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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ XUÂN HƯƠNG TRANG STRATEGIES TO ENCOURAGE STUDENTS TO PARTICIPATE IN ENGLISH SPEAKING ACTIVITIES AT HAIPHONG SECONDARY VOCATIONAL SCHOOL OF TECHNICAL – PROFESSIONAL TRAINING Những chiến lược tăng cường tham gia học sinh học kỹ nói Trường Trung cấp Kỹ thuật - Nghiệp vụ Hải Phòng M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English teaching methodology Code: 60.14.01.11 HANOI, 2015 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ XUÂN HƯƠNG TRANG STRATEGIES TO ENCOURAGE STUDENTS TO PARTICIPATE IN ENGLISH SPEAKING ACTIVITIES AT HAIPHONG SECONDARY VOCATIONAL SCHOOL OF TECHNICAL – PROFESSIONAL TRAINING Những chiến lược tăng cường tham gia học sinh học kỹ nói Trường Trung cấp Kỹ thuật - Nghiệp vụ Hải Phòng M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English teaching methodology Code: 60.14.10.11 Supervisor: Dr Dương Thị Nụ HANOI, 2015 DECLARATION I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “Strategies to encourage students to participate in English speaking activities at HaiPhong secondary vocational school of technical – Professional training" is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master of Arts, and that this thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or tertiary institution Hanoi, 2015 Lê Xuân Hương Trang i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I offer my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Duong Thi Nu, who has supported me thoughout my thesis with her patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge Without her support and active participation in every step of the process, this thesis may never have been completed I would like to thank the teachers of the Faculty of post – graduated studies for their interesting lectures who provided me with the strong inspired statation for this study This study would not have been possible without the corporation and support extended by teachers and students at HaiPhong Secondary Vocational School for Technical – Professional Training Their patience and willingness to respond to my survey questionnaires are very much appreciated I would also like to thank my colleagues who listened and discussed ideas about this thesis with me on many occasions Their informal support and encouragement has been indispensable Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family and friends for their encouragement and support during the course of my writing Without their support and assistance, it is impossible for me to finish this research ii ABSTRACT This research has been done in an attempt to encourage students to take part in oral presentations and improve their speaking skill at HaiPhong Secondary Vocational School for Technical – Professional Training Specifically, the researcher puts focus on students’ attitude towards speaking skill, their degree of participation in classroom speaking activities, reasons that make them hesitant to participate in oral activities, current methods applied to teach speaking as well as teachers’ view of CLT, their attitude towards unwilling speakers and mistake makers, their difficulties in teaching speaking and techniques and activities applied in teaching speaking The research was carried out among nine teachers and 100 students at HaiPhong Secondary Vocational School for Technical – Professional Training The data were collected by means of survey questionnaires, classroom observation It was firstly unveiled from the results that the level of students’ participation in speaking lessons is rather low Secondly, students’ talking time in speaking lessons is limited Thirdly, regarding to factors affecting students’ participation in oral activities, there were five main ones namely uninteresting speaking topics, poor background knowledge, lack of confidence, lack of motivation and passive learning style Fourthly, teachers’ difficulties in teaching speaking was also highlighted Lastly, the current methods were shown that most of the students feel uncomfortable learning with the teachers’ teaching activities which lead to the inability, or the unwillingness of the students to express themselves through oral activities Basing on these findings, some implications are recommended for both the teachers and the students iii LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES List of Figures Figure 1: The importance of speaking Figure 2: Interest degree in speaking Figure 3: Opinion of speaking topics Figure 4: Degree of participation in oral activities Figure A, B: Current methods in speaking teaching Figure 6: Students’ exectation from their teachers Figure 7: Students’ expectation for speaking activities Figure 8: Applied teaching methods Figure 9: Teacher’s attitude towards oral activities Figure 10: Difficulties in speaking teaching Table 11: Activities to motivate students to participate more in oral activities List of Tables Table 1: Students’ attitude towards speaking skill Table 2: Factors that make students hesitant to participate in oral activities Table 3: Teachers’ opinion of CLT Table A, B: Teachers’ reactions towards unwilling speakers and mistake makers Table 5: Techniques to make students more interested in speaking lessons Table 6: Time on-task, off-task for students in speaking activities iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT iii LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES iv TABLE OF CONTENTS v PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale 2 Aims of the study 3 Research questions Scope of the study Methods of