The difficulties in english speaking of english majored freshmen at tay do university

TAY DO UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE RESEARCH PROPOSAL THE DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH SPEAKING OF ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY Supervisor Huynh Thi My Duyen, M.Ed Student Name: Nguyen Thi Kieu Nhi Code: 13D220201074 Class: Bachelor of English 8B April, 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT In fact, there is no success without assistance, either directly or indirectly from others During the period of studying in Tay Do University, I have received a lot of attention and help from my teachers and friends First of all, I would like to express the heartfelt thanks to my supervisor – Huynh Thi My Duyen, MA She was very friendly and enthusiastic, provided useful references, materials and advices for me during the busy time Thanks to her instructions and comments I could prepare the proposal more easily and quickly Honestly, this research proposal could hardly finish without enthusiastic help of her In addition, she spent her valuable time on guiding and encouraging me during the time I was conducting the research Secondly, I would like to send my sincere thanks to University of Tay Do especially, the teachers of Faculty of Linguistics and Literature for giving me the opportunities to carry out the proposal research Finally, I want to give my deep gratefulness to my friends who always stand by my side, encourage and support me both materially and mentally The completion and success of this research would not be achieved without their help COMMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT……………………….………………………………i COMMENTS ……… ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ……….iii ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………v PART 1: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………… 1.1 Rationale…………………………………………………………………… 1.2The significance of the research…………………………………………… 1.3The organization of the research proposal……………………………………3 PART 2: LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………… 2.1 The definition of speaking………………………………………………… 2.2 The difficulties in speaking………………………………………………… 2.2.1 Linguistic factors……………………………………………………… 2.2.1.1 Vocabulary………………………………………………………… 2.2.1.2 Grammar…………………………………………………………….7 2.2.1.3 Pronunciation – Intonation – Accent……………………………… 2.2.2 External factors…………………………………………………………10 2.2.2.1 Strategy…………………………………………………………….10 2.2.2.2 Psychology –Fluency………………………………………………11 2.2.2.3 Background knowledge…………………………………………….12 2.2.3 Summary of the literature review……………………………………… 14 PART 3: RESEARCH AIMS–RESEARCH QUESTION–HYPOTHESIS….15 3.1 Research aims………………………………………………………………15 3.2 Research question………………………………………………………… 15 3.3 Hypothesis………………………………………………………………… 15 PART 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY……………………………… 17 4.1Design……………………………………………………………………….17 4.2 Participants………………………………………………………………….17 4.3 Instruments………………………………………………………………….17 4.3.1 Questionnaire………………………………………………………… 18 4.3.2 Interview……………………………………………………………… 19 4.4 Procedure………………………………………………………………… 19 PART 5: EXPECTED OUTCOMES……………………………………… 20 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………… 21 APPENDICES…………………………………………………………… 25 APPENDIX A: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS ………25 APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW ………30 ABSTRACT The research “The difficulties inEnglish speaking of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University” aims to be conducted to help freshmen to recognize their own problems in speaking, and find out suitable ways to avoid these problems The participants of study are English majored freshmen from class English 11B at Tay Do University In study process, questionnaire and interview are used as instruments to collect the data The results of the research will show the difficulties in English speaking of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University Besides, the teacher can also know the problems of their students to change the teaching method and suggest some possible solutions in order to help students learn and improve English speaking PART INTRODUCTION Part describes the rationale of the study Moreover, it also presents the aims and significance of the research The organization of the research proposal is presented in the final of this part 1.1 Rationale According to Richard, (2002:3) state that English is an international language in the world The English language is a primary source of communication It meanstoshare ideas, thoughts and help everyone understand each other Almost young and adult learners in Vietnam are now aware of the fact that foreign language, especially English can be considered as a main key for job opportunities or study-abroad.Nowadays, with the economic renovation and open door policy in the past decades, English is a common language for people around the world toexchange information In human daily communications, it is spoken language that is vehicle to help everyone understand each other Speaking also has a strong impact on many fields Speaking English fluently is a main key to communicate with foreigners and a big chance to get success in career, education, culture as well as daily life… For these reasons, in Vietnam, teaching and learning English are very necessary Among the four skills of English communication and language, speaking is the most important Speaking is the uniquely human ability to communicate information, ideas and emotions Chaney (1998 citied in Kayi) defines “speaking as the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and nonverbal symbols, in a variety of contexts” It is evident that the natural language learning process for any learner is to learn to speak first According to Sesnan (1997) when people learn language they always learn to speak first People ask directions rather than look for sign post or a map In fact, speaking is a crucial part of foreign language learning and teaching because its forms and meanings are dependent on the context in which it occurs including the participants themselves, their collective experiences, the physical environment and the purposes of speaking However, speaking English is not easy Some students have to face many difficulties when they speak According to Ur (1996:117), there are many factors that cause difficulties in speaking They are as follows: inhibition, nothing to say, low or uneven participation and mother tongue In addition, Raba’ah (2005:15) pointed out that there are many factors that cause difficulties in speaking English Some of these factors are related to the learners themselves, the teaching strategies, the curriculum, and the environment.English speaking can be considered the most