: they have no motive to express themselves beyond the guiltyfeeling that they should be speaking Another problem starts from the fact thatlearners have low or uneven participation Only one participant can talk at atime if he or she is to be heard; and in a large group this means that each onewill have only very little talking time This problem is compounded by thetendency of some learners to dominate, while others speak very little or not at

all Finally, the problem that Ur gives is the mother-tongue use In classes,learners share the same mother tongue, they may tend to use it because it iseasier; it will not be natural for them to speak to one another in a foreignlanguage; and the learners feel less "exposed" if they are speaking theirmother tongue If they are talking in small groups it can be quite difficult toget some classes - particularly the less disciplined on motivated ones - to keep

to the target language

In reality, learners have to face many more problems than those withspeaking activities Lack of motivation is a big obstacle to them The abstractterm “motivation” on its own is rather difficult to define It is easier and moreuseful to think in it term of “motivated” learner: one who is willing or eager toeffort in learning activities and to progress learner motivation makes teachingand learning immeasurably easier and more pleasant, as well as moreproductive Reece and Walker (1992:87) approach motivation throughconcepts related to motivation:

- Interest: Students with an interest in a subject tend to pay moreattention to it and study it to a level greater than we demand Their attentionand workrate is high with a correspondingly higher quality of learning

- Need: There are several possible needs but the most commonstudents’ needs are:

 Need for achievement e.g success in reaching a goal

 Need for affiliation e.g friendly relationship with other persons

including you, and the teacher

 Need for dominance, and this is attained by obtaining leadership, power or control over others e.g getting the best results in the class

-Attitude: Emotions and feelings are important So if students get

pleasure out of calculations, they will enjoy working with activities involving calculation, or if they get satisfaction from working with their hands, they willlearn psychomotor skills well

- Aspiration: Students may have a particular aim in mind If they pass acourse then they can enter another course which will then qualify them topractice a chosen profession

Ur (1996:275) also gives seven characteristics of motivated learners inlanguage learning process including learning speaking

- Positive task orientation: The learner is willing to tackle tasks andchallenges and has confidence in his or her success.

- Ego – involvement: The learner finds it important to succeed inlearning in order to maintain and promote his or her own positive self- image

- Need for achievement: The learner has a need to achieve, to overcomedifficulties and succeed in what he or she sets out to do

- High aspirations: The learner is ambitious, goes for demandingchallenges, high proficiency, top grades

- Goal orientation: The learner is very aware of the goals of learning, or

of specific learning activities, and directs his or her efforts towards achievingthem

- Perseverance: The learner consistently invests a high level of effort inlearning, and is not discouraged by setbacks or apparent lack of progress

- Tolerance of ambiguity: The learner is not disturbed or frustrated bysituations involving a temporary lack of understanding or confusion; he or shecan live with these patiently, in the confidence that understanding will comelater

Another way to approach motivation is to consider different kinds ofmotivation There are many distinctions of motivation, but the three followingones are most common The first distinction has been made in the literaturebetween “integrative” and “instrumental” motivation: the desire to identifywith and integrate into the target-language culture, contrasted with the wish tolearn the language for purposes of study or career promotion Anotherdistinction which has been made in Brown (1987) is that between “global”,

“situational” and “task” motivation: the first is the overall orientation of thelearner towards the learning of the foreign language; the second has to do withthe context of learning (classroom, total environment); and the third with theway the learner approaches the specific task in hand The third distinction,perhaps more useful for teachers, is that between “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”motivation Intrinsic motivation is the generalized desire to invest effort in thelearning for its own sake and largely rooted in the previous attitudes of thelearners: whether they see the learning as worthwhile, whether they like thelanguage and its cultural, political, and ethnic associations Extrinsicmotivation derives from the influence of some kind of external incentive, as

distinct from the wish to learn for its own sake or interest in tasks Manysources of extrinsic motivation are inaccessible to the influence of the teacher:for example, the desire of students to please some other authority figures such

as parents, their wish to succeed in an external exam, or peer-groupinfluences

In fact, students in high school, especially the tenth forms, have notachieved the above all characteristics of motivated learners in languagelearning and in learning speaking skill They just have some kinds ofmotivation, some of them have no motivation The students do not really loveEnglish or are not simply interested to see what it is like They considerEnglish as a minor subject, so for them, speaking English is not necessary,and they are not eager to speak The lack of extrinsic or intrinsic motivationleads to the lack of the purpose of learning speaking And it is true that lack ofmotivation is one of the biggest problem that students have to encounter

Furthermore, the inhibition problem is not simply: worried aboutmaking mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face or shy of the attention thattheir speech attracts; they are inhibited by their characteristics, problems interms of pronunciation, and problems in term of grammar

First, the root of the characteristic problem starts from that students arenot the centre of all speaking activities They are passive and not used totalking in front of class It leads to the fact that they are always timid and shyabout making presentation in front of other students Moreover, students arevery afraid of making mistakes They worry about losing face in front of theteacher and other students These characteristics inhibit them in learningspeaking very much

