Difficulties facing vnuas second year english majored students in speaking 4 lessons

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES BA THESIS DIFFICUTIES FACING VNUA’S SECOND- YEAR ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS IN SPEAKING LESSONS NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM HAI CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH TRONG CÁC GIỜ HỌC NÓI Student: DOAN THI HAI YEN Student code: 621281 Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Supervisor: NGUYEN THI LAN ANH, M.A HANOI – 2021 VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES BA THESIS DIFFICUTIES FACING VNUA’S SECOND- YEAR ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS IN SPEAKING LESSONS NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM HAI CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGƠN NGỮ ANH TRONG CÁC GIỜ HỌC NĨI Student: DOAN THI HAI YEN Student code: 621281 Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Supervisor: NGUYEN THI LAN ANH, M.A HANOI – 2021 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority over the study project report titled "Difficulties facing VNUA's second-year English-majored students in speaking lessons." submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of English Language degree Except where noted, no other person's work has been utilized in the text of the thesis without proper attribution Hanoi, 2021 Doan Thi Hai Yen Approved by SUPERVISOR Date: …………………… i ACKNOWLEDGMENT This Thesis is the result of an end of a long way: the end of the English language Course It would not have been possible without the participation and assistance of numerous brave and courageous people along the way Thus I have to thank them all First and foremost, I'd like to express my gratitude to MA Nguyen Thi Lan Anh, who served as my supervisor and instructor during this thesis For the last months, she has been devotedly guiding me, advising me on what I should and should not include in this thesis; she is a guide to lead me so that I may complete my thesis flawlessly Not only that, but she also imparted to me her experiences in the process of working Those are the extremely valuable practical knowledge that I learn in this process a thesis, these practical things will be the luggage in the educational path that I have Through this thesis study, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Vietnam National University of Agriculture's Board of Directors, the Department of Organization and Training, and the leaders of the Faculty of Education and Foreign Languages for allowing me to participate in the research for this thesis I would like to thank my university teachers for creating the best conditions for my thesis In particular, I wish to express special thanks to my parents for their support and the flexibility that they have enabled me, especially to my mother who brought me up and went so far, to overcome a lot of hurdles, including financial assistance, that they have provided me over the entire field training time ii I extend my gratitude to my teammates especially to my group study, with whom I shared my dark days and together we sort out academic and social problems Lastly, specials thanks must be given to all students from K64, who joined my survey and interview for their feedback and attention during the survey with which I learned a good lesson about the difficulties of learning speaking 4, causes and suggestions, and to complete this thesis I would like to thank all those who made this thesis possible and become a reality with their kind assistance Thank you sincerely! Hanoi, July 2021 Doan Thi Hai Yen iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i ACKNOWLEDGMENT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv ABSTRACT vi LIST OF TABLE AND CHART viii PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1 RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY .1 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY RESEARCH QUESTIONS SCOPE OF THE STUDY .2 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY .3 DESIGN OF THE STUDY PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW .5 1.1 REVIEW OF THE PREVIOUS STUDIES 1.2 REVIEW OF THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.2.1 Definition of English speaking skill 1.2.2 The importance of English speaking skill 10 1.2.3 General outline of a speaking lesson 12 1.2.4 What a good speaker does 12 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 15 2.1 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 15 2.2 RESEARCH SETTING 15 2.3 DATA COLLECTION 16 2.3.1 Data collecting instrusments 16 iv 2.3.1.1 The survey questionnaire 16 2.3.1.2 An interview 17 2.3.2 Data collection procedures 17 2.4 DATA ANALYSIS 18 CHAPTER 3: FINDING AND DISCUSSION 19 3.1 FINDINGS 19 3.1.1 The survey results from the questionnaire 19 3.1.2 Results from the interview 27 3.1.2.1 Kinds of Student’s Difficulties in Speaking 27 3.1.2.2 Kinds of Causes of Difficulty in Speaking 28 3.1.2.3 Kinds of Student’s Efforts in Speaking 29 3.1.3 Suggestions on improving the students’ English speaking performance 31 3.2 DISCUSSION 32 3.3 SUMMARY 32 PART C: CONCLUSION 34 RECAPITULATION 34 CONCLUDING REMARKS 35 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 36 