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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING BINH DUONG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES RESEARCH PROJECT FACTORS NEGATIVELY AFFECTING ENGLISH SPEAKING COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN TERM OF FACE-TO-FACE OF STUDENTS ENGLISH AT BINH DUONG UNIVERSITY Student’s name: Hà Thị Hương Student’s ID: 180…… Class: AV…… Supervisor: Phạm …… 2021-2022 DECLARATION MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING BINH DUONG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES Student’s name : Hà Thị Hương Student’s ID : 180…… Topic : Factors Negatively Affecting English Speaking Communication Skills In Term Of Face-To-Face Of Students English At Binh Duong University Supervisor : Phạm …… Student’s declaration: I declare that this final report is entirely my own work and does not involve in plagiarism or collusion It also has not been accepted as part of a submission to another purpose elsewhere I accept heavy penalty for any cheating or plagiarism SUPERVISOR’S ASSESSMENT SECTION PROCESS ASSESSMENT DATE OF SUBMISSION Topic Literature review Methodology Full draft FINAL ASSIGNMENT ASSESSMENT CRITERIA NO Process Content Research objectives and research questions Theoretical framework Methodology Contribution Format GRADE Citation, font, size, margins, line spacing… Spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes SUM Bình Dương,…………………………… Phạm …………… TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTENTS DECLARATION i SUPERVISOR’S ASSESSMENT .ii CONTENTS iii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .1 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY CHAPTER 4: RESULT AND DISCUSSION 4.1 External Factors Influencing Students’ Speaking Performance 4.2 Internal Factors Influencing Students’ Speaking Performance CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 10 REFERENCES v APPENDIX vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Number Abbreviation BDU L1 Full word in English Binh Duong University First language LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table - General information Table - External factors Table - Internal Factors CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In Vietnam, English is a foreign language subject that most students are familiar However, English is not use frequent even inside classes and less frequent outside the class Whereas, students have limited time to practice English in class, and they still not have enough motivation to learn English outside in order to get familiar with English Thus, not all language learners after many years studying English can communicate fluently and accurately To students of English major at BDU, students are easily to pass exams of English subjects, but does not mean they can communicate face-to-face in English well Every student has their own problems that affect their speaking communication ability in English However, there are very few studies on the influencing factors, so this research will delve in to find out the causes as well as offer some solutions to support students of English major at BDU improve their English communication skills This study the author will shed light on problems which are affecting to communication skills of students study English as a second language and how their speaking English communication can be improved Once pinpointing the contributory factors in this issue, hopefully this research will help people seek suitable solutions corresponding with each influencing factor to address the question of augmenting the students of English at BDU In other words, this study will investigate the role of factors determinants, which include both intrinsic and extrinsic factors The intrinsic factors are individual ability, awareness, motivation and confidence while extrinsic factors comprise learning environment and teaching methods, materials, teacher’s competence From the research results, it can be said that intrinsic factors play a vital role in shaping students’ communication English proficiency Students learning a foreign language like English must have the ability, method of study, hard work However, learning English is completely different from learning other logic subjects This means that intelligence does not pose a strong position in determining the student’s proficiency in English In particular, the ability to communication English is the most important factor, directly determining language proficiency Therefore, the aims of this research are to provide factors that affect to English communication ability of students; to explore mistakes that students often make when they communicate in English; and to suggest some ideas which are suitable with these issues to support students overcome those problems Accordingly, there are three questions must be answered at the end: What are the common problems that occur when students speaking English? What are the causes of English communication skills difficulty that students face with? What are the suitable solutions for the problems? This research is structured into five chapters, which are as follows: Chapter has an introduction, Chapter contains the literature review, and Chapter covers research methodology, Chapter is about research and discussion and Chapter is for the conclusion CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW There are some problems related to English speaking skill are an issue of many Asia students included Vietnam There have been some researchers investigating English speaking ability Vietnamese students at universities According to Tarigan (2013) explained that speaking is the ability to clarify and convey thoughts, feelings, and opinions Based on these explanations, Le and Mai (2019) defined five items were required to assess students’ speaking ability: pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, dexterity, and self-confidence Vo (2018) many English majored undergraduates, specifically first year students at Can Tho University (CTU) suppose that speaking skills are challenging This fact has been clearly established by many researchers The students in Vietnam, for example, learn English in their home country where the native language is Vietnamese The only way to learn English in Vietnam is through formal instruction, i.e in the classroom where language teachers are native speakers of Vietnam There are few opportunities to learn English through natural interaction in the target language, which is only possible when students meet native English speakers who come to the country as tourists Additionally, Le (2019), Ngo (2010) and Khamkhien (2011) also emphasize other related internal factors, which are vocabulary limitations, grammatical structures, sentence formation, which lead them to use their mother tongue instead of speaking the target language Furthermore, Ly (2021) and Diep (2017) showed that English student major generally show reluctance or have some difficulty speaking English Furthermore, according to the author’s observations in conversations with foreign teachers, students regularly lack self-confidence, have no ideas for conversation, or are waiting for support from the Vietnamese teachers There are four central issues that students repeatedly experience in learning speaking English such as being shy, being passive, thinking for ideas to say, and using L1 (Ur, 2012) Brown (2000) said that one of the elements of foreign language apprehension is the “fear of negative social evaluation, arising from a learner’s need to make a positive social impression on others” English language majors have difficulties in using English for communication When engaged in authentic communicative situations, they often lack the necessary vocabularies they need to get their meaning across As a result, Vo (2018) they cannot keep the interaction going for an extended period of time Thus, English language students are frequently not confident enough to speak out their ideas in English because they feel nervous about making mistakes, be afraid of being evaluated by their teachers or classmates, or feel shy of speaking in front of other people (Ur, 2012) In another university, Le (2019) caried out a research to examine the factors that limit students’ ability in speaking lessons at Ba Ria - Vung Tau University The results revealed that the main factors which affecting the students’ contribution in speaking English classes are from lecturers, students, and the classroom atmosphere In addition, Ngo (2010) difficulties in learning speaking English encountered by the freshmen at the Faculty of Information Technology of Thai Nguyen University are also studied that external inhibitor of the English speaking of learners as a foreign language is the content of the curriculum for teaching English In other words, as mentioned in the study by Tuan (2015), if the content of the curriculum for teaching English is not geared towards communication skills, the speech performance of students may be affected In another study, Ambu and Saidi (1997) share these concerns by pointing out an inappropriate allocation of time devoted to teaching speaking skills and curriculum without meeting the communication needs of English learners In addition to the external challenges mentioned above, the limitation of the English learning environment also contributes to the speaking performance of students of English as a foreign language Harmer (2001) and Ur (2012) Following the discovery of challenges that students experienced, different solutions are recommended by the above-mentioned authors to support Vietnamese students deal with the difficulties in English communications Overcoming those problems is very important for every researcher Ly (2021) suggested to overcome the challenges of speaking English, students are encouraged to learn all the skills and aspects of the English language equally, as all components of the language are correlated with each other This means that if the student focuses only on practicing speaking skills but forgets to improve pronunciation or listening comprehension, it is not a good strategy Also, it is recommended that students limit the use of Vietnamese in their language classes Instead, they should try brainstorming and sharing their ideas in English Also, the student population can be overcome if they practice speaking with a group of friends Peer learning and mutual support can increase your self-esteem and reduce your fear of speaking English in front of other people Most importantly, each student must have strong motivation and determination to improve their speaking skills CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY To carry out this study, referencing previous research papers was an important step Based on the search keywords “Factors affected English communication skills, students, Vietnam” on Google Scholar, within 0.14s got more than 108,000 results However, in order to select the most suitable research papers for reference, it is necessary to base on criteria such as topic, object, location, method, sample size These things take a lot of time to read as well as to check, filter, and require concentration Quantitative is the main method in this study to examine the English major students’ problem of communication English speaking of all four courses: freshmen, sophomore, junior and senior Ly (2021) this survey based on a questionnaire designed on Google.Doc A questionnaire of 22-item speaking skills is used as a tool of data collection Specifically, this step has been carried out as follows: Firstly, doing the questionnaire The respondents of this study were 150 Vietnamese students enrolled in the English major at BDU There are about 300 students, so the population size of this study is 300 With the margin of error 5% and population proportion 50%, the sample size needs to reach at least 118 respondents in order to have a confidence level of 98% As a result, the number of participants of this study qualified the confidence level of 98% that the real value is within +/-5% of the survey value Because all of the survey members are students, their age was 18 or 21 A majority of them have been learning English for a range of time between and 10 years Although their English backgrounds knowledge is different, they are all Vietnamese learners of English Participants were asked to share private details of their learning experiences In order to protect their privacy and keep the confidentiality, participants’ names, gender were not included in the questionnaire to protect the confidentiality and respect their privacy Secondly, collecting data in terms of the research questions and the aim of this study, quantitative data was collected through a survey questionnaire designed by using the online Google Form The first two questions to the students’ general information about what year they at BDU and their time in studying English The following 20 questions of the questionnaire were designed to discover factors that affect the respondents’ performance of speaking English These 22 survey questions were in the format of the Likert scale, with their level of agreement ranged from strongly disagree (numerically coded as 1) to strongly agree (numerically coded as 5) The last item was an open question that provided the survey contributors with an opportunity to add their other problems which not include the previous ones mentioned in the prior 22 questions The next step is analyzing the results of questionnaires to discover the most frequent students’ difficulties in learning English speaking communication skills The raw responding data from the questionnaire is collected and transferred into a Microsoft Excel file Following that, its numeric data is summarized, analyzed and reported into tables of results Finally, synthesizing the findings and drawing out conclusion CHAPTER 4: RESULT AND DISCUSSION 4.1 External Factors Influencing Students’ Speaking Performance Nearly 81.4% of the BDU English-majored believed that English speaking communication skills are necessary to their future job More than 61,9% of respondents also said that they liked the Speaking subject in class Several reasons supported their enjoyment of learning to speak English Table - General information Freshmen Sophomor e 5,1% 19,5 Under years – 10 years 20,3 More 55,1 years Others 22,9% 26,3% % Junior % Senior than 10 39,8% 11% % First of all, more than a half of the survey participants shared that they were provided opportunities to practice speaking inside the classroom However, 53,4% of them disagreed that the time budget for practising English speaking in class was adequate When it comes to 24,6% of the surveyed students thought that the content of the speaking topics in the Speaking textbooks is not interesting while 33,9 % thought the topics are interesting In terms of the role of lecturers, just about 45,8% of the questionnaire participants supposed that the lecturers gave them plenty of time to prepare for a speaking task The proportion of giving enough time to perform a speaking task was nearly the same as the previous aspect This result had a correlation to the above-mentioned point that these students were provided many chances to practise speaking in class Besides, around three-fourths of these students said that the lecturers usually supported correcting their mistakes while they were practising communicative speaking In general, more than 49% of the respondents felt that they were satisfied with the Speaking courses of their English major Table - External factors N Factors o Agree Result Neutral Disagre e English speaking communication skills are necessary to your future job Usually have chances to practice speaking inside the classroom Time for practicing speaking in class is adequate Content of the speaking topics in the textbooks is interesting Lecturers give you plenty of time to perform a speaking task Lecturers usually correct your mistakes Satisfied with the Speaking courses at BDU 81,4 11,9% 6,7% 49,1 38,1% 12,7% 22,9 23,7% 53,4% 33,9 41,5% 24,6% 45,8 33,1% 21,2% 55,9 23,7% 20,3% 49,1 31,4% 19,5% % % % % % % % Overall, it was assumed that a majority of the surveyed participants had pretty satisfaction with the aforementioned elements The time allocation and opportunities for practising in class and the content of the textbooks are not the main factors Influencing English-majored student's Speaking Performance at Binh Duong University to mention the support from the lecturers, can be considered external factors affecting BDU student’s speaking performance Because these elements are mostly related to the syllabus of speaking subjects, they not come from the respondents’ inner ability Although the students had no interference on the mentioned aspects, these external components impact a part of their speaking performance The data evidently showed that about nearly 50% of the responses or more had negative results about the influence of those external features on their speaking performance It was consequently revealed that their difficulties in speaking English got a half of initiate from the external factors 4.2 Internal Factors Influencing Students’ Speaking Performance Listening skills, pronunciation, and fluency are inter-related language aspects that can directly affect speaking performance When it comes to listening skills, just about 29.6% of English-majored was confident about their listening ability In contrast, a total of 31,4% of these BDU students were not self-assured about listening to English Dissimilarly, the trend of pronunciation aspect had an opposite trend in comparison to listening skills While 22,8% of respondents said that they were not good at pronunciation, nearly double percentage 30,5% of the survey participants supposed their pronunciation was good When asked if they can speak fluently, the difference between agreeing and disagreeing answers is 7,6%, specifically, only 24.6% of students are confident with their ability to communicate in well English while the rest not Coherence and grammar were also mentioned in the questionnaire One-third (37,3%) of the respondents share that they could logically arrange their ideas Conversely, only one-fifth (21.1%) of them assumed that their ideas about the speaking topics were not logically arranged during their talks There was just a slight difference between one side of those who could use a wide range of grammar (27.9%) and the other side of those who could not apply many grammatical points in their speaking performance (28.8%) Table - Internal Factors N Factors Results Agree o Neutra l Your pronunciation is good Your listening skill is good Disagre e 30,5 % 24,6 46,6% 22,8% 39% 36,4% 24,6 43,2% 32,2% 37,3 41,5% 21,1% % You can speak fluently % You can easily develop and expand 8 10 11 your ideas You can use a wide range of grammar You can arrange your ideas in a logical way You fear criticism or losing face when you speak You use Vietnamese a lot in your speaking class You are confident when speaking in front of many people You feel shy or nervous in your Speaking class You not have much knowledge related to the speaking topics % 27,9 43,2% 28,8% 35,6 39% 25,4% 39,9 22% 38,1% 45,8 38,1% 16,1% 29,6 39% 31,4% 44% 28,8% 27,1% 44,9 35,6% 19,5% % % % % % % When it comes to the frequency of using L1 during speaking lessons, nearly 50% of the survey participants confessed that they used a lot of Vietnamese language in their speaking class This percentage was noticeably high when it was compared to 16,1% of the students who did not use much L1 in the speaking time It seemed that a noticeable number of English-majored still kept the habit of thinking for ideas and vocabulary in Vietnamese when they were speaking English One reason which could partly explain for this phenomenon was their lack of topic knowledge about the speaking themes Nearly one-half of the respondents (45%) shared that they did not know the speaking topics This problem could support the reason why the students usually took time brainstorming for the answers in L1 before translating them into English to speak In order to find out the students’ difficulties when they speak English, shyness cannot be ignored When checking if the questionnaire participants had shyness or nervousness in their speaking class, about 44% of them agreed that they felt shy or nervous Their inhibition might come from the reason that the students were worried about making mistakes when they spoke Due to this fear, they tended to be cautious before speaking something Further than that, these students feared that their audience would criticize them Nearly a half of the surveyed BDU students (40%) were concerned about criticism or losing face after making speaking errors All of the factors mentioned above includes the apprehension about speaking in classroom settings, being the focus of attention when speaking, and losing face when giving the wrong answers Students who feel inadequate in their English proficiency tend to not participating in class communication To avoid the feeling of anxiety, they might incline to be reluctant during English speaking lessons Generally speaking, the students’ ability to use language skills and aspects is one vital factor influencing their English communication Weak listening skills and pronouncing as well as low fluency in speaking, can lead to poor performance in communicative English However, when taking a detailed look into the survey results, these difficulties were not the significant issues of these BDU students Similarly, although there are problems related to coherence and grammar, they are still not significant problems for these Englishmajored students However, regarding the over-use of L1 and lacking topical knowledge, a high proportion of the respondents proved that these factors had a clear negative impact on their speaking process Most importantly, being shy or nervous can be considered the most crucial factor in making the participants of the survey struggle with speaking lessons According to the statistics of the questionnaire, fear of making mistakes, criticism or losing face was the main concerns of the surveyed students It appears that the syllabus for English practicum that aims to provide learners opportunities for communicative use of the language is not implemented well Students rarely practise their English in class because they often use their mother language Besides, little group or pair work is done in class Students are passive expressed opinions and discussed problems In other words, there is little communication practice during the English practicum This correlates to the finding that most students felt a lack of confidence in using English as a means of communication CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION The purpose of this study is to discover the difficulties of the English-majored students at BDU when making communication in English From the statistics of the data obtained from an online questionnaire, their problems related to speaking were analyzed and discussed The results were categorized into two groups named external factors and internal factors in terms of the survey respondents’ points of view Regarding the first category, external factors refer to outer issues that the students have no control over or interference in a particular learning context Specifically, these 10 external factors consist of the available chances of practicing speaking in class, the adequate time allocation, and the lecturers’ support Most of these factors relate to the curriculum elements of the English linguistics program As a result, to minimize the impact of these external features, the management board and all lecturers of the Faculty of Foreign Languages are recommended to have an annual review on the validity and practicality of the current English Language program Based on the review, necessary adjustments or updates need to be conducted to enhance the program's quality and increase the satisfaction level of its students Concerning the second factor, the internal factors refer to inner issues that the students self-encounter during their learning process Following this approach, the discovered factors that involve students’ ability in using language, over-use of L1 in speaking time, lack of topic background knowledge about speaking themes and shyness when making English communication in term of face-to face Among these problems, students’ ability to use language aspects, which includes languages skills such as listening, pronunciation, grammar, and logical arrangement of ideas, has a minor impact on the student’s communication in English Over-using Vietnamese during the speaking time has a more noticeable influence on these students’ speaking problems Above all, feeling shy and nervous of the survey respondents causes the most significant difficulties in their speaking process In order to overcome the challenges in making English communication, students are suggested to learn all English language skills and aspect equally because all of the language components have intercorrelation This means that it is not a good strategy if the student just focuses on practising speaking skills but forgets to improve pronunciation or listening skills In addition, students are recommended to limit the use of Vietnamese in their speaking class Instead, they should try to brainstorm and share their ideas in English Furthermore, students’ inhabitant can be surpassed if they practice speaking with a group of friends Learning with peers and supporting each other can boost their self-esteem and reduce the fear of speaking English in front of other people Most importantly, each student needs to have strong motivation and determination to advance their communication’ ability performance Besides the findings, some limitations of this study need to be mentioned The target population of this study is just BDU English-majored students It would be better if this study expanded the 11 participants to non-English majored as well Another limitation is that this study only surveyed half of the students of English major In other words, the results rely on the perceptions of their speaking problems If the viewpoints of the lecturers teaching English speaking were included, the findings could be more wholly covered 12 REFERENCES Ambu, S., & Saidi, B (1997) Issues in teaching English speaking in foreign language classroom: A questionnaire study in Oman Unpublished master’s thesis ELT Curriculum and Methodology: College of Education of Sultan Qaboos University Brown, H D (2000) Principles of language learning and teaching (Vol 4) New York: Longman Diep L (2017) Measurement of factors affecting English speaking skills of students at the foreign languages department of Van Lang University Research and Science Today, 13(1), 138-147 Harmer, J (2001) The practice of English language teaching London/New York, 401-405 Khamkhien, A (2011) Quantitative And Qualitative Views Of Thai Efl Learners ‘learning Oral Communication Skills Academic Research International, 1(1), 90 Ly, K C (2021) Factors Influencing English-majored Freshmen’s Speaking Performance at Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry Journal of English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, 3(6), 107-112 Le, M A., & Mai, T (2019) An Investigation into Factors that Hinder the Participation of University Students in English Speaking Lessons IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS, 24, 84–94) https://doi.org/10.9790/0837-2404068494 Ngo, P T (2010) A study on the difficulties in learning speaking English of the first year students at the Faculty of Information Technology, Thai Nguyen University (Doctoral dissertation DHNN) http://repository.vnu.edu.vn/handle/VNU_123/40927 Tarigan, H Guntur (2008) Berbicara: Sebagai Suatu Keterampilan Berbahasa Bandung: Angkasa 10 Tuan, N H., & Mai, T N (2015) Factors affecting students’ speaking performance at Le Thanh Hien High School Asian Journal of Educational Research, 3(2), 8-23 11 Ur, P (2012) A course in English language teaching Cambridge University Press 12 Vo, P Q., Pham, T M N., & Ho, T N (2018) Challenges to speaking skills encountered by English-majored students: A story of one Vietnamese university in the Mekong Delta Can Tho University https://doi.org/10.22144/ctu.jen.2018.022 Journal of Science, 54(5), 38-44 APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE Time: Oct to Oct 2021 FACTORS NEGATIVELY AFFECTING ENGLISH SPEAKING COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN TERM OF FACE-TO-FACE OF STUDENTS ENGLISH AT BINH DUONG UNIVERSITY What year are you at university? Freshman Sophomor e Junior Senior How long have you been learning English? Under years 7-10 years More than 10 years Other Strongly disagree 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Disagre e Neutral Agre e Strongl y Agree English speaking communication skills are necessary to your future job You like speaking English in class You usually have chances to practice speaking inside the classroom You think that the time for practicing speaking in class is adequate You think that the content of the speaking topics in the textbooks is interesting The lecturers give you plenty of time to perform a speaking task The lecturers usually correct your mistakes while you are speaking In general, you have been satisfied with the Speaking courses at your university Your pronunciation is good Your listening skill is good You can speak fluently You can easily develop and expand your ideas You can use a wide range of grammar You can arrange your ideas in a logical way You fear criticism or losing face when you speak You use Vietnamese a lot in your speaking class You are confident when speaking in front of many people You feel shy or nervous in your Speaking class You not have much knowledge related to the speaking topics What other problems you encounter in learning English speaking skill? (Please specify) …………… ... Angkasa 10 Tuan, N H., & Mai, T N (2015) Factors affecting students’ speaking performance at Le Thanh Hien High School Asian Journal of Educational Research, 3(2), 8-23 11 Ur, P (2012) A course