A study on english speaking ability of the first year students at law department, vinh university = nghiên cứu về khả năng nói tiếng anh của sinh viên năm nhất khoa luật, trường đại học vinh

However, we can look at the real situation of speaking English of the students Viet Nam in general and the first year students at Law Department, Vinh University in particular.. For the

( NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ KHẢ NĂNG NÓI TIẾNG ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM

NHẤT KHOA LUẬT, TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC VINH )

GRADUATION THESIS

FIELD: METHODOLOGY

VINH-2015

VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT

Vinh, March 2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

For the completion of the thesis, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable contributions from many people

First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor

MA Bui Thi Thanh Mai for giving me excellent suggestions, advice and detailed critical comments on this research

I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to all my lecturers of the Foreign Language Department, Vinh University They taught me a lot of knowledge and skills which support me to complete this research

In addition, particular thanks must go to the authors whose materials have been used in my graduation paper

Finally, my warmest thanks also go to my loving parents, my younger sister, and my friends for encouragement

I have tried my best to complete this graduation thesis; however, because of the limitation of knowledge, experience as well as materials, my thesis is still far from being perfect Therefore, I would like to receive some comments from you so that my graduation thesis will be better

Vinh, March 2015

Vu Thi Thuong

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES v

LIST OF PICTURES vi

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1.The rationale for choosing the subject 1

2.Aims of the study 1

3.The scope of the study 1

4 Research questions 1

5.Methods of the study 2

6.The design of the study 2

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 3

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 3

1.1 The concepts of English speaking skill 3

1.2 Importance of speaking skill 3

1.3The component of speaking skill 4

1.4 Stages of a speaking class 4

1.5 Principles for teaching English speaking skill 5

1.6 The criteria of successful speaking activities 5

CHAPTER 2: INVESTIGATION 7

2.1 Investigation 7

2.1.1 Goals of the investigation 7

2.1.2 The subjects of the investigation 7

2.1.3 Methods for the data collection 7

2.1.4Procedures 7

2.2 The real situation 8

2.2.1 Survey results: 8

2.2.2Analysed results and the reasons for the real situation 14

2.2.2.1 Recommend Target PET - student‟s book 14

2.2.2.2 Problems with speaking activities 17

2.2.2.3 Analysed results and the reasons of the real situation 17

CHAPTER 3 THE SOLUTIONSTO IMPROVE ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL 21

3.1 For teachers 21

3.2 For the students 31

3.3 Some important hints used to speak English successfully 33

PART III: CONCLUSION 35

3.1 Conclusion 35

3.2 Suggestions for further studies 35

REFERENCES 36

APPENDIXES 36

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Table 1: Results of the Survey Questionnaire 8

Figure 1 : Which English skills do you spend most of time on studying? 8

Figure 2: How do you feel about English speaking skill? 9

Figure 3: What have you been learning English for? 9

Figure 4: How often do you speak English in class ? 10

Figure 5: Which level is your ability of speaking English? 10

Figure 6: How much time do you spend on practicing speaking English? 11

Figure 7: What do you usually do to raise your English speaking ability? 11

Figure 8: Do you agree that the environment of english communication affect considerably on your English speaking improvement? 12

Figure 9: How often do you study english vocabulary? 12

Figure 10: How many new words do you usually study at a time? 13

LIST OF PICTURES

Picture 1: Target PET of Richmond (Student‟s Book) 15

Picture 2: Content of Target PET (Student‟s Book) 16

Picture 3: Discussing activity in English class 23

Picture 4: The teacher uses the cards in teaching English speaking skill 24

Picture 5: The pictures or cards in teaching English speaking skill 25

Picture 6 : Telling the story base on the pictures 25

Picture 7: Describing and guessing games (for thing) 26

Picture 8: Dialogue activity in English class 27

Picture 9: Role play activity in English class 28

Picture 10: An information gap activity 29

Picture 11: Interview activity in information gap game 30

Picture 12: Vinh University English Speaking Zone Club 32

Picture 13: Vinh University English Speaking Zone Club 32

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 The rationale for choosing the subject