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY 37 REFFERENCES 38 APPENDIXES 41 v ABSTRACT English is an international language common to all countries across the world English is a vital item for everyday conversation to be learned and practiced In English, Speaking is one of the most important skills to be enhanced as means of effective communication, and it is regarded as one of the most difficult aspects of language learning The focal point of this thesis is to find out the difficulties facing the secondyear English- majored in speaking lessons, with the objectives focusing on some suggestions to improve their English skills in general and English speaking skills in particular 60 students were participated in completing the questionnaires and 10 out of sixty students were interviewed to get to know more about their problems in speaking English class, the causes, and efforts they have made to improve their English speaking performance The initial results revealed that the most reason for the students facing difficulties were two sorts of problems namely linguistic problems and nonlinguistic problems Supported the finding, the hypothesis of the study was formed Possible measures are proposed to tackle such challenges in helping students speak English more effectively Practice makes perfect, encouraging the students to talk English, giving them plenty of chances to talk, using English at school, asking them to form English speaking environment, and applying solutions studied The evaluation of the action plan revealed that the student's motivation significantly improved after the action plan implementation Supported this finding, further recommendations, and deeper implications are provided vi LIST OF ABBREVIATION VNUA: Vietnam National Unitversity of Agriculture ESL: English as a Second Language EFL: English as a Foreign Language CLT: Communicative Language Teaching ELTIN: English Language Teaching in Indonesia vii LIST OF TABLE AND CHART Table Difficulties facing the second-year English majored students in learning English speaking from their own perspective 19 Chart 3.1: The percentage of students faced the difficulty of Pronunciation 21 Chart 3.2: The percentage of students lack of vocabulary 21 Chart 3.3: The percentage of students grammart mistakes Error! Bookmark not defined Chart 3.4: The percentage of students lack of confidence 23 Chart 3.5: The percentage of students lack of motivation 23 Chart 3.6: The percentage of students anxiety about speaking 24 Chart 3.7: The percentage of students shyness 24 viii consequently, they cannot keep the interaction going Inadequate strategic competence and communication competence can be another reason as well for not being able to keep the interaction going 5- Some learners also lack the motivation to speak English 6- The lack of a target language environment can be considered another problem, which of course results in a lack of involvement in real-life situations 7- Not allowing learners to participate in discourse can be another reason for speaking difficulties 3.1.2.3 Kinds of Student’s Efforts in Speaking Pertaining to the students’ efforts to cope with their difficulties in speaking performance, it was ascertained that there were 22 attempts that they had done for these They were (1) practice English with friends, (2) try to be braver in speaking, (3) making sentences from difficult words, (4) making English club, (5) sitting with friends who give support to speak, (6) looking up the dictionary for words, (7) doing exercises on grammar book, (8) memorizing vocabulary, (9) reading English grammar books, (10) reading English in order to get new ideas, (11) reading conversation books, (12) practice English by themselves, (13) listening to the radio, (14) listening English conversation cassettes, (15) listening to music, (16) watching TV, (17) asking friends if any difficult words, (18) studying 12 tenses, (19) reading English books, (20) looking for difficult words by reading book then memorize them, (21) taking English course, and (22) practice English at home From 22 kinds of the efforts that were used by the students to solve their problems, they only used out of the 14 characteristics namely ‘they make their own opportunity for practice in using language inside and outside the classroom’, ‘they learn certain production strategies to fill in gaps in their own competence’, and ‘they are creative, developing a ‘feel’ for the language by experimenting with grammar and words’ 29 Based on the result of interviews many students said that their efforts did not meet their expectations maximally Perhaps, it might be due to the efforts that they had made from no.6 to no.22 were deemed as common efforts In addition, the students also did not have a variety of strategies and creativities to solve their problems This may had caused their unsuccessful adequate efforts According to the findings of interviews with speaking lecturers about the difficulties that speaking students faced, the difficulties that students faced in speaking were ‘difficulty speaking,' ‘lack of vocabulary,' ‘lack of grammar knowledge,' ‘afraid of making errors,' and ‘less active in speaking.' Four difficulties were discovered: ‘being frightened of making mistakes,' ‘losing confidence to speak,' ‘feeling uncomfortable to make mistakes,' and ‘not knowing what to say.' The researcher also discovered an inter-relationship between issues and their causes as a result of this investigation Problems might be the causes in this situation, or the causes could be the problem Some examples are as follows (1) ‘Not being brave to speak’ was caused by ‘being afraid of making errors’ and ‘being afraid of making errors’ was caused by ‘not being brave to speak.’ (2) ‘Not being confident to speak’ was caused by ‘being afraid of making errors’ and ‘being afraid of making errors’ was caused by ‘not being confident to speak.’ (3) ‘Being afraid of speaking was caused by ‘being afraid of making errors.’ ‘Being afraid of making errors’ was caused by ‘being afraid of speaking.’ (4) ‘Nervous to speak’ was caused by ‘not being confident to speak.’ ‘Not being confident to speak’ was caused by ‘nervous to speak.’ (5) ‘Not used to talking in class’ was caused by ‘being afraid of making errors.’ ‘Being afraid of making errors’ was caused by ‘not used to talking in 30 class.’ The data above showed that between problems and causes there was a cause-effect cycle 3.1.3 Suggestions on improving the students’ English speaking performance On observing in the interview, the researcher noticed that there are some factors that cause speaking difficulties: linguistics and non- linguistics, consequently, the researcher suggests and adopts the following solutions which may help in overcoming such difficulties That divided into main suggestion: For student and for students: For teachers: - Making the students more competent in communicating orally in English by practicing English speaking - Encouraging Learners not to use their mother tongue - Encouraging learners to read more and more to get a high quantity of vocabulary - Raising the motivation of English speaking for students - Providing the environment which may help the students in English speaking - Students should avoid anxiety by encouraging them to speak fluently even if they make errors or mistakes in their speaking and not to criticize them cruelly, moreover, we should let students avoid the fear of criticism, or simply shy by making them familiar with the person who is talking with - Allowing learners to participate in the discourse may help the student's English speaking - Raising the element of self-confidence in the students - Encouraging students not to use their mother tongue - Select challenging topics and activities - Show a supportive attitude to the students For students: 31 - Students must have a motive to express themselves - Raising the motivation of English speaking - Believe for yourself - Use English in daily communication - Join in the English club to develop you speaking English 3.2 DISCUSSION From the findings above, it came as a surprise that 100% of participants being asked during the interview valued teacher’s teaching as the most helpful method to help them to actively participate in speaking lessons, showing that they are eager to practice their English speaking skills Therefore, what can be done to improve the students’ speaking practice is to encourage and give them careful instructions so that they can be more confident to be engaged in the classroom practice process On the other hand, other suggestions such as providing students with familiar topics, revision of grammar, vocabulary, and creating more opportunities for them to practice the listening skill with more comfortable performance conditions, i.e creating the language environment with real-life situations and contexts to inspire them to action to participate in English speaking both in and outside classroom activities It should be concluded that in order to enhance students’ English speaking skills, it is essential for them to improve their knowledge of English and utilize various means of practice Once the students’ knowledge of English is improved and opportunities of practicing are available for them to speak English in class, they can gain confidence and get rid of the fear of making errors, enabling them to develop their English speaking skills 3.3 SUMMARY In conclusion, Chapter has given readers an analysis of the study results and a critical discussion which were fully employed in the study to interpret and 32 assess the collected data The findings as shown explicitly throughout the chapter indicate that the study has been done in a valid manner and has enabled the researcher to answer the research question Last, the recommendations on teaching listening have been made from the study findings 33 PART C: CONCLUSION RECAPITULATION Based on the study data and dialogues, it is reasonable to conclude that nearly all K64 students who participated in my survey English Department at VNUA had some difficulty with their English speaking skills Most students struggle with speaking because they lack vocabulary, lack confidence in speaking, lack experience speaking in class, and have difficulty conveying words or sentences "Fear of making mistakes" was the most prevalent source of problems for most pupils In this study, the researcher identified two categories of speaking challenges for students: linguistic problems and non-linguistic problems Based on the characteristics of effective language learners provided by Rubin and Thompson, it is possible to conclude