difficult skill to acquire learners not only know how to produce specific points of language such as linguistic factors (grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary) sub skills etc, but also that they understand when, why and in what ways to produce language (social linguistic competence) According to Murcia and Olshtain (2000:89), speaking requires command of both listening comprehension and speech production skills (vocabulary retrieval, pronunciation, choice of grammatical pattern, and so forth) in unpredictable, unplanned situations Tatham and Morton (2006:273) believemany people report that they can understand a language but they cannot speak Similarly, students at Tay Do University especially the English majored freshmen, may also get many difficulties in speaking English According to the researcher's observation, they are worried about making mistakes, receiving critics or losing face in front of the class Some of them seem lacks of confience when speak in front of many people Therefore, speaking English seems to be a very challenging task to them For reasons above, the researcher decides to carry out a study entitled“The difficulties in English speaking of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University” to find out details of the problems students face in speaking English Thanks to that solutions can be found to help them overcome obstacles in speaking and improvetheir speaking skill effectively 1.2The significance of the research The research results can be usefull for students Through the research results, English freshmen can recognize common difficulties in English speaking Then they can find methods to resolve the difficulties that they face and improve their speaking skill Besides, the teacher can also know the problems of their students in English speaking to change the teaching methods and suggest some possible solutions in order to help students in learning and improving speaking English 1.3The organization of the research proposal The research proposal consists of five parts Part one Introduction includes the rationale, the significance of the research, the significance of the research proposal Part two Literature review embraces the definitions of speaking, the difficulties in speaking andsummary of the literature review Part three includes Research aims, Research question and Hypothesis Part four Research methodology involves design, participants, instruments, and procedure Part five includes Expected outcomes PART LITERATURE REVIEW Part presents the definitions of speaking and problems Englishlearners may face in speaking (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation –intonation- accent, strategy, psychology – fluency and background knowledge) It also includes ways to improve speaking skill and the end of this part will be a summary of the literature review 2.1 The definitions of speaking Speaking is one of the language skills very important to be mastered by the students in order to be a good communicator Speaking is the verbal use of language to communicate with other people They only regard speaking as a simple and easy process that involves speaking the words, the ideas…by speaking out what they think So, they should start by making sure they think about the same thing when they use this term Speaking is a way that helps people to communicate with each other by verbal language, which has the information exchange and contents building up in the conversation According to Chaney, (1998), speaking is the building and sharing meaning process expressing by the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols in many different situations Another definition by Situjuh (2011), speaking is made from the cooperation action of the contribution, assumptions, expectations and interpretation from participants in each regular situation Besides, Burns and Joyce (1997:89) states that “Speaking is defined as an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information Its form and meaning are dependent on the context in which it occurs, the participants, and the purposes of speaking” In short, speaking can be the way to carry out feeling through words, even conversations with others It means that human use words and phrases in interactive process of constructing meaning of speaking Nunan (2003:48) defines that “speaking consists of producing systematic verbal utterances to convey meaning” To know deeper what speaking is, Nunan differentiates it from writing In spoken language, speaking has to be listened by others It has temporary confidence; they cannotexpress their ideas easily and fluently, they alsocannot speak confidently and efficiently too They may feel nervous and shy when take speech in front many people PART RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4.1Design The design of the research is based on the research question and hypothesis stated in Part The main key of the research results is participants The data from the participants will be collected through the questionnaire of English majored freshmen at TDU Moreover, to make the research more reliable and valuable, students are randomly selected to answer the interview questions The collected information of these two instruments will be analyzed to show the difficulties in English speaking of English majored freshmen at TDU This study is the combination of quantitative research and qualitative research because the instruments are questionnaire and interview 4.2 Participants The participants of this study are 40freshmen majoring in English studying in the same class (English 11B) at Tay Do University The students in class English 11B come from different areas, both rural and urban They speak Vietnamese as their mother tongue and English is considered as foreign language They have learned English for many years (more than seven years) They use Speaking1 as theirspeaking material and take their speaking course in the first semester They will be given a questionnaire and an interviewto find out the difficulties that they have faced in speaking English 4.3 Instruments Questionnaire and interview are instruments of this research These instruments are very helpful in collecting necessary information about students’ problems in speaking The role of questionnaire is to investigate difficulties ofstudents in speaking English By answering the questions on questionnaire the students can show their attitude towards English speaking skill It also point outs the students’ obstacles when learning speaking Besides, the interview for students is used to collect data to compare withthe information in the questionnaire and get more details 4.3.1 Questionnaire The questionnaire (see Appendix A) is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents It is often designed for statistical analysis of the participