Applying pể corection to improve 2 nd year students’ speaking skills at hong duc university

DECLARATION I hereby state that I Nguyen Thi Hoai, being a fourth-year student at Hong Duc University certify my authorship of the study entitled Applying peer correction to improve 2nd year students speaking skill at Hong Duc university: An action research at Hong Duc University.” The thesis is the study of my own research and the substance of the thesis has not, wholly or in part, been submitted for a degree to any other universities or institutions Thanh Hoa, May 2021 Nguyen Thi Hoai i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my special thanks to my supervisor Master Trinh Thi Hang for her constant guidance, suggestions, dedication and professionalism through my research My deep gratitude goes to the lecturers of Hong Duc University for their interesting lectures which have inspired me to conduct this study I am also indebted to the staff and students of Foreign Language Department at Hong Duc University for their support and participation in my research I wish to acknowledge, in particular, my family and my best friends who have encouraged me while I was accomplishing this study Finally, I would like to thank the readers who have patiently read and given valuable comments on this thesis ii ABSTRACT The purpose of the study is to investigate the current situation of teachers' giving feedback and its impacts on students learning in speaking lessons This study was carried out at Hong Duc University with 30 students of 2nd year students The purpose of the study is to investigate the current situation of teachers’ giving feedback and its impacts on students’ learning in speaking lessons Data for the research was collected from observation sheets, questionnaires, and interviews Findings from these instruments reveal that teachers at Hong Duc University are highly aware of the importance of giving feedback on students’ speaking Their direct feedback is mostly very useful and motivates students to talk at class The limitation of the study and some suggestions for further study are then drawn up iii TABLES OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii ABSTRACT iii TABLES OF CONTENTS iv PART I INTRODUCTION 1 Rationable Aims of the study Research questions Scope of the study Methods of the study Design of the study PART II DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background of speaking skill 1.1.1 Definition speaking skill 1.1.2 The Importance of Speaking Skill 1.1.3 Position of speaking skill in English language teaching 1.2 Theoretical background of teaching speaking 1.2.1 Definition of teaching speaking 1.2.2 The principles for teaching speaking 1.2.3 The importance of the teaching speaking skill 1.2.4 The relationship between speaking and other language 1.2.4.1 The relationship between speaking and listening 10 1.2.4.2 The relationship between speaking and reading 11 1.2.4.3 The relationship between speaking and writing 12 1.3 Theoretical background of peer correction 13 1.3.1 Definition of peer correction 13 1.3.2 Types of peer correction 14 1.4 Role of peer correction 14 iv 1.4.1 The benefits of peer correction 14 1.4.2 Drawbacks of peer correction 20 1.5 The teacher and students roles in giving and receiving feedback in speaking skills 21 1.5.1 The teachers role 21 1.5.2 The students role 21 1.1 Context of the study 23 2.2 Subject of the study 23 2.3 Procedure 23 2.3.1 Identify problems 23 2.3.2 Planning 24 2.3.3 Action 24 2.3.4 Data collection and analysis 26 2.3.5 Reflection 26 2.3.6 Summary 26 CHAPTER DATA ANALYSIS, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 27 3.1 Before applying peer correction 27 3.1.1 Classroom observation 27 3.1.2 Survey questionnaire 27 3.1.2.1 Reasons for giving no feedback in teaching speaking English skill 27 3.1.2.2 Teacher’s purposes in giving feedback for teaching speaking skill 29 3.1.2.3 The appropriate time for teachers giving feedback in speaking lesson 29 3.1.2.4 The aspects for teachers giving feedback 30 3.1.2.5 Teachers’ frequency of using some types of feedback 31 3.1.2.6 Teachers’ opinions about types of feedback 31 3.1.2.8 The background information of students 33 3.1.2.9 Status of giving feedback in speaking skill 37 3.2 During and after applying peer correction 37 3.2.1 Classroom observation 37 3.2.2 Students’ interview 37 3.2.3 Teachers’ interview and discussion 38 3.2.4 Major findings 38 v 3.2.5 Some suggestions 39 PART III CONCLUSION 41 REFERENCES 43 APPENDIXCES .I vi PART I INTRODUCTION Rationable English has become an international language in the world as well as in Viet Nam English is very important because of its crucial role on the path of industrialization and modernization Knowing the important of speaking in communication, many schools in Vietnam invest to improve teaching and learning four English skills, especially speaking comprehension At Hong Duc university, speaking skill is taught as one of the main skills of English With the 2nd year students of English for tourism, speaking skill is mainly focused The reason is that these students will become tour guides or receptionists in the future so that they are requested to have good ability of speaking and listening in English In recent years, my college has invested to improve the quality of teaching and learning four skills of English, especially speaking comprehension Teaching and learning condition is also improved with good furniture and authentic materials However, students’ speaking skill is not as good as the hope because of many problems One of the serious problems that many colleges and universities in Vietnam have to face is large English class size At my school, there are more