Second, clear pronunciation is an important goal in language learningbecause poor pronunciation often prevents communication There are threeproblems that students meet when learning pronunciation: sound, stress andintonation:

- The sounds of English can be more difficult than any other languagebecause there is a poor correlation between the sounds of English and theletters of the English alphabet The alphabet has only twenty-six letterswhereas there are approximately thirty-nine commonly used sounds Forinstance, in the word “the” The /δ/ sound is not represented by one letter, butrather two “th” Another difficulty is that one letter may represent two

different sounds For example, the letter “c” represents the sound /k/ in theword “cat” /kæt/ and it represent the sound /s/ in the word “ice” /ais/ and thesame sound may be represented by two different letters For instance, thesound /k/ is sometimes represented by the letter “c” and “k”, as in the word

“cake” and “kiss”

- Next, in English stress is important, both at the word and sentence level

To stress a syllable or word, we say it with greater speed, volume and pitch.That is, it is spoken more quickly, more loudly, and with a higher tone Theproblem here is that we do not have clear principles to stress syllables orwords, so it is difficult for students to remember how words or syllablesstressed They must remember them mechanically There are severalimportant things to know: a difference in word stress can mean a difference inmeaning For example, “re’cord” is a verb and “’record” is a noun; unstressedsyllables or stressed syllables are also important on the sentence level

- Moreover, intonation is the problem that students often meet whenlearning pronunciation Sentence intonation indicates grammar meaning orsentence types and also is the tone or pitch pattern on a sentence

Third, grammar also prevents learners much from learning speaking.Although Vietnamese adopt Western alphabets in the writing, the grammaticalstructures are different from English Moreover, the tenth forms have toapproach the new method of learning and teaching and new experimentaltextbook program, when taking part in learning activities, especially inspeaking activities they them selves must imply old and new knowledge toprove that they are the centre of all activities Grammar is a big problem theyencounter when attending speaking activities The following grammaticalpoints create much difficulty for students when speaking English:

Articles

There are no articles such as "a" or "the" in Vietnamese Students tend

to omit them when they are writing E.g "We live in (a) house"

Grammatical Ending and Agreement

Vietnamese students are usually not familiar with the English grammarrule of making a verb to agree with its subject, i.e., "she likes" or "we eat".They are also having difficulties to make pronoun to agree with its antecedent,i.e., "the school which", "the girl who", or the "place where"

Personal Pronouns

A system of personal pronouns and classifiers is used in Vietnamese toindicate age, education, or official rank These pronouns are considered to beimportant when addressing others

English word Vietnamese word Meaning of the word

Mr Ong the man of your grandparents' age

Bac the man of your parents age

Chu the man younger than your parents

Anh the man in his teens or early twenties

Mrs Ba the woman of your grandparents' age

Bac the woman of your parents' age or youngerMiss Em, Chi the woman in her teens or early twenties

Co girl of her very young age

Plural

Vietnamese does not use suffixes to express plural Plural is expressed

by the context alone or by the use of different plural particles Students maytend to forget to add a final "-s" or "-es" to a noun to make a noun plural

Verbs

Since Vietnamese has no inflection (the addition of affixes to the root of

a word to indicate its grammatical significance), the verbs are not conjugated

to express different tenses, passive or possessive Students may also havedifficulty using the verb "to be" in the following sentences "(The) car (is)red": "They (are) force(d) to run"; or "It (is) (a) green box"

Word Order

In Vietnamese, the formation of negative or interrogative sentences donot change the basic word order: Subject - Verb - Object The languagedepends on a strict word order to convey its' meaning Vietnamese does notuse contractions (e.g., doesn't) to form interrogative sentences The negative

"kh«ng" is placed before the verb when forming negative

What mentioned in this chapter provide theoretical basis related to thestudy, especially in this chapter the author has given the theory of problemsthat students often face in learning speaking To shorten the gap between thetheory and the reality, the author continues her study with the survey to findout real problems in the next chapter

Chapter 2: Situation analysis

In this chapter, through the survey the real problems facing 10th form students in English speaking classes will be displayed and discussed

2.1 The Overview of the Survey

2.1.1 Objective of the Survey

This survey was conducted at Duc Tho high school in Ha Tinhprovince because this is one of three schools in Ha Tinh applied the newtextbook program The survey aims to investigate the real situation of learningspeaking skills at Duc Tho high school at present The objectives are also tofind out the real problems which 10th students facing in speaking classes at

this level and present useful activities to help them improve learningspeaking.

