Factors that affect the motivation of fourth year english majors at hanoi open university in learning english speaking skills HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITYCODE 02 FACULTY OF ENGLISH GRADUATION THESIS FACTORS[.]
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH CODE: 02 GRADUATION THESIS FACTORS THAT AFFECT THE MOTIVATION OF FOURTH-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY IN LEARNING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS Name of student: Nguyen Hai Nam Date of birth : 19/02/1997 Class : K22A.01 Supervisor : Nguyen Van Quang, Ph D Ha Noi – 2019 DECLARATION Title: Factors that Affect the Motivation of Fourth-year English Majors at Hanoi Open University in Learning English Speaking Skills I certify that no part of the above report has been copied or reproduced by me from any others’ work without acknowledgement and that the report is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor Hanoi, 16 April, 2019 Student Supervisor Signature Signature ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the process of making graduation thesis, I received a lot of enthusiastic support, which helped and guided me through the past time First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the board of directors of the English Faculty of Hanoi Open University for facilitating me to complete this graduation thesis Secondly, I honestly thank Mr Nguyen Van Quang, my supervisor, who has given me advices to fulfill my graduation thesis and thanks to those guidance, I have improved my English skills a lot Thirdly, I would like to thank my friends who lent me a hand to conduct the survey on a large number of students Finally yet importantly, I am grateful to the students of Hanoi Open University, who took part in my survey and helped me to complete this study In short, I really thank to all people who helped me finish my graduation thesis TABLE OF CONTEN Chapter I: Introduction 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aims and objectives of the Study 1.3 Scope of the Study 1.4 Research questions 1.5 Methodology 1.6 Design of the Study Chapter II: Theoretical Background 2.1 Definition of Motivation 2.2 Direct factors that affect learning English speaking skills .5 Chapter III: Methodology 11 3.1 Data collection .11 3.1.1 Instruments .11 3.1.2 Participants .13 3.2 Data analysis 14 3.2.1 Instruments .14 3.2.2 Techniques .14 Chapter IV: Findings, Discussion and Recommendation 16 4.1 Findings about factors that affect students’ learning English speaking skills motivation 16 4.2 Discussion about factors that affect students’ learning motivation .28 4.3 Recommendation to enhance motivation in learning English speaking skills .36 Chapter V: Conclusion 39 5.1 Summary 39 5.2 Limitation .40 5.3 Suggestion for further research 40 References .41 Appendices 42 Y TABLE OF FIGUR Table - Factors that affect students’ motivation in learning English speaking skills 10 Table - Factors, Question for each factor and meanings of question .45 Graph - Factor from learners and classroom environment (n=130) .17 YGraph – Factors from lecturers (n=130) .20 Graph - Factors from family (n=130) .23 Chart - Reasons for choosing English as major at university 25 Chart - Substantial difficulties in English speaking skills 27 Factors that affect the motivation of fourth-year english majors at hanoi open university in learning english speaking skills CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale English is a universal language and now a compulsory subject at almost every school, college and university in Vietnam However, the capacity for using English fluently is still a remaining problem to every learner, especially the speaking skills According to the IELTS statistics, speaking skills have always been recorded a considerably low average band score Motivation is believed to be the main ground that affects learners’ ability to speak English fluently Only with the sufficient motivation can bring the fullest potentials of the English learner into play and achieve the successful status in the end For this reason, this paper is operated with the expectation that in the end, the solutions to impulse motivation and avoid negative effects on learners’ determination It is also expected to improve English speaking skills of learners 1.2 Aims and objectives of the Study The main aims of this research are to identify the factors that make impacts on the motivation in learning English speaking skills among the fourth-year English major university students and to learn in which way those factors impact In addition, the writer also hope that through a view on different aspects which affect the motivations of students in learning English, solutions that improves students speaking skills will be found Hence, the objectives that are expected to be achieved are: To identify the factors that affects learning English motivation skills, especially the significant ones NGUYEN HAI NAM - K22A1 - 2015-2019 Factors that affect the motivation of fourth-year english majors at hanoi open university in learning english speaking skills To aware how the factors affect students motivation 1.3 Scope of the Study Due to the fact that the number of English learners is distributed into various age groups, this study will be operated: Place: Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University School year: 2018 – 2019 Population: Fourth-year English majors – Translation Program Sampling: Direct factors affecting English speaking skills Beside, due to the limitation of time and manpower, the direct factors, which appear in the study, are the main factors and they not cover all the direct factors that can make an impact on students’ motivation in learning English speaking skills 1.4 Research questions The goal of the study is to understand what will make impacts on students’ motivation in learning English speaking skills Therefore, these following questions were selected in order to gather complete data for analyzing What are the factors that affect the motivation in learning English speaking skills? What is the mechanism for the factors to exercise their effects on learning English speaking skills? 