than thirty students in one class so that it causes many problems and difficulties for teaching and learning English, especially for practicing speaking skill In limited time with too large numbers of students, English teachers find it difficult to control and organize the class Furthermore, students have few chances to practice speaking so that their speaking ability is not improved According to Brown, HD (2000), second language learning is the process of trial and error Errors, according to Nunan (2001) were “seen as a normal and healthy part of learning process” (p.88) Making mistakes were considered as the clear evidence for the development of students After making an error and being corrected, the learners can learn more and get experience from their mistakes so that their learning is better Thus, correction is very important for both teacher and students to improve students’ language ability At HDU, most of errors are corrected by the teacher However, in a large class size, teachers cannot check and correct all mistakes for all students As an English teacher, I find it difficult to help my students to correct their mistakes In forty five minutes of a lesson, I can correct some mistakes of some students only Thus, many of my students complain that when speaking, they not know whether they make mistakes or not and how to correct error so that their English is not improved A Vietnamese old saying said that “Học thầy không tày học bạn” In English it means that a student learning from a friend is better or than leaning from your teacher I find that this saying is good use in my situation where students need to be learned in cooperative environment According to Larsen-Freeman (2000), cooperative learning involves that students can learn from each other in groups.(p.164) Similar to this opinion, Johnson (1994) considered cooperative learning as a process of working together to accomplish shared goals When working together, students have chance to share their experience, knowledge, ideas and also error correction Peer correction is when students correct mistakes to each other This technique helps to raise independence, responsibility and build the learner – centered environment (Butler, 1997) From all the reasons above, I would like to investigate the benefits of peer correction – type of error correction techniques and also strategy of cooperative learning process- in teaching and learning speaking skill at my university Aims of the study The main purposes of this study are: -To identify the fact of giving feedback by teachers at Hong Duc University in English speaking skill -To find out the impacts of teachers’ feedback on students in English speaking lessons to suggest on how to give feedback effectively Research questions My research questions are: Does peer correction have negative or positive effect on students’ speaking skill? Can peer correction be helpful in large English class? What are students and teachers’ attitudes to peer correction? Scope of the study In fact, feedback can be largely used in teaching and leaming English for students at all grades However, in this study the research only intends to focus on giving feedback on speaking English for 2nd year students at Hong Duc University Therefore, the findings and suggestions may be just useful for speaking skills in similar teaching conditions Methods of the study In order to collect sufficient data for analysis, the following methods were employed Theoretically, the researcher spent time reading books and materials available on teaching and learning speaking to get knowledge of the subject Moreover, in order to find out the effective ways to give feedback on speaking English lessons, two questionnaires were conducted One was designed for teachers and the other was for students The research also interviewed students and teachers about giving feedback in speaking lessons to get information from participants Observation was another method of the study The research observed the way teachers gave feedback and the World to students in speaking skill Design of the study The study consists of three Parts: Part I is the INTRODUCTION States the rationale, aims of the study, research question, scope of the study, methods of the study and design of the study Part II is the DEVELOPMENT consists of chapters Chapter (Literature review) presents the literature review of the study including theoretical background of speaking, teaching speaking and giving feedback Chapter (Methodology) describes context of the study, subject of the study and procedure Chapter (Data analysis finding and discussions) analysis data collected from the survey questionnaires, the class observations and the interviews Part III is the CONCLUSION which gives a brief summary of the study PART III CONCLUSION The main focus of my innovation was to examine whether peer correction had positive or negative effect on students’ speaking skill improvement With the help and cooperation of my colleagues and my students, my innovation was quite successful The results from the classroom observations, teachers and students interviews showed the significant change in speaking class with peer correction In teaching English, particularly in speaking, building positive attitudes of the students towards this skill is very important It has great influence on the results of teaching and learning process.The graduation paper, therefore, absolutely places emphasis on how teachers give feedback and how their feedback affects speaking learning process of students Some suggestions for giving feedback have been recommended basically to help teachers give feedback effectively so that students can be confident to speak English Among three types of feedback, it is not wise to identify which of them are the best ones for applying in speaking lessons to raise students’ motivation Clearly, each type of feedback has its own interesting and stimulating points, it is much better to combine them all together when it is suitable and possible And, of course, teachers of English can create more meaningful activities based on these suggestions for giving feedback that are their students’ own interests This paper is completed in a short time Additionally, there is still limitation in the knowledge and the lack of teaching experience of the writer Therefore, errors are probably inevitable Thereby, all remarks and comments from both teachers and students will be highly appreciated In this paper, the suggestions for giving feedback have been recommended However, for disadvantaged conditions, there may be other ways to give effective feedback for students Peer correction not only helped teacher to correct students’ errors better in speaking lessons, it also helped to improve students’ speaking skill as well as to build the cooperation learning environment After working with peer correction in speaking lessons, both teachers and students showed their happiness with this change Students had more chance to learn from each other Furthermore, after speaking, students were received useful feedback from their peers and teacher, thus, their speaking skill was improved Besides, students in groups had more responsibility with their tasks With teachers, 41 peer correction helped them to reduce their workload and they could correct more students’ errors My innovation was conducted with limited time, thus, I could not prepare pre tests and post tests of speaking to measure how students’ speaking skill was improved However, from the result of my innovation, it might not be sure to affirm that peer correction had good impacts on the improvement of students’ speaking skill but it could be sure that peer correction had positive effect on students’ participation in group work activities and cooperative learning environment Peer correction was considered as one of the best ways to correct students’ errors in speaking lessons However, teachers should not abuse this technique To correct students’ errors, teachers should coordinate closely with other techniques such as teacher correction, self-correction for the best correction for students If I had more chance to another research, I would investigate the effectiveness of peer correction in writing lessons It was the first time I had done an innovation, thus, there were some limitations in my research However, I was happy with the result of my innovation and found that after my innovation, most of my colleagues said that it was the good way to understand more about the teaching contexts, about students and about problems in language teaching and learning The administrators of my college promised that they would invest and encourage teachers to action research Some of my colleagues began to other action research about their teaching problems It might help to improve teaching methodology and to enhance the quality of teaching and learning at University 42 REFERENCES Glenn Fulcher (2003) Definition about speaking skill A S Hornby (1987) Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Oxford University Press Brown, G and G Yule, (1992) Teaching the spoken language Cambridge University Press Littlewood, W, (1991) Teaching oral communication: a methodological Framework Blackwell Publishers David Nunan, (2005) Research Method in Language Teaching Cambridge University Press Brumfit, (1991) What is good primary practice? National for English language teaching and reference Jared, (2001) Taiwan English policy Cambridge University Press Wiggins, Grant, (1998) Designing Assessments to Inform and Improve Student Performance San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc Miser, W Fred, (1998) Giving Effective Feedback Academic Leadership Live 10 Nunan, D, (2003) PracticalEnglish language teaching.NY 11 Nunan, D, (2005) Language teaching methodology: A textbook for teachers Great Britain: Prentice Hall International (UK)Limited 12 Brown, H D (2000) Principle of language learning and teaching fourth ed, Longman, Inc 13 Butler, P (1997) Toward a definition of alternative assessment in English as Second language (ESL) instruction Issues in alternative assessment: The Japanese perspective Washington, DC, ERI clearing house on Language and Linguistics 14 Chin Lin, G H & Chieh Chien, P S (2009) ‘An investigation into effectiveness of peer feedback’, Journal of applied foreign languages fortune institute of technology, 3/1: 43 15 Chun-xian, Z (2007) A study of peer error feedback US-China foreign language, Vol 5, No 43, 16 Coit, C (2004) Peer review in an online college writing course Cited by 17 Chin Lin, G H & Chieh Chien, P S (2009) An investigation into effectiveness of peer feedback, Journal of applied foreign languages fortune institute of technology, Vo.3, No 18 Cramer, D (2004) Effects of peer tutoring programs on the reading comprehension of Hispanic middle school students, Retrieved from the Worldwide Web: http://cramer.myweb.uga.edu/6200/StudentSamples/EffectsofPeerTutoring pdf 19 Franco, C P (2008) Using wiki-based peer-correction to develop writing skills of Brazilian EFL learners, Novitas-ROYAL, Vo 2, No 1, 20 Jacobs, G (1989) Miscorrection in Peer feedback in writing Class RELC Journal, 20/1 21 Johnson, D (1994) Cooperative Learning in the Classroom Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development 22 Larsen-Freeman, D (2000) Techniques and Principles in Language teaching, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press 23 