Nowadays, English plays an important role in our jobs and life, especially, English speaking skill To communicate with other people in the world we often use English speech And speaking skill can also help us to express ideas, see, and feel If

we are good at English, it will help us have many opportunities to get a good job with high salary, and easily to get promotion in the career Besides, speaking English well,

we can communicate with most of the people in the world, as well as, access a huge amount of information on all the fields of science, culture, society, business, sport, music through books, newspaper, internet, so on

However, we can look at the real situation of speaking English of the students Viet Nam in general and the first year students at Law Department, Vinh University in particular Most of the students cannot be able to speak English fluently while they have been studying English for several years Hence, what are the reasons for the real situation? Do they belong to the awareness of students, the teaching method of teachers or other reasons? What are the solutions used to improve the English speaking ability for the students?

For the above questions, the author would like to conduct the research entitled:

“A study on English speaking ability of the first year students at Law Department, Vinh University.”

2 Aims of the study

In this graduation thesis, we pay attention to the real situation of speaking English of students in order to find the reasons and suitable solutions We hope that after reading my thesis, the students will aware the necessity of English speaking skill and get the good ways to study better In addition, the teachers are given some

essential suggestions to teach English speaking skill more effectively and interesting

3 The scope of an investigation

Because of the limitation in the objective and subjective conditions, we carried out this investigation in the first year students of Law Department, Vinh University

4 Research questions

With the above objectives, the research questions are:

- Why can‟t students speak English fluently while they have studied for a long time?

- What should be done to improve the quality of teaching and learning speaking skill for the first year students of Law Department, Vinh University?

5 Methods of the study

For completion, we have carried out some methods as follows:

Analytic methods: A survey questionnaire on the first year students of Law Department, V.U about speaking skills and give the suitable solutions

Quantitative: 70 students in class were required to do the questionnaires

6 The design of the study

Apart from acknowledgement, table of contents, there are three main parts in my thesis:

Part I Introduction: The introduction is the overview of the study It refers to

the goals of this research, research subjects, the mission of research, the methods of research, the scope of an investigation and the design of the study Through this part,

we can understand the purposes of the thesis and what we get after reading this

Part II Development

Chapter 1: Literature review: In this chapter, we will review the theory around

speaking skills, such as concepts of speaking, its importance, the component of speaking skill, stages of a speaking class, and the criteria of successful speaking activities

Chapter 2: The investigation and the solutions: This chapter is very important It

helps us understand the procedures of the survey, the real situation and its reasons, then the results of the investigation

Chapter 3: The solutions to improve English speaking skill: In this chapter, the

researcher will put the solutions for English teachers and students in improving English skills

Part III Conclusion and suggestions for further study: This part includes the

main results of the research and gives some suggestions for further study

PART II: INVESTIGATION

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 The concepts of English speaking skill

Speaking is the primary mode of communication and the key to human communication We can say that speaking means to converse, or expressing one‟s thoughts and feelings in spoken language Therefore the most researchers studied and brought out many different concepts of speaking, such as :

Byrne (1997:8) has claimed that “speaking is a two-way process between the speaker(s) and the listener(s) involving the productive skill of speaking and the receptive skill of understanding.”;

Brown (1983) has stated “speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information.”;

Scott (1978) has pointed that “speaking can be typified as an activity involving two or more people in which the participants are both hearers and speakers having to react to what they hear and make their contribution.”;

Most of these researchers agree with one very important feature of speaking, that

is a two way process between the speaker and listener Both the speaker and listener have specific functions to perform their communication The speaker transmits the information to the listener and use different ways to express what they want to say by eye contact, body language, intonation, stress, his facial expressions while the listener has to decode that information