1.5 Methodology A questionnaire is sent to some fourth-year Translation classes in order to collect complete data The expectation is to achieve distinct, detailed and NGUYEN HAI NAM - K22A1 - 2015-2019 Factors that affect the motivation of fourth-year english majors at hanoi open university in learning english speaking skills realistic information All the data is analyzed and concluded at the end of the story 1.6 Design of the Study For easier comprehension, the study is divided into chapters, all of which encompass the typical information to support the research: Chapter One: “Introduction” The reason why this topic is chosen, aims, scope, research questions, methods and design of the thesis are explained in this part Chapter Two: “Theoretical Background” In the second part, the definitions of motivation is briefly mentioned, and most of the part concentrates on factors divisions that affects students’ motivation in learning English speaking skills Chapter Three: “Methodology” In part three, the method and procedures are explained in details along with the scope of the research The information collected from investigation should be as realistic as possible in order to analyze Chapter Four: “Findings, Discussion and Recommendation” Data from investigation is gathered for appraisal and linked to theoretical background After that, the result from analysis is discussed and suggestions are pointed out Chapter Five: “Conclusion” At the end of the research, the information in the study is concluded In addition, there are some words about limitation of the studies and suggestions for further research in the future NGUYEN HAI NAM - K22A1 - 2015-2019 Factors that affect the motivation of fourth-year english majors at hanoi open university in learning english speaking skills CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 Definition of Motivation As mentioned by Oxford and Shearin (1996), motivation is a critical, vital aspect of which learners are fully involved in learning process Motivation is a term which appears frequently in both educational and research contexts In educational contexts, particularly in this case is second/foreign language (L2), motivation is the force that drive us to absorb in knowledge Many studies on motivation have been conducted in order to explain a question why human behaves as they Eventually, many studies lead to many theories and results Therefore, we cannot acknowledge an answer in a simple and straightforward way Hence, let us take a look at some generally accepted definitions First of all, Burden believed that “From a cognitive perspective, motivation is concerned with such issues as why people decide to act in certain ways and what factors influence the choice they make.” [Burden; 1997] In addition, Dornyei also stated “motivation explains why people decide to something, how hard they are going to pursue it and how long they are willing to sustain the activities” in 2001 These two explanations just describes partly of the definition of motivation that we are looking for Still, they have high reference values In the book “Social Psychology and Second Language Learning” published in 1985, Gardner said "Motivation in the present context refers to the combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language plus favourable attitudes toward learning the language" He also assumed in another book that motivation involved desire to learn a language, intensity of effort to achieve this, and attitudes toward learning the language This definition of Gardner is quite right, but NGUYEN HAI NAM - K22A1 - 2015-2019 Factors that affect the motivation of fourth-year english majors at hanoi open university in learning english speaking skills rather complex In contrast, McDonough gave us a basic explanation that motivation consists of four elements: The reasons why we want to learn The strength of our desire to learn The kind of person we are The task and our estimation of what it requires of us [McDonough, 2007, pp 369-371] From the above, it can be deduced to a conclusion that motivation is a critical, vital trait which strongly affects one’s determination to achieve a goal Motivation drives human to act and behave in a particular manner, therefore it is the reason for each action that a person takes so as to be success In this educational context, motivation is a decisive factor that will result in the rate and success of L2 learning Without motivation, even the greatest minds with extraordinary skills cannot achieve a long-term accomplishment More than that, in some cases, motivation can supplement significant inadequacies so that a learner can overcome difficulties and succeed in learning L2 2.2 Direct factors that affect learning English speaking skills The lack of motivation can come from many different factors All these factors make the learning process difficult (Jafari, 2013) However, we can divide the direct factors affecting the motivation of students learning L2 into three groups: The factors come from inside the classroom, the factors come from the lecturers, and the factors come from family From inside classroom: Firstly, let us take a look at the factors come from inside classroom These factors can be divided into two categories The first type is the factors NGUYEN HAI NAM - K22A1 - 2015-2019