2.1.2 Informants and Their Background

2.1.2.1 The Teachers

Although this school applies the new English textbook program whichstudents have to learn four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing,most of teachers still follow the old method (the Grammar-TranslationMethod) of teaching because most of teachers here are not really acquaintedwith the new program In speaking classes, introduction is given in the nativelanguage of the students and there is little use of the target language forcommunication The teachers focus on grammatical parsing, i.e, the form andinflection of words They often give typical exercises that are to translatesentences from the target language into the mother tongue (or vice versa) As

a result, they do not really create an good environment for students to speakEnglish

2.2 Description of the Survey

During the teaching observation time, to be close to students and toteach them in some periods of English, the author partly realizes someproblems that students often face in speaking classes To make it more clearand gather all the information needed for her thesis she prepared the surveyquestionnaire including 15 questions to ask students The questions of thesurvey are designed short, clear and easy for students to understand The

content of the questions is related to learning speaking English and specificproblems that students face in speaking classes A part from one questionabout learning speaking in general, the other questions of survey focus on sixproblems with speaking activities: lack of motivation, inhibition, nothing tosay, low and uneven participation, mother-tongue use, and uninteresting topicsand activities One student gets one sheet of paper containing the same 15questions and works individually in ten or fifteen minutes to give their ownanswers The survey is carried out with two classes 10A2 (47 students) and10C1 (48 students) The information collected is seen as one of the mostreliable and exact sources The data and result of the survey will be gatheredand discussed in the next part.

2.3 Survey Result and Discussion

The answers gained from students bring some sort of interesting andtruthful information concerning the matter under research The author hasarranged the result collected in the following table In the table, A stands for

“Answers”, and Q for “Questions”

The survey result is represented in the following table:

In the table above, the percentages of the answers in the surveyquestions for students are displayed The survey questions for the students will

be found in the appendix The blanks stand for the absence of the options.Question 1 is about learning speaking in general Question 15 is the question

to which the participants can choose more than one answer by ticking into theanswers

The questions from 2 to 8 indicate the survey result about the problem

of motivation According to the table it is obvious that among the students bywhom the author has her survey questionnaire of motivation completed, shefinds out that 49% of them think that speaking skill is important, whereas only25% take speaking skill as very important Despite the great importance ofspeaking, the number of the students who like reading is more than the oneswho like speaking (only 20%) 72% learn to speak in order to pass exams,only 13% take speaking with the purpose to communicate with the foreigners.The rest learn to speak for entertainment or speaking when necessary One ofgreat reasons for that is the students do not determine to learn speaking foranything Moreover, when being asked about topics of speaking activities,67% (question 5) say that the topics in speaking classes are uninteresting It isone of the factors leading to the boring speaking activities The students whofeel bored during speaking lessons say it is the topics that let them down andreally bore them and they also notice that other students have the same feeling

as theirs As a consequence, many just do not bother to talk about the topicsthat they see no interest in There are two main reasons of boredom First, thetopic is based on the text that everyone has already known about, and thusthey do not want to talk about Second, the topic is brought from outsidesources but out of students’ interest, in both cases, students just keep silent,and even if teachers force them to speak, they do it very unwillingly And100% (question 6) are sure that they will feel easier to speak English whenhaving interesting topics and the teachers supply some help or instructions Inaddition, question 7 and 8 indicate that the ways of presentation the topics andthe organization of the activities of teachers do not attract and motivatestudents to speak 90% answer that teachers often force them to makedialogues similar to the models The teachers often have students work inindividual or in pairs, sometimes the whole class works together whereas only7% say that they work in groups in speaking activities

To sum up, almost students have a lack of motivation because they donot know the real importance of learning speaking as well as they do notdetermine the purpose of learning speaking, or the topics of speaking activitiesare not interesting, etc When having a lack of motivation they are not willing

or eager to effort in learning speaking activities and learning speaking is notimmeasurably easier and more pleasant, as well as more productive Thestudents do not have interest, need, good attitude or aspiration in learning.That is the big problem which the students often face

The questions from 9 to 10 indicate the survey result about the problem

of inhibition From the table with question 9 we see that there is not a goodenvironment for students to speak English because 84% answer that peoplearound them rarely speak English to them Without an atmosphere of speakingEnglish obstacles the speaking skill development of students very much Andnext, question 10 shows clearly the problem of inhibition in speaking classes.89% claim that factors inhibiting their speaking include: worrying aboutmaking mistakes, fearfulness of criticism or losing face or shyness of theattention that their speech attracts, problems of pronunciation, vocabulary orgrammar

In short, both subjective and objective reasons create inhibitionproblems to students Almost students really feel inhibited, difficult and loseconfidence to speak in front of the others Their negative attitude to thesematters just keeps themselves away from taking part in the activities becausethey are fearful of comparison and criticism from the others These are really

a trouble since the more they feel inhibited to speak, the less they participate

in speaking activities and the worse their speaking ability becomes

The questions from 11 to 12 indicate the survey result about theproblem of low or uneven participation The data show obviously that theparticipation of students in speaking activities is low or uneven 75%participate speaking activities if only the teacher forces 69 % say that theyoften speak less than their friends do Only the small rate (8% and 19%)express to be eager to speak and find themselves to speak more than theothers There are a lot of reasons causing this matter in which theuninteresting topic is considered to be the most major reason Low and unevenparticipation never gives the successful speaking activities

The question 13 indicates the survey result about the problem of

“nothing to say” According to the survey, 100% of the students face theproblem of having nothing to say They claim that a lack of ideas, a poor