the study Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW Nature of speaking skill and principles in teaching speaking 1.1 Nature of speaking skill 1.2 Principles of teaching speaking 1.3 Teacher’s roles in teaching speaking Students’ participation in oral activities 2.1 Concept of students’ participation 2.2 Factors affecting students’ participation in oral activities CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY 12 Subjects of the study 12 Data collecting instrument 12 Data collection procedure 13 Data analysis procedure 14 CHAPTER THREE: STATISTICS AND ANALYSIS OF DATA 15 Results of questionnaires for students 15 1.1 Students’ attitude towards speaking skill 15 v 1.2 Students’ degrees of participation in classroom speaking activities 17 1.3 Reasons that make students hesitant to participate in oral activities 17 1.4 Current methods applied to teach speaking 20 1.5 Students’ expectation from their teachers 21 Results of questionnaire for teachers 23 2.1 Teachers’ view of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 23 2.2 Teacher’s attitude towards unwilling speakers and mistake maker 25 2.3 Teachers’ difficulties in teaching speaking 26 2.4 Techniques and activities applied in teaching English speaking 27 Results of classroom observations 28 CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 30 Findings 30 1.1 Levels of students’ participation in speaking lessons 30 1.2 Students’ talking time in speaking lessons 30 1.3 Learner’s factors affecting participation in oral activities 31 1.4 Teacher’s difficulties in teaching speaking 33 1.5 Current teaching methods 34 Recommendations from the study 35 2.1 Recommendations for the learners 35 2.2 Recommendation for the teachers 36 PART C: CONCLUSION 40 Recapitulation 40 Conclusions 40 Limitations and suggestions for further study 42 REFERENCES 43 APPENDIXES I vi PART A: INTRODUCTION This part, which includes rationale for the study, aims, research questions, scopes, methods and design of the study, would hopefully provide readers an overview of the whole research Rationale Speaking skill, the most important aspect of learning a second language, is still a challenge for most students at vocational schools in general, HaiPhong Secondary Vocational School for Technical – Professional Training in particular Many students not have a clear purpose of learning English in their mind and they are passively motivated to learn English basing on the textbooks and teachers’ method of delivery As a result, most of students consider English as a compulsory subjects at schools and find themselves unable to use English for day-to-day communication Many research has been done on English language teaching and learning at secondary vocational schools toward a greater emphasis on communication and student centeredness While efforts have been made to encourage the participation of students in writing, reading, listening, far less attention is paid to teach necessary techniques to develop good speaking skill Besides, numerous difficulties in teaching and leaning speaking such as error correction, overcoming nervousness, etc… helping students to develop their ability in communication has not been emphasized much yet In terms of my experiences of teaching English at HaiPhong Secondary Vocational School for Technical – Professional Training, I found that most of my students are unwilling to participate in oral activities Reasons or this are various including teaching methods focus on grammar, teachers’opinion of English learning, student’s lack of idea or language devices, etc To bridge the gap, this research aims at exploring some real situations about English speaking teaching and learning at HaiPhong Secondary Vocational School for Technical – Professional Training, and search for some reasons that affect the students’ participation in oral activities as well as to suggest some appropriate teaching strategies to stimulate learner’s involvement in oral activities Aims of the study This study is designed to bring a fresh atmosphere into English classes for the students at HaiPhong Secondary Vocational School for Technical – Professional Training In general, it has three purposes Firstly, it is to investigate the impacts of oral activities on the students’ performance in English speaking lessons Secondly, it aims at finding students’ attitudes towards the participation in oral presentations in the classroom Finally, it is to provide both teachers and students with some suggestions to encourage students’ participation in speaking activities Research questions In order to reach the aims of the study, the research questions are as followed: 1 What are teachers and students’ attitudes towards speaking skill? 2 What are the factors affecting students’ participation in speaking activities? 