Teaching english speaking skills to the tenth form students at dinh chuong duong high school problems and prroposed solutions

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAININGVINH UNIVERSITY TRƯƠNG THỊ LOAN TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS TO THE TENTH FORM STUDENTS AT DINH CHUONG DUONG HIGH SCHOOL: PROBLEMS AND PROPOSED SOLU

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

VINH UNIVERSITY

TRƯƠNG THỊ LOAN

TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS TO THE TENTH FORM STUDENTS AT DINH CHUONG DUONG HIGH SCHOOL:

PROBLEMS AND PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

(Dạy các kĩ năng nói Tiếng Anh cho học sinh lớp 10

tại trường THPT Đinh Chương Dương: vấn đề và giải pháp)

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code : 60 14 10

maSTER thesis in education

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr VÕ ĐẠI QUANG

VINH - 2011

I have been fortunate to receive invaluable help from many people during

my study First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude toAssoc.Prof.Dr Vo Dai Quang, my supervisor, for his immense encouragement,wholehearted and detailed guidance, without which the study could not have beencompleted

My special thanks also go to all my lecturers of the Faculty of Post –Graduate Studies, Vinh University and Vietnam University of LanguagesInternational Studies for their scientific knowledge through useful lectures whichhelp me a lot in completing this study

I would like to show my sincere thanks to my classmates who help me alot in finding references and giving their invaluable comments and suggestionswhile the work of this thesis was in progress

I take this opportunity to send my thankfulness to my colleagues andstudents from Dinh Chuong Duong High School for their willingness to take part

in the study Without their help this thesis would not have been so successful

Last but not least, I also owe my indebtedness to my family members fortheir love, care and encouragement in the process of writing this thesis

This study is aimed at investigating how activities are carried out in speakinglessons by the tenth form students at DCD High school and at finding out themethods of teaching activities effectively The data were collected by means ofclass observation and questionnaire administered to 7 teachers of English and 120students The study suggests that in class time, teachers should use various activities

to creat chances for students to practise and encourage them to speak In addition,they should develop more positive attitudes towards oral errors to make them feelmore confident to speak The thesis also provides some implications for Englishlanguage teaching

LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS AND TABLES

1 Abbreviations

CLT Communicative Language Teaching

COFS Classroom Observation Forms

DCD Dinh Chuong Duong

EFL English as a Foreign Language

ELT English Language Teaching

ESL English as a Second Language

L1 First Language / Mother Tongue (in this research: Vietnamese)L2 Second Language / Target Language ( in this research: English)SLA Second Language Acquisition

2 Tables

Table 4.1: Students’ judgement on speaking activities in their speaking lessons

Table 4.2: Teachers’ judgement on speaking activities in speaking lessons

Table 4.3: The types of errors made and the timing of errors – correction

Table 4.4: The types of activities are conducted and solutions

DEFINITIONS OF KEY TERMS

(1) Aims: the underlying reasons for purposes of a course of instruction.

(Richards, 1987, p 254)

(2) Approach: different theories about the nature of language and how languages

are learned (Richarchs, 1987, p.20)

(3) Communicative Competence: the ability not only to apply the grammatical

rules of a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also

to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom (Richards, 1987,p.65)

(4) Linguistic Competence: the knowledge a learner knows about the language.

(7) Speech (Oral) Errors: faults made by speakers during the production of

sounds, words and sentences (Richards, 1987, p.344)

(8) Target Language: the language a person is learning, in contrast to a first

language or mother tongue (Richards, 1987, p.373)