1.2 Importance of speaking skill

As the number you are concerned that English is the official language of 53 countries and territories It is the official language of the Europe and 3rd most people use only after Chinese and Spanish Especially, if you want to study abroad, European Union is a top priority for you by the living conditions and the school‟ s reputation, then English is the language you should never ignore Therefore you necessarily have

to learn English to be able to follow the content of training programs, to communicate with teachers and friends as well as to serve your life When you can speak English well, you can be confident to live and work in any countries

Besides, learning speaking English is to improve your lives and your future Because employers will want to choose a candidate with good English speaking skills, instead of a candidate cannot use or use this bad language Even if you work for a Japanese company, or any other multinational ones, if you can speak English well, you will be given priorities

In addition, speaking English well help you promote your career You can get your dream jobs with a higher salary

1.3 The component of speaking skill

According to Vanderkevent (1990:8) there are three components in speaking: The speakers: Speakers are people who produce the sound They are useful as the tool to express opinion or feelings to the hearer So if there are no speakers, the opinion or the feelings will not be stated

The listeners: Listeners are people who receive or get the speaker‟s opinion or feeling If there are no listeners, speakers will express their opinion by writing

The utterances: The utterances are words or sentences, which are produced by the speakers to state the opinion If there is no utterance, both of the speakers and the listeners will use sign

1.4 Stages of a speaking class

According to Erin Lowy (1999), a speaking class should have three stages: speaking stage, while-speaking stage and post-speaking stage

pre-The Pre-speaking stage: prepares students by getting them to think about the topic or situation before they speak about it Pre-speaking tasks can be brainstorming

or discussion tasks, where students collect all their ideas on the topic; vocabulary preparation tasks, where the teacher pre-teaches key vocabulary to help students express their ideas more easily or train students with pronunciation drill so that they can speak English in good stress and intonation and this will help them speak out their ideas in English easily and fluently In this stage, the teacher will have to set up a pre task, organize pair/group work and give clear instructions about the task

The while-speaking stage: the teacher lets students work with each other without interfering with correcting any mistakes in order not to stop students from being influent She/ he just gives assistance when if necessary At the while-speaking stage, the teacher does not have to do a lot of teaching, because her/ his will be working on the while-task by themselves, individually or in groups Instead, the teacher will have

to do a lot of monitoring and assisting weaker students who are having difficulty completing the task

The post-speaking stage: is like the follow-up stage After students have practiced speaking skill in the while-speaking stage, they do an extension speaking activities This helps students take the information from other groups or whatever they have produced in the while-speaking stage, and do something meaningful with it At this stage, the teacher gets students to report their work and let the whole class share what

they have got from pair/group work The teacher might give feedback, correct serious mistakes here and give students marks

1.5 Principles for teaching English speaking skill

According to Burn and Joyce (1997), each teacher should follow these principles for teaching as follows:

1 Provide the cultural and social purposes of spoken

2 Provide activities which involve dialogues and functional use of the language In other words, teaching should focus on language use and on meaning rather than usage and form

3 Do not emphasize the significance of mistakes This helps to encourage students to speak without fear of correction

4 State the purpose of the activity to the students This provides a context or focus to help comprehension

5 Focus and work toward real and spontaneous speech

6 Design activities which encourage natural interaction between speakers

7 Place students in pairs, or small groups Small groups and pairs are good sources of motivation and surely help to increase the students‟ talking time Besides, it

is easy for the teacher to access the students, to give explanations, suggestions, assistance and encouragement to each student

8 Provide topics of interest to the students

Use the target language This greatly increases the amount of English spoken and reduces the temptation of students to hide in their native language

1.6 The criteria of successful speaking activities

In order to get involved in activities in an English speaking class, teachers of English should pay attention to the following criteria (Ur, 1996:120)

Learners talk a lot As much as possible of the period of time allotted to the activity is in fact occupied by learner talk This may seem obvious, but often most time

is taken up with teacher talk or pauses

Participation is even Classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative participants: all get a chance to speak, and contributions are fairly evenly distributed

Motivation is high Learners are eager to speak, because they are interested in the topic and have something new to say about it, or because they want to contribute to achieving a task objective

Language is of an acceptable level Learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of

language accuracy Speaking is the ability to use the language in ordinary way by

speech It is not only a matter of transferring some messages to other persons but is

also communication, which needs more than one person to communicate with When people speak, they construct ideas in words, express their perception, their feelings and intentions, so that interlocutors grasp meaning of what the speakers mean If the learners do not have speaking skill, do not understand the English words that are said

by the speaker, do not acknowledge the language, they cannot grasp meaning of what the speaker mean In that condition, they cannot be said successfully in learning English, because they do not have a meaningful interaction of English conversation Due to it, students who want to speak English well need to learn and practice it as much as possible As proverb says „practice makes perfect‟ Therefore, students must practice to speak English as often as possible so that they are able to speak English fluently and accurately

CHAPTER 2: DEVELOPMENT

2.1 Investigation

2.1.1 Goals of the investigation

In 4 skills: listening skill, speaking skill, reading skill, writing skill, most learners have difficultly in speaking skill Because speaking skill requires learners to have their general language knowledge, such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation so that they can communicate effectively in every situation

The investigation was carried out with the aims of understanding clearly about the real situation of English speaking nowadays, finding the reasons why, and putting the suggested solutions to improve English speaking skills of the students

2.1.2 The subjects of the investigation

The first year students at Law Department, Vinh University

2.1.3 Methods for the data collection

In this research, the data collection have been used by the following methods: Questionnaire: A questionnaire with 12 questions was given to 70 students The questionnaire is aimed at investigating the awareness of the students about studying English speaking skills, requiring to give some ideas to study English speaking skills more effectively

Analytic and synthetic methods: from the data collected, the researcher synthesized and analized to know the facts about the ability to speak English

2.1.4 Procedures

The procedures of the investigation were carried out as follows

First, the researcher prepared some lists of questionnaires to investigate the teachers and the students about the real situation of studying English speaking skill Then the researcher delivered it to the students After filling in it, we collected all the papers and analyzed data

Second, from collecting the data and information, the researcher spent much time

on analyzing answer sheets and direct interviews

2.2 The real situation

Question 1: How long have you been learning English ?

According to statistics, every student has been studying English for a long time 7 years is for 43,75 % and 9 years is 37,5%, 12 years for 18,75% So, we can see that students have chances to study English when they were still pupils of the primary school

Figure 1 : Which English skills do you spend most of time on studying?

25%

15,75%

40,5%

18,75%

In this question , 40.5% of the students admit that they spend most of time on studying reading skill, and 25% of the students choose listening skill while writing skill covers for 18,75% Unexpectedly, only 15.75% of the students practice speaking skill

Figure 2: How do you feel about English speaking skill?

It can be clearly seen from the chart, 50% of the students admit that English speaking skill is difficult and 37,5% of the students say that they are interested in English speaking skill Meanwhile, only 12,5% think that English speaking skill is boring

Figure 3: What have you been learning English for?

B To communicate with foreigners

C To satisfy your favorite in English

D To get a good job

37,5%

50%

12,5%

In question 4, “What have you been learning English for?”, most of the students (37,5%) choose the aim of studying English is to cope with the tests and contests in class, 25% of the students study English to communicate with foreigners and to get a good job, besides, 12.5% of the students want to satisfy their hobby in English

Figure 4: How often do you speak English in class ?

Speaking English in class is very useful to improve the English speaking ability

of the students However, it is clear from the chart that 75% of the students sometimes speak English in the class whereas only 6.25% always speak English and never speak English is for 18.75% This result shows that the students need to create by themselves opportunities to practice speaking English as much as possible in class

Figure 5: Which level is your ability of speaking English?

In question 5, the researcher wants the students to judge their English speaking ability correctly by themselves Conformable statistics, 75% of the students realize that

they are bad at speaking English skills; unexpectedly, only 25% are good at speaking,

no one judges that they are excellent

Figure 6: How much time do you spend on practicing speaking English?

The aim of this question is to survey the time which the students spend on practicing speaking English Looking at this chart, we notice the results as follows: 43,5% of the students spend 10 minutes practicing and 18.75% choose 20-30 minutes However, no one spend over 30 minutes on speaking skill Noteworthy, 37.5% of the students never practice speaking English

Figure 7: What do you usually do to raise your English speaking ability?

A Watching the films of American

B Listening to music and singing English songs

C Joining in English speaking clubs

D.Chatting with the foreigners on internet such as facebook, yahoo, skype,

In question 8, the researcher put this question with the aim of investigation about some ways which the students usually use to promote their English speaking ability Through these questions, the researcher can understand more clearly the reasons why the students cannot speak English well while they have studied for several years The above pie chart shows that most of the students choose listening to music and singing English songs (56,25%), 25% of the students watch the films of America, and 12.5% of students raise their ability by chatting with the foreigners on internet such as facebook, yahoo, skype, Meanwhile, only 6.25% of the students join in English speaking clubs

Figure 8: Do you agree that the environment of English communication affect considerably your English speaking improvement?

In question 9, 93.75% of the students admit that the environments of English communication affect considerably their English speaking improvement However, 6,25% say that they do not agree with this opinion The students think that they can speak English better or not, it depends on one‟s effort, not on the environment

Figure 9: Vocabulary is very essential in studying speaking skill Because of having plentiful vocabulary, it is easy for you to express what you want to share So, how often do you study English vocabulary?

93,75%

Looking at the chart, we can notice that the students “always” study English vocabulary only 12.5% Most of the students chose the answer “sometimes” It means that 87.5% of the students “sometimes” study English vocabulary

Figure 10: How many new words do you usually study at a time?

In question 11, the researcher wants to survey the number of new words which the students usually study at a time As can be clearly seen from the chart, 50% of the sts study 1-2 new words each time, 37.5% study 5-7 new words, and over 10 new words only for 12.5% From this result, we can notice that the investment in learning english vocabulary is too limited 1-2 new words each time is really too difficult for the students to their speaking ability Because of having many new words, it is easy for you to express what you want to share

Question 12: Which activities do you want to be organized in class by your teacher to raise your English speaking ability? Please make clear

In question 12, according to the investigation 70 students of Law Department, Vinh Uni, we noticed that most of the students hope their teacher to organize some activities in English lessons such as discussing in small groups, listening to music in English and singing, presenting dramas, playing games, outdoor activities, quick oral,

problem solving, etc They believe that discussing activities help the students get more chances in practicing speaking English with their friends They can be confident to speak their opinions in front of people Through this activity, the students will be more confident and increase vocabulary, and the lesson will be more effective In addition, they think that presenting a drama in class is very interesting It creates the air of class more comfortable, happier and more active It also makes the relationship between the sts and teacher closer Besides, the students desire that the teacher should sometimes play some songs in English in class Because it not only helps them reduce stress in a difficult lesson, but they also get vocabulary and improve their pronunciation Moreover, they also solve problem in the fact of life through picture, or video Because it is compulsory that they must think carefully about the problem to solve it appropriately, and then they use their vocabulary in English to convey to others However, they admit that the oral activity between the teacher and the students is very boring

2.2.2 Analysed results and the reasons for the real situation

2.2.2.1 Recommend Target PET - student’s book

At present, Target PET (student‟s book) of Richmond has been used by students

of Law Department, Vinh University There are 12 units in the book, each of which is divided into two lessons Each lesson looks at one of the topics that could appear in the exam, and contains Vocabulary, Language focus and authentic Exam practice

Picture 1: Target PET of Richmond (Student’s Book)

Picture 2: Content of Target PET (Student’s Book)