3 What should teachers to increase students’ participation in speaking activities? Scope of the study The research is conducted with view to current situation of teaching and learning speaking at HaiPhong Secondary Vocational School for Technical – Professional Training and find out the reasons why the students are not ready to speak and suggest some strategies to attract their attention There are two groups of subjects in the study The first group contains 100 students who have learned English for years at lower secondary schools The second group includes teachers of English to help find out what teaching methods and techniques were currently exploited in their teaching students around his country to describe their good teachers to him Some of the students describe people who lecture all the time, some of them describe people who little other than facilitate group process, and others describe everything in between However, he does notice that despite the different teaching methods employed by different good teachers, these teachers share some characteristics Palmer summarizes that good teachers are “people who have some sort of connective capacity, who connect themselves to their students, their students to each other, and everyone to the subject being studied” The interpretation of this is that good teachers let the students know that they care for the students They help the students communicate with each other among themselves so that they find themselves in a nice learning environment They also motivate the students to learn the subject they’re teaching In my project, Palmer’s list of qualities of good teachers shows that the relationship between teachers and students has a great value in making his class an interesting place where students can enjoy learning In other words, the teacher’s personal qualities may have a remarkable effect on his/her students’ participation 11 CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY To conduct the research, two methods were applied: qualitative method and quantitative method All comments, suggestions and conclusions in the study are based on the analysis of the statistic data collected from Questionnaires Survey and Observation Subjects of the study This paper was carried out among 100 students namely X06, X07, K07 and teachers of English placed into two groups The first group was selected to complete the survey questionnaire with a hope of obtaining comprehensive data and accurate reflection of their participation in speaking activities They have been learning English for at least nearly three years (some learned English at secondary schools, but some did not) The other group has nine teachers aged from 25 to 37 They have been teaching English at school for at least years After carrying out the survey questionnaire, group K07, X06 was chosen for carrying out the classroom observation for direct reflection of the students’ participation in oral activities Accordingly, the researcher could have more in-depth findings about the research’ issue Data collecting instrument Based on the essence of the research questions, the researcher employed both quantitative and qualitative method including survey questionnaires and classroom observation to examine the results Survey questionnaire Among the different methods of collecting data for research purposes, the survey questionnaire is preferred by researcher due to its strengths and benefits This instrument is said to “provide data economically and in a form that lends itself perfectly to the purposes of the study” (Vanjendra & Mallick, 1991, p.13) Despite the fact that this instrument is widely used, it has several minor limitations Questions may be misunderstood by respondents and responses to closed-ended questions provide 12 limited depth As a results, a large number of valueless data can exist So, the researcher plans to to avoid using ambiguous and difficult words to make sure that the respondents could understand clearly what they had to Especially, the questionnaire for students was written in both English and Vietnamese to avoid students’ confusion or misunderstanding and thus the inaccuracy of the results Classroom observation This research used two survey questionnaires as the primary tool, followed by classroom observation for deeper investigations According to Bridget, Robert, Jason, Megan (A Practitioner’s Guide to Conducting Classroom), by using classroom observation, the researcher can strengthen the information collected from the questionnaires In this observation, the researcher paid attention to students’ talking as well as the degree of students’ participation times in speaking lessons Data collection procedure Step 1: Pre-test the questionnaire Pre-testing is the administration of the data collection instrument with a small set of respondents from the population for the full scale survey If problems occur in the pre-test, it is likely that similar problems will arise in full-scale administration The purpose of pre-testing is to identify problems with the data collection instrument and find possible solutions This step allows the researcher to determine whether the respondents have any difficulty in understanding the questionnaire and whether there are ambiguous or biased questions and measure how much time it takes to complete each questionnaire The results of the pre-test helps to ensure that all the required information will be obtained Step 2: Delivering the survey questionnaires 100 copies of questionnaires for students in classes X06, X07, K07 and 09 for teachers were delivered at break time to make sure that all the participants received the questionnaires The researcher also prepares for questions raised by participants during the process Time for the questionnaires completion was about 15 minutes 13 ... encourage students to participate in English speaking activities at HaiPhong secondary vocational school of technical – Professional training" is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master... understanding of the next part of the research Nature of speaking skill and principles in teaching speaking 1.1 Nature of speaking skill 1.1.1 Definition of speaking Every language has two kinds of. .. Difficulties in speaking teaching Table 11: Activities to motivate students to participate more in oral activities List of Tables Table 1: Students? ?? attitude towards speaking skill Table 2: Factors that