TABLES OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS AND TABLES iv

DEFINITIONS OF KEY TERMS v

TABLES OF CONTENTS 1

PART A: INTRODUCTION 4

1 Rationale 4

2 Scope of the study 4

3 Objectives of the study 5

4 Research questions 5

5 Organization of the study 5

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 6

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

1.1 Review of previous words 6

1.2 Speaking skill 6

1.2.1 Speaking skill definition 6

1.2.2 Features of teaching speaking skills 7

1.2.3 Features of learning speaking skills 9

1.3 Motivation 9

1.4 Articulatory features of some English speech sounds 10

1.5 Types of Errors in Speaking Lessons 12

1.5.1 Grammatical errors 12

1.5.2 Discourse Errors 12

1.5.3 Pronunciation Errors 13

1.5.4 Lexical Errors 13

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 14

2.1 An Overview of the Research Site 14

2.1.1 Dinh Chuong Duong High School 14

2.1.2 Textbook 14

2.1.3 Teachers 14

2.1.4 Learning Situation in 10th Form 15

2.2 The Subjects of the Study 15

2.2.1 The Students 15

2.2.2 The Teachers 16

2.3 Data Collection Instruments 16

2.3.1 Questionnaires 16

2.3.2 Classroom Observation 16

2.4 Data Collection Procedures 17

2.4.1 For Questionnaires 17

2.4.2 For Classroom Observation 17

2.5 Summary 18

CHAPTER 3: PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE DATA 19

3.1 Students’ Questionnaires 19

3.2 Teachers’ Questionnaires 23

3.3 Observation Classroom 27

3.4 Summary 29

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND COMMENTS 30

4.1 Problems faced by tenth form students at Dinh Chuong Duong High School in learning English speaking skills 30

4.1.1 Learning environment 30

4.1.2 Difficulties from teachers 37

4.1.3 Facilities 38

4.2 Discussion 38

4.2.1 For teachers of English at DCD Upper Secondary school 38

4.2.2 For students of English at DCD Upper Secondary school 39

CHAPTER 5: PROPOSED SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS MENTIONED 46

5.1 Some proposed solutions for teachers 46

5.1.1 Well – defining the purpose of each speaking lesson: accuracy or

fluency 46

5.1.2 Catching students’ interest 47

5.1.3 Lead students to activities 49

5.1.4 Considering some other factors in speaking activities 51

5.1.5 Making pre-speaking activities meaningful 54

5.1.6 Redesigning inappropriate tasks 54

5.2 Some proposed solutions for students 55

5.2.1 Maximal students’ talking time 55

5.2.2 Even participation among the students 55

5.2.3 Strong motivation to speak 55

5.2.4 Comprehensibility of the students’ language 56

5.3 Summary 56

PART C: CONCLUSSION 57

1 Recapitulation 57

2 Concluding remarks 57

3 Pedagogical Implications 59

4 The limitations of the study 60

5 Suggestions for further research 60

REFERENCES 61

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

From the reality of teaching and learning English speaking skill, especially atupper secondary schools, we can easily see the obvious limitations Even studentswho have learned English for several years cannot speak English fluently or cannotspeak it at all In class, we as teachers often find the students can hardly use Englishfor communicative objectives even in the simple form or we may find the studentswho are able to point the answer of the question on a text but they can not explaintheir reason in choosing the answer It is also evident that in class, the students havelimited time to practice their speaking skills, and it resulted on their ability to usethe target language, as the old saying “Practice makes perfect” The lack ofmotivation, the lack of confidence when communicating or poor knowledge ofEnglish language can be causes In addition to those mentioned above, equipmentsand teaching methods of teachers can make the situation worse In speaking lessons,teachers use different methods to get students to speak English in which speakingactivities are considered effective and interesting to motivate students to learn

Speaking skills has been used for a long time and proved very effective asthe inspiration for students to study And the fact of teaching speaking activities atupper secondary schools seems not to meet this target However, this problem is noteasy; teachers and students get many difficulties in carrying out activities inteaching English-speaking skills Students still feel bored or do not want to take part

in these activities during speaking lessons

Therefore, in order to teach students how to speak in the best way possible,studying on how to teach English-speaking skills effective is very necessary

Thus I decide to choose a study on “Teaching English speaking skills to thetenth form students at Dinh Chuong Duong Upper Secondary School: Problems andproposed solutions”

2 Scope of the study

Detecting problems in the teaching of English speaking skills at DCD Uppersecondary school in Thanh Hoa province and providing some proposed solutions forspeaking skill development

3 Objectives of the study

This thesis is designed as a research into how E-speaking activities are taught

at DCD Upper secondary school in Thanh Hoa province The focus is onrecognition of problems and finding solutions to these problems

3 What are the possible solutions to the problems?

5 Organization of the study

This study is structured as follows:

Part A: Introduction

Part B: Development

Chapter 1: Literature review

Chapter 2: Methodology

Chapter 3: Presentation and analysis of the data

Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion

Chapter 5: Proposed solutions to the problems mentioned

Part C: Conclusion

REFERENCES

APPENDIX

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is mainly the result of the process of reading, collecting,studying, and generalizing the documents from many authentic sources about theliterature review of the study

1.1 Review of previous words

For years, language teaching was seen as helping learners develop linguisticcompetence Many researches around teaching speaking as ‘appropriate error-correction strategies in speaking lessons’, ‘Some suggestions to conduct effectivelyEnglish speaking activities’ etc proved very effective as the inspiration forstudents to study Recently Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) with itsemphasis on meaning and communication in the target language and its learner-centered approach has served as the dominant approach to language teaching.Davies (2000) finds that CLT is without doubt the approach used by most languagetoday With the fact of teaching speaking skills at Dinh Chuong Duong High School

I want to study more about teaching English speaking activities for the tenth formstudents I hope I can contribute to teaching English speaking successfully

1.2 Speaking skill

1.2.1 Speaking skill definition

There are many scholars expressing their own viewpoints about speaking.These are some of the most typical ones

- Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use ofverbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998, p 13)

- In Brown and Yule’s opinions (1983), spoken language consists of short,fragmentary utterances in a range of pronunciation

- Speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involvesproducing, receiving and processing information (Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce,1997) In general, speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode It, like the other

skills, is more complicated than it seems at first and involves more than justpronouncing words.

Speaking skill is considered the art of communications, it is a productiveskill that helps the speakers express their ideas A person who has good speakingskills is the one who can generate words that can be understood by listeners and forthat good speaking skill is a useful mean to make the utterances clear andinformative According to “Language Teaching Techniques” published byEnglish ]=language institute Victoria University of Wellington: “ Speakingactivities are ]very often used to master content matter Group work in most schoolclasses is used not for the language activities it provides, but because through trying

to understanding texts, experiencing activities, producing material, or problemsolving activities, learners master the content matter of the subject they arestudying” This proved that in the classroom, speaking skill can be effectivelyconducted by the activities relating to the tasks for a group of people such asdiscussion or group-work, pair-work

1.2.2 Features of teaching speaking skills

Just think of all the different conversations people have in one day andcompare that with how much written communication they do in one day Which dothey do more of? In their daily lives, most of them speak more than they write, yetmany English teachers still spend the majority of class time on reading and writingpractice, almost ignore speaking and listening skills If the goal of their languagecourse is truly to enable their students to communicate in English, then speakingskills should be taught and practiced in the language classroom

According to Jack Richards, a very famous professor at CambridgeUniversity, when teaching speaking skill, teachers determine a set of the goals thatthe course should be required to meet A speaking class should have the activitieswhich address specific aspect of oral skills Oral skills conclude three aspects:interaction, transaction or performance An interaction talk is that talk can createsocial interactions among people and address the face needs of participants An

interaction talk has to focus on participants and their social needs such as greeting,asking for permission, etc Meanwhile, a transaction talk obtains information or getsgoods or services This focuses on the message that the participants wants totransmit And a talk is performance when there is audience and speaker, the speakermust be single so that there is no interaction in the talk and the speaker must create

a “ product”, and here it may be a welcome speech, class talk, etc

According to Hayirie Kaky, teaching speaking skill is to teach learners to:

- Produce the English speech sounds and sounds and sound patterns:Pronunciation is a very important part in learning any languagesincluding English

- Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and rhythm of thesecond language

- 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

Teaching speaking skill is really difficult because it is a challenge forteachers who want to raise students’ interest If the activities are interested, studentswill participate in the class actively This is also a criterion to evaluate the quality ofthe speaking class Teaching speaking skill is somehow an art of getting students’involvement in the activities If teachers don’t prepare the speaking lesson carefully,they won’t make their students concentrate on the lessons and implement the taskswillingly

A successful speaking class is one in which the grammar and pronunciationerrors are addressed appropriately However, teachers should notice the differencesbetween the mistakes and the errors Some mistakes can be ignored but the errorsystem must be addressed and corrected so that students can avoid these later

Teachers should give feedback and must address both the good and the bad of thestudents and the thing that students have not done well yet can be correctedsmoothly to save their face

1.2.3 Features of learning speaking skills

Grace Stovall Burkart (1998) claims that it is necessary to supply studentswith the basic aspects of the skill and language learners should recognize three areas

of knowledge: Mechanics, Functions and Social and cultural rules and norms Thefirst aspect includes pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary This aspect helpsstudents use the right words in the right order with the correct pronunciation.Besides, It focuses on the surface of the talk in terms of how the ideas are arranged,how words are pronounced and used The second is Functions It includestransaction, interaction and performance It helps students determine the type of thetalk with certain criteria and purposes And the last is the social and cultural rulesand norms such as turn-taking, rate of speech, length of pauses between speakers,relative roles of participants This aspect supplies students with the backgroundknowledge to help them understand how to take into account who is speaking towhom, in what circumstances, about what, and for what reason

According to Jo Mac Donough (1995: 151) “ speaking is often thought of as

“colloquial”, which helps to accounts for its lower priority in some teachingcontext”

In the process of language teaching, teachers should help their studentsdevelop speaking skill by providing interesting topics, authentic practice thatprepares students for real- life communication situations

1.3 Motivation

Many students equate being able to speak a language as knowing thelanguage and therefore view learning the language as learning how to speak thelanguage, or as Nunan wrote, "success is measured in terms of the ability to carryout a conversation in the target language." Therefore, if students do not learn how tospeak or do not get any opportunity to speak in the language classroom they may

soon get de-motivated and lose interest in learning On the other hand, if the rightactivities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a lot of fun, raisinggeneral learner’s motivation and making the English language classroom a fun anddynamic place to be.

1.4 Articulatory features of some English speech sounds

Vowel should be differentiated based on criteria such as distance from thetop of the tongue and soft palate, tongue position that blocks occupied in the mouth,lip roundness, and duration To distinguish, we can use features such as [high],[low], [Back], [front], [round], [tense], and [Advanced Tongue Root] Thesefeatures can also be used to describe the consonants

1.4.1 Feature [+ / - high] distinguish narrow vowels (close / high) with the othervowels The vowel [+ high] is pronounced with the tongue body that is higher than''neutral' 'position The vowels are not articulated with the tongue body raised aresounds [- high]:

[+ high]: [i:, i, u; u: ]

[- high]: [o, o:, a:, , „, e, ∂, ∂:]

1.4.2 Feature [+ / - low] distinguish low /close (low /open) vowels with the others.The vowels [+ low] are pronounced with the lower tongue body compared to theneutral position The ones [- low] are the sounds which not pronounced with thetongue body lowered

[ + low ]: [„, a:, o, ]

[ - low ]: [ i:, i, u, u:, o, o:, e, ∂, ∂: ]

All consonants in English, except for two sounds [h], [?] (glottal), are thecharacteristic [- low]

1.4.3 Feature [+ / - back] distinguish the back vowels with other vowels Vowel[+back] is the sound of articulation with the tongue block backward compared to theneutral position Value [- back] is used to describe the vowel pronounced with thetongue position which does not shrink back All consonants in English, except forthe soft palate sounds, all share the characteristic [- back]

[ + back ] : [ u, u:, o, o:, a, a:]

[ - back ] : [ i:, i, , , ∂, ∂:, „, e]

1.4.4 Feature [+ / - front] is used to distinguish the sound from the front of thearticulation with the sounds formed later in the mouth cavity Value [+ front] isvowel that the tongue body is pushed forward neutral position in the process ofarticulation Value [- front] is used to indicate the sounds which are not on themanner of articulation above The sounds with the character [- front] includingcentral vowels and back vowels:

[ + front ] : [ i:, i, „, e ]

[ - front ] : [ u, u:, o, o:, a:, , ∂, ∂:]

The combination of two features [back] and [front] which describes the nature ofthe central vowels such as [∂, ]

1.4.5 Feature [+ / - round] distinguish the lip round sounds and not ones Value[+round] is formed with rounded lips The sound is not formed by such method asthe character [- round] All consonants in English, except for sound [w] are bilabial [ + round ] : [ u, u:, o, o: ]

[ - round ] : [ i:, i, a:, , ∂, ∂:, „, e]

1.4.6 Feature [+ / - tense] can be used to distinguish the long vowels with shortvowels This feature is usually not considered to be related to the consonants Thesounds [+ tense] are articulated with the stiffness of the muscles of the tongue masswith its neutral status And the sounds [- tense] are made without the stiffness of thetongue

[+ tense]: [ i:, u:, o:, ∂:]

[ - tense ]: [ i, u, o, „, , ∂, e]

1.4.7 Feature [+ / - Advanced Tongue Root] is used to distinguish the vowelspronounced with the tongue ahead The sounds [ATR] is produced with the tonguepushed forward leaving its neutral position in the mouth cavity, so tongue body islifted The sounds without the method of articulation above is the character [- ATR]

Sometimes this feature is used in English to describe the distinctive needs of thecharacteristic sound [tense]

1.5 Types of Errors in Speaking Lessons

1.5.1 Grammatical errors

Grammatical Errors, which stress the need for grammatical accuracy in bothspeech and writing, may hinder communication Actually, the biggest distraction forany language teacher with regard to error correction has been the traditional focus inELT on the correction of errors at a grammatical level At the global level, morpho-syntactic errors can detract from overall intelligibility and may thus have a seriouseffect on communication A speaker’s utterance “I love my dog more than my wife”can be very confusing At sentence level, ‘errors’ may often reflect performance

‘mistakes’ for which immediate teacher correction is not necessarily appropriate (Lee,1990) For instance, a speaker said: “I singed English, but I didn’t feel it is English”

1.5.2 Discourse Errors

Discourse Errors are dependable upon the observance of the rules ofspeaking and reflect learners” cultural and pragmatic knowledge of language use

An example for this kind is “Now I’m learning English news I like them” As can

be seen, this is an error of cohesive device misuse because the speaker considered

“news” a plural noun

Hendrickson (1981) points out that pedagogy needs to be related to modes oflinguistic presentation The approach to correcting errors Each discourse modedemands different correction at different acceptable periods

With spoken discourse, the question of when to correct becomes vital to thelearner’s confidence and to the train of conversation Besides, methods forcorrecting oral errors are also paid much attention to It is extremely difficult for aspontaneous conversation or interaction to take place in oral communicativediscourse if oral errors should not be encouraged for fear of damaging learners’confidence A more suitable approach would be to encourage learners to beconscious of the ability to monitor themselves and correct their own errors

1.5.3 Pronunciation Errors

Phonological Errors are manifested in wrong pronunciation and intonation.For example, the speaker mispronounced the word from [waste] to [water] in thefollowing sentence: “Some threw water in the forest they got a fine” This causeddifficulty for the listener to understand In the process of SLA, such errorsnecessitate timely correction because they may have a meaning-differentiatingfunction As teachers, few would expect students to be able to achieve a nativesound system in their L2 This is an area where fossilization does tend to take place.However, a communication breakdown can occur if a phonologically-induced error

is serious enough to affect intelligibility This is when appropriate correction iscrucial in indicating the speaker’s error, as by implicit suggestions from the listener

1.5.4 Lexical Errors

Lexical Errors may also hinder communication and intelligibility This type

of errors can easily arise in combination with other categories An example is aspeaker’s error in the sentence: “I read a lot of books interesting” It is a commontype of lexical errors, namely wrong word order A more serious lexical error can befound in the following utterance: “The man raised from the ground” That is themisuse of the verb “raise” In this case, “rose” would be accurate Like morpho-syntactic errors, lexical errors are errors which are habitually corrected by teachers

On the whole, it is easy for teachers to correct lexical errors as one only needs topinpoint the change in meaning and provide the correct word

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1 An Overview of the Research Site

2.1.1 Dinh Chuong Duong High School

Dinh Chuong Duong High School, founded in 1998, is located in Hau LocTown, Hau Loc District, Thanh Hoa province This public school has 28 classeswith 68 teachers of different subjects Currently there are approximately 1427students of three grades: 10, 11 and 12 Grade 11 has 9 classes, grade 12 has 11classes, grade 10 has 8 classes On the average, there are about 50 students in aclass Most of the students come from different villages close to the school

The number of students in the 10th grade are 435 students They are now 16years of age The students learned English as a foreign language for four years atJunior High School and are all learning English, with three English classes a week

2.1.2 Textbook

The 10th form students are now using Tieng Anh 10, the standard syllabus,written by Hoang Van Van et al It follows two popular approaches, namely learner-centered approach and communicative approach There are 16 units in the textbook.Each units contains 5 lessons: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and LanguageFocus Obviously these textbooks focus on linguistic knowledge as well as skillformation and development Speaking skill is taught in one lesson of a unit Itsprimary goal is to teach communicative competence, that is, the ability tocommunicate in English However, this year Ministry of Education and Trainingasks schools to reduce lessons and improves quality of teaching and learning Sosome units are cut and some long and difficult units are added with periods

2.1.3 Teachers

All the 8 teachers of English at DCD High School are Vietnamese, agedfrom 26 to 37 The youngest has 2 years of teaching English while the oldest hasbeen teaching English for 12 years Seven of them are female Seven of them gotformal training Only one is in-service graduates

2.1.4 Learning Situation in 10 th Form

In English lessons, the main materials used are simply a blackboard,textbooks and in recent two years teacher have been using cassettes during listeninglessons and using projector during the lessons The classrooms are physicallyovercrowded, with limited space for activity organization Besides, there are nocompetitions and outdoor activities for students to take part in Moreover, most ofthe students do not see the importance of English They just focus on learning thesubjects for their entrance exam, namely maths, chemistry and physics Englishtests are administered to measure students’ language ability However, students’speaking exam is not implemented Generally, the students’ knowledge of English

is poor Also their exposure to English in the classroom is very limited, so they arenot good at communicative skills Therefore, the teaching of English in general, andthe teaching speaking English in particular has encountered a lot of difficulties

The organizing of activities in speaking lessons is arbitrary Each teacher hasdifferent reactions to learners’ activities Most of them don’t usually use activities inthe lessons due to the lack of knowledge of teaching methods and students’ abilitywhen they use activities in the class

2.2 The Subjects of the Study

The subjects of the study are 7 teachers of English teaching the tenth formstudents Besides, 120 students at DCD High School, where the researcher teachesEnglish, are selected The teachers and students will help by filling in thequestionnaires and carrying out their classes as usual for the researcher to observeand collect the most reliable data

2.2.2 The Teachers

The 7 teachers of English who are currently teaching the tenth form areasked to complete the questionnaires for teachers Among them, there are 6 femalesand 1 male Their ages range from 26 to 37 They have been teaching English atDCD High School from 2 to 12 years Most of them got formal training

2.3 Data Collection Instruments

In order to get the needed information, the two instruments are employed.They are questionnaires and classroom observation

2.3.1 Questionnaires

Two sets of questionnaires were designed to investigate how speakingactivities are carried out and get the participants’ opinions of taking part in differentactivities Each includes 9 items to be responded to answer the research questions

The questionnaire for students, with 9 questions written in English, wasadministered to the students The questionnaire for students was divided into twoparts as follows:

Part 1 is designed to get some background information of the students

Part 2 consists of 9 questions devised for the students to provide the facts ofconducting speaking activities in their speaking lessons

The questionnaires which delivered to 7 teachers also consists of 9 questions

in order to collect information related The teacher-questionnaire consists of twomain parts:

Part 1 elicits some background information from the teachers

Part 2 with 9 questions, is designed for the teachers to give the facts ofEnglish speaking activities

2.3.2 Classroom Observation

Besides the questionnaires, classroom observation is also the main tool tocollect more information about the work of conducting speaking activities inspeaking lessons for the study The researcher intends to observe the three classes

C2, 10C3, 10C4, taught by two different teachers of English who have different

abilities The data will be collected in four lessons, two for each class Each lessonlasts 45 minutes The classes must not be prepared for being observed The teachersand students do as usual Moreover, the researcher must not do anything to interferewith the teachers, the students and activities, that is non-participating observation.The details of speaking activities are observed and filled in the ClassroomObservation Forms (COFs), (see Appendix).

2.4 Data Collection Procedures

The work of data collection for this study was carried out in the beginning ofthe second semester The school – years started early, August 16, 2010, so thesecond semester began on November 18, 2010 At this time, the tenth form studentshave learned in DCD for one semester They have quite adapted to the newenvironment in general and the teaching and learning of English in particular Alsothe teachers have got to know quite a lot about their students

2.4.1 For Questionnaires

To collect data, the researcher has to design the questionnaires for theteachers and students Student-questionnaires were distributed to 116 students of thethree classes 10C2, 10C3 and 10C4 at DCD High School 4 students from the threeclasses were absent on the day the filling of the questionnaires was carried out due

to their sickness Teacher-questionnaires were also delivered to 7 teachers ofEnglish teaching the 10th form students

Before administering the questionnaires, the researcher gave someintroduction and instructions, including Vietnamese explanation when necessary, inorder to make the procedures clear to the teachers as well as the students in the hopethat the subjects would fully understand the contents of the questionnaires As forthe questionnaires administered in the classrooms, the teachers were asked to leavethe classroom so as to make the students feels comfortable as they were answeringthe questions Then, all 116 student-questionnaires and 7 teacher-questionnaireswere returned to the researcher

2.4.2 For Classroom Observation

Before embarking in observing the classes, the researcher designed the COFs

violations Also, prior to the observation, in order to have an overview of theEnglish language knowledge provided for the students in lower secondary school,the researcher spent a considerable time reading the textbooks, namely, Tieng Anh

6, Tieng Anh 7, Tieng Anh 8 and Tieng Anh 9

When observing the lessons, the researcher did not do anything to interferethe class All the data needed were observed and carefully filled in the forms.Besides, the researcher used a voice recorder to record all the lessons in case of laterreference After observing the lessons, the data from the COFs were organized andanalyzed to get needed information for the thesis

2.5 Summary

This chapter has presented the methodology of the study In other words,the researcher site, subjects of the study and data collection methods have alsobeen discussed at great length Next chapter will present presentation and analysis

of the data

CHAPTER 3: PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE DATA

In this chapter, the data collected from the questionnaires and classobservation will be presented and analyzed Data analysis is based on the details ofthe questionnaires for teachers and students and Classroom Observation forms.Firstly, all the collected data from the questionnaires and Classroom Observationforms are read through to obtain the sense of the overall data The data will then becalculated and expressed in the form of tables Finally, the data will besystematically analyzed and evaluated

3.1 Students’ Questionnaires

The first part of the questionnaires for 120 students of 10C2, 10C3 and 10C4 isdesigned to get some background information of the students It consists of questions, eachoffers the students freedom to choose what are true for them The results of thequestionnaires for students are presented in table 3.1 and analyzed as follows:

Questions Options Number of

Responses Percentage

1.How do you

like speaking

activities ?

a I like speaking activities a lot 71 59.17%

b I like them very much 18 15%

c I don’t like them very much 29 24.17%

d I don’t like them at all 2 1.67%2.Which kinds of

b Have more chances to practice 40 33.3%

c More confident to speak 36 30%

d Feel comfortable to learn 11 9.17%

b Not very enthusiastically 28 23.3%

c Don’t take part in if possible 15 12.5%

a Fear of making mistakes 51 42.5%

b Can’t think of anything tospeak

activities?

Table 3.1: Students’ judgement on speaking activities in their speaking lessons

Asking about students’ attitudes toward speaking activities, I got thefollowing results Among 120 students from DCD Upper Secondary school asked,

71 students (59.17%) like speaking activities a lot, only 18 students (15%) like themvery much Noticeably, 29 students (24.33%) do not like them very much and even

2 students (1.67%) do not like them at all

In relation to the kinds of errors corrected, the majority of the students(63.3%) showed that phonological errors were a priority to be corrected Correctinggrammatical errors ranked second with 20.83% while the correction of lexical errorsand discourse errors accounted for 11.67% and 4.17% respectively

When being asked about the frequency of applying speaking activities inspeaking lessons, 79 students (66%) answered that their teacher often use speakingactivities 20 students (16.67%) claimed that their teacher usually use speakingactivities, and the answer “sometimes” was chosen by 21 students (17.33%)

52 students (43.3%) thought that speaking activities help speaking lessonsmore motivating, 41 students (34%) found that it is more interesting to learnEnglish with speaking activities Only 10 students found it more comfortable withspeaking activities Remarkably, 15 students (12.7%) showed their differentopinions about this, they found that it is easy to understand and master lessonsdeeply with these activities; others thought that they can help students pronouncecorrectly, improve their speaking and even listening skills, some of them chose allthree options

In terms of the question of activities that students like to take part in, thereare many options for them to choose, the answers are therefore varied However, themajority (27.5%) chose the activity discussion, 15% like role play, 10% areinterested in information gap, only 8.3% like brainstorming, Story telling is liked by

14.17% Interview and picture describing are also interested in with 12.5% and13.3% Especially, one student likes puzzles

Talking about the advantages of speaking activities on learning English,students gave various answers 33 students (27.5%) find it more interesting to learnEnglish, 40 students (33.3%) said that they have more chances to practice speakingEnglish, 36 students (30%) thought that speaking activities make them feel moreconfident to speak English and the rest 9.2% (11 students) gave other answers: theyfeel comfortable to learn and therefore help them improve their speaking skills

Through students’ answers about their participation in speaking activities, Ifound that most of them (67.5%) excitedly take part in every activity, 28 students(23.3%) not very enthusiastically take part in activities, and 15 students (12.5%)answered that they did not take part in if possible No student never takes part in

Among the problems students often face up to when taking part in speakingactivities, the fear of making mistakes is the most common 51 students (42.5%)said that they had this problem 27 students (22.5%) can not think of anything tospeak Another problem is that they like speaking in mother tongue instead ofspeaking English and this percentage is 24 students (20%) Only 5 % do notunderstand their teachers’ instructions 10 students (8.3%) found these activities toodifficult and the rest (10 students) had different ideas; their problems are badpronunciation, poor vocabulary or background knowledge Some of them said that

“I like speaking English but I’m not confident.”

100% agreed that teachers should organize speaking activities in teachingspeaking skills

To mention the work arrangement students like best when learning speakingactivities, most of them (76.7%) like work in pairs Working in group is liked most

by 12 students (10%), and working in team is liked most by 13 students (10.8%).The least popular work arrangement is individual work because it is liked by only 3students (2.5%)

3.2 Teachers’ Questionnaires

The survey questionnaires for teachers are designed to get some backgroundinformation of the teachers It consists of 7 questions, each offers the teachers freedom tochoose what are true for them The data collected are illustrated in table 3.2 and thenanalyzed as follows:

Questions Options Number of

3 42.86%

c Because they make theclassroom atmosphere moreexciting and dynamic

d Shyly and passively 2 28.6%

7 What are the

b Students don’t say anything 2 28.6%

c Students only reluctantlyanswer when they are asked

a Encourage students to speak 6 85.7%

b Give more interestingactivities

3 42.8%

c Give clear instructions 1 14.3%

Table 3.2: Teachers’ judgement on speaking activities in speaking lessons

Surveying the teachers’ attitude toward the importance of English speakingactivities, I received the following results Among 7 teachers of English at DCDUpper Secondary school, many of them thought that it is very important butdifficult to carry out effectively while the percentages of teachers considering itvery important and important are the same

Dealing with the frequency of using English speaking activities, most ofthem (85.7%) usually use speaking activities, and the rest 14.3% often use them intheir speaking lessons.

With reference to the types of errors to be corrected, 71.4% of the teachersindicated that phonological errors are of their choice The equal proportion 42.86%was chosen for correcting lexical and grammatical errors No teachers paid attention

to discourse errors, so this kind of errors was always ignored in speaking classes

To survey the reason why the teachers use speaking activities, 57.1% saidthat they use them because they help students improve their speaking skills 42.86%thought that they make students more interested in learning speaking, only 14.3%use speaking activities because they make the classroom atmosphere more excitingand dynamic

Talking about activities teachers often use to promote students’ speakingskills, most of them chose 3 activities: discussion, role play and brainstorming.14.3% said that they often use picture describing while the percentages of teachersusing story telling and interview are the same 14.3% Remarkably, none of theteachers chose the activity Information gap

As for work arrangement used in speaking activities, no teacher chooseindividual work and teamwork Meanwhile, the majority (57.1%) thought that pairwork worked best According to the rest (42.86%), group work worked best

When being asked about the participation of students in speaking activities, 3teachers (42,86 %) claimed that most students avoid taking part in if possible Therest found that their students take part in enthusiastically 42.86, creatively (28,6%)and shyly, passively (28,6%)

Among the problems teachers have to face with when using speakingactivities, the most common is that students tend to use mother tongue instead ofusing English (57.1%), while 28.6% claimed that their students do not say anythingand the rest 28.6% said that students only reluctantly answer when they are asked

And talking about the reasons of those problems, more than half of teachers(57.1%) thought that students are lack of English speaking skills The reason

“students are afraid of making mistakes” was chosen by 42.8% of teachers, and therest 71.4% thought that lacking vocabulary may be one of the main reasons

To cope with the problems when using speaking activities, 85.7% chose toencourage students to speak and give more interesting activities (42.8%).Meanwhile, only 14.3% gave clear instructions

e Errors

Gramma r Errors

Lexical Errors

Pronunciation Errors

Immediate Correction

immediate Correction

Non-No % Non-No % No % No % No % No %

1 2 7.1 8 28.6 4 14.3 14 50 8 80 2 20

2 3 9.4 13 40.6 5 15.6 11 34.4 18 100 0 0

Total 5 8.3 21 35 9 15 25 41.7 26 92.9 2 7.1

Table 3.3: The types of errors made and the timing of error-correction

As can seen table 3.3, the common types of errors occurring weregrammatical and pronunciation ones, 35 % and 41.7 % respectively Two types oferrors rarely appeared are discourse errors (8.3 % ) and lexical errors ( 15 % ) Interms of grammatical errors, most of them are wrong usage of grammatical pointsthoroughly, so they were unable to use the grammatical items in practice.Additionally, the correction of pronunciation errors was considerable In otherwords, the learners find it quite difficult to pronounce correctly when learning aforeign language

In the two classes, there was not much difference in the number of the types

of errors made by the students except grammar errors In the two lessons of teacher

1, there were only 8 while 13 were made in the two lessons of teacher 2, whichresulted in a greater total number of errors committed in teacher 2’s lessons, 35compared with 28 in the lessons of teacher 1

Table 3.3 also presents the timing of error correction in the lessons of the twoteachers in details From the table we can see that both teachers preferred immediate

to non-immediate correction, 80% and 20% respectively Especially, immediate

correction was employed in all cases of error-correction (100%) in the lessons ofTeacher 2 while it was used in correcting 8 out of 10 errors (80%) in Teacher 1’s.

According to the classroom observation, the correction of errors is taken placeunevenly One teacher corrected almost every errors made by the students while the othersometimes did this Of all the errors committed, 60 in total, only 32 errors were corrected

Redesign tasks

Encourage

ss to speak

Give instructions Clearly

Table 3.4: The types of activities are conducted and solutions to them

Regarding the types of activities used in the lessons of the two teachers, itwas found that individual work (50%) was employed more often than pairwork(16.7 %) and groupwork (33.3 %) The good point of using pairwork andgroupwork or teamwork is to help students become more active and understand thelessons quickly and help atmosphere of the classroom avoid boredom However, theteachers seemed not to be interested in these types of activities, so there was a lowfrequency of using them Only one case of pairwork (16.7 %) in the lessons ofteacher 1 and two (40 %) in teacher 2’s while no one used teamwork which makeclassroom more active

In terms of solutions to the activities effectively, the teacher mostlyencouraged the students to take part in the activities (50 %) and give the instructionsclearly (50 %) Teacher 1 don’t redesign the tasks while teacher 2 redesign (16.7

%) Redesigning the tasks makes the lessons easier and helps the students attend thelessons better