that the techniques employed by the students to address their difficulties only a few corresponded with Rubin and Thompson's concepts, implying that their efforts were insufficient Some ideas have been made based on the debate The most essential one is that speaking skills not stand alone; they are supported by mastery of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation; as a result, lecturers of these topics must enhance student mastery This paper reviewed the factors that affect VNUA second-year English majored students’ English speaking performance The mentioned factors in this paper have an important role in developing learners’ speaking skills The factors make learners less self-confident and less comfortable in their speaking classes The findings of this paper indicated that learners with low self-esteem, higher anxiety, and low motivation have serious difficulties in speaking skills in spite of having acceptable linguistic skills The paper showed that students who have higher motivation and lower anxiety can speak easily and effectively Thus, students should have a friendly and cooperative environment that can help them 34 overcome their difficulties in oral performance Based on the review of the literature of the study, teachers should understand their students’ interests and feelings, improve their learners’ self-confidence, and choose the best teaching method to keep their learners involved in the speaking activity Teachers should praise their students to speak English They should build a friendly relationship with their students, make them feel very happy in the class, and have a feeling of great enthusiasm and eagerness to study English in general and speak English in particular According to the study's literature review, teachers should allow their students enough time to practice speaking skills, assist them in overcoming their shyness through friendly behaviors that make them feel comfortable when speaking, remind their students not to worry about making mistakes, and provide them with clear instructions and adequate guidance Teachers should provide their students more chances to speak English by giving speaking tasks that motivate them to speak and encouraging them to engage in speaking activities Furthermore, teachers must know when and how to rectify their students' mistakes so that they are not afraid to make them CONCLUDING REMARKS The researcher discovered the greatest challenges in linguistics problems and non-linguistics problems based on the findings of interviews and surveys Specifically, "lack of vocabulary," "lack of grammatical understanding," "bad pronunciation," "lack of speaking confidence," and "fear of being detected." These are specific difficulties that lead to causes such as "less remembering vocabulary," "worrying about using the right words," "rarely reading grammar books," "not confident when speaking," "unaccustomed to speaking English in class," "afraid of making mistakes when speaking," and "lack of interest in learning grammar." 35 Since then, the researcher has developed classroom and extracurricular activity ideas for instructors in order to improve the English speaking abilities of first-year English majors in particular, and all English learners in general In this paper, study topics and objectives have been defined via challenges, reasons, and conversations to provide specific solutions to enhance English speaking abilities Regarding internal factors (mentality factors), I recommend these following issues for English-majored sorphomore First of all, they are recommended to raise their awareness of independent learning style Secondly, it is also required that second- year students need to learn how to think and speak English in class or after class by joining English speaking clubs in campus and off campus LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY Although the researcher has made a considerable effort to complete the study, there are still some unavoidable limitations beyond expectation Due to time deficiency, sources restriction, and the researcher’s limited experience, the study still has some shortcomings Firstly, the researcher initially tends to combine questionnaires with interviews or observation so that the findings are more varied and convincing However, due to the lack of time and some incidents when contacting and making appointments with the intended classes, the survey is carried out in a hurry, which has reduced its preciseness Moreover, due to the influence of the corona virus epidemic, all survey 0and interview directions must be changed to the online form Secondly, the time allowed to implement this research topic is limited, so the study cannot cover all aspects of the field and only focus on the most typical ones In short, the researcher hopes that future studies in the same field will take those limitations into consideration to become more complete and high- appreciated All the constructive comments and contributions for this study will be positively welcomed 36 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY It is desired that further research studies would be conducted to tackle the issues that students have when learning and practicing English speaking Further research can be conducted at other universities or with non-major students, as various items might provide different findings Furthermore, future studies may choose to investigate more effective techniques for learning spoken English Technology application, in particular, is currently a significant trend that may be used to research Hopefully, the findings regarding challenges, causes, and recommendations in this study will be useful to other scholars 37 REFFERENCES Bailey and Savages, (1994), New Ways in Teaching Speaking & (1997), Lewis New Ways in Teaching Adults on Amazon.com (Baker, J., & Westrup, H (2003) Essential Speaking Skills: A Handbook for English Language Teachers London: Continuum Bashir, M., Azeem, M., & Dogar, A H (2011) on Amazon.com Boonkit, K (2010) Enhancing the Development of Speaking Skills for NonNative Speakers of English Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2010), 1305–1309 on Amazon.com Brown H.D, 1994, Skill and speaking definitions (Skill development) on karlaflores08.blogspot.com/2015/04/skill-and-speaking definition.html Burns& Joyce, 1997, Focus speaking on https://í.municzth/329367/ffm/thesissolcova-textpdf Carter & McCarthy, 1995, The traditional methodology of teaching modern languages through speaking on wwwhummet.unipi.it/slifof2004vol1/pdf/Bocale2.1 Hopkins, David 1993 A Teacher’s Guide to Classroom Research Philadelpia: Open University Press on Amazon.com Lilis Suryani, 2015, The effectiveness of role play in teaching speaking on suryani.lies3@gmail.com Nunan, D 1991 Language Teaching Methodology A Textbook for Teachers New York: Prentice Hall International, Ltd on Amazon.com 10 Rubin J and Thompson L, 1982, How to be a more successful speaker on https://wwwscirp.orp/ /reference/papersaspx 11 Ur, Penny 1996 A Course in Language Teaching Practice: and Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 38 12 Van Duzer, 1997, Speaking skills and teaching speaking: English education on englishekstensi.blogspot.com/…/speaking-skill-teaching (Baker, J., & Westrup, H 2003) 13 (AlSibai, 2004, p.3) Speaking Difficulties Encountered by Young EFL Learners 14 Scrivener, 2005, p.146 Learning teaching J Crivener 15 NIHAYATUL HIMMAH in 2018, Speaking problems faced by EFL learners in individual presentation 16 Dr Ahmed Maher Mahmoud Al Nakhalah ịn December 2016, Problems and Difficulties of Speaking That Encounter English Language Students at Al Quds Open University Tài liệu tham khảo khóa luận tốt nghiệp, luận văn, luận án: Nguyen Huong Giang GH Nguyen, 2017, Investigating the effect of using Role-play in teaching speaking English for grade 10 students at high school on https://LuanVan.net.vn.com Ta Thi Minh Phuong MP Ta, 2015, A study on extra activities to improve English speaking skill of QTTN class at Haiphong private University on https://LuanVan.net.vn.com Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam, 2019, Difficulties facing HUBT's second year English majored students in speaking lessons, causes and suggestions Le Thi Thu Hang,How to promote speaking skills for th graders at Bach Dang secondary school in Haiphong Tài liệu tham khảo từ internet: Vo Phuong Quyen, Pham Thi My Nga and Ho Thao Nguyen, 20 July 2018, Challenges to speaking skills encountered by English-majored students: A story of one Vietnamese university in the Mekong Delta 39 file:///C:/Users/GC/Downloads/06-EDVO%20PHUONG%20QUYEN(38-44)022.pdf Communicative Language Teaching https://www.professorjackrichards.com/wp-content/uploads/RichardsCommunicative-Language.pdf Chaney, 1998 in Kayi, 2006 Teaching Speaking: Activities to Promote Speaking in a Second Language 40 APPENDIXES Appendix 1: Survey questionnaire The original survey questionnaire by researcher Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam research titled: "Difficulties facing HUBT's second-year English majored students in speaking lessons, causes and suggestions", written in 2019 Below is a questionnaire consisting of questions: Strongly The difficulties in…… Strongly Disagree disagree Agree agree pronunciation lack of vocabulary lack of confidence and motivation being afraid of speaking not being good at grammar Adapted questionnaire table: The difficulties Strongly disagree Disagree Agree Strongly agree Pronunciation Lack of vocabulary Grammar mistakes Lack of confidence Lack of motivation Anxiety about speaking Shyness 41 Appendix 2: Interview The interview aims to find out the difficulties facing VNUA second-year English-majored students in learning to speak English and the causes of those difficulties Hello, my name is Doan Thi Hai Yen, a fourth-year English-majored student Currently, I am doing BA thesis, so I can ask you for a few minutes to complete my BA thesis I would like to interview students some questions about speaking skills and the difficulties facing first-year English-majored students in speaking skills All of your information will be kept confidential Here are the interview questions: What problems did you have in speaking lessons? What were the causes of difficulties and problems? What efforts have you made to overcome the difficulties and problems you have had? Thank you very much for your precious time with me Wish you all have a good study! 42 This is the link of survey online: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gZ1zsI1_rJkPatCMV6oqCmlx8ukSM2T6Qd1 MY5VgA30/edit 43