Matusiewicz, K B & Frlit, A B (2009) Correction techniques preferred by students during the process of learning a foreign language Psychology of language and communication, Vol 13, No 24 Nunan, D (2001) Second language acqusition Cambridge University press 25 Sultana, A (2009) Peer correction in ESL classrooms BRAC university journal, Vol VI, No 26 Ting, M & Qian, Y (2010) A case study of peer feedback in a Chinese EFL writing classroom, Chinese journal of applied linguistics, Vol 33, No 44 27 White, E (2009) Students’ perspective of peer assessment for learning in a public speaking course Professional teaching articles, Vo 33, No 28 Richard, A, (1991) Communication in the classroom Longman 29 Larson, (1996) Communication in the foreign language Longman 30 Robert Frost The importance of speaking skill 31 Gattullo, F, (2000) Corrective feedback teaching style: exploring a relationship Pecs: University of Pecs press 32 Harmer, J, (2001) The practice of English language learning London: Longman 45 46 APPENDIX APPENDIX 1: CLASSROOM OBSERVATION SCHEME Date: Observer: Teacher: Class: No of students: 30 SS’ Proficiency level: Intermediate Observation focus: Error corrections used and students’ behaviour to peer correction in speaking lesson A Error corrections used in speaking lesson Tick (√) the appropriate box for your agreement what you can notice when the teacher correct students’ errors No Statement Agree Teacher ignores to correct students’mistakes Teacher corrects all students’ errors Teacher gives comments and asks students to self correct Teacher asks students work and correct errors in groups I Disagree B Students’ behaviors and their participation in group work activities with peer correction Fill in the table below about the students’ behaviour in the group you observe Each time a student supports one idea for speaking topic, identifies and corrects errors of partner’s speaking, she or he will has point No Name of Support student ideas discussion for Identify and Total correct mark speaking errors II APPENDIX SURVEY QUESTIONAIRES Dear Students, I am doing a research project on the influence of peer correction on the students’ learning speaking skill I will be very happy if you can take time to answer following questions as fully and as accurately as possible I am sure that the information provided in this survey would be kept confidential Thank you very much! Please circle the option or write your answers for the following questions: Which skill you like most? - Why? A Writing C Speaking B Reading D Listening What you think about speaking learning in your school? A Interesting and attractive B Boring C Other opinion Which mark you often get from speaking tests? A – C 7- B – D - 10 What is (are) the way(s) error correction in your speaking lessons? (You can choose more than one option) A Teacher stops and corrects directly B Teacher ignores to correct errors C Teacher asks students to self correct D Teacher asks students to peer correct III Which method is most frequently used? A Teacher stops and corrects directly B Teacher asks students to self correct C Teacher asks students to peer correct What you hope to change in correcting errors in your speaking lessons? ………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………… In your opinion, what is the best way to correct your speaking errors? ………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………… IV APPENDIX SPEAKING CHECKLIST FOR STUDENTS Error correction Does your parner Name of Name of Name of Name of students/ students students/ students/ group /group group group Avoid silence or hesitation? Fluency and coherence Speak at length on each topic? Use words to connect ideas? Use a wide range of vocabulary? Lexical resource Use idioms and collocation? Paraphase? Speak in complex sentences? Use a variety of Grammatica l range and accuracy grammatical forms? Avoid grammatical mistakes? Pronounce words accurately? Pronunciation Join sounds together? Vary intonation? V APPENDIX GROUP WORK’S ERROR CORRECTION Group No Name of Error Correction students/ group Pronunciation Cohesion Fluency Grammar Vocabulary structure Le Thi Thuy Good Good Good Group I am I am interesting in interesting watch TV in watch ->watching TV -> interested Le Thi Ha She likes cat Good Good Good Good Korea Not fluent He came in the Group Error: ket Correction: kæt Pham Kim Good Oanh Group 33 Error: room when I ‘kəriən am watching TV -> Correction: watching kə'riən Hoang Thi I Good Thuy Group VI was Quite good APPENDIX SPEAKING CHECKLIST FOR OBSERVERS Speaking skill Student Student Student Student Student Student /group /group /group /group /group /group Speaker Appropriately voices Maintaining topic Fluently speaking Audience responding Pronunciation Stress and intonation Grammar structure Vocabulary use Listener Attentively listening Asking/ giving comments Taking turns VII APPENDIX INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS Question Which skill is most difficult for you to correct errors? Question What are your difficulties when you correct your students’ errors in speaking lessons? Question How you correct your students’ speaking? Question Did you use peer correction in speaking lessons? Question Do you think peer correction have positive or negative effect on students’ speaking skill? Why or Why not? VIII APPENDIX INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS Question Do you like to learn English speaking lesson? Why or Why not? Question What are difficulties when you learn speaking? Question How does your teacher correct your errors in speaking lessons? Question After working with peer correction in speaking activities, you like this way of error correction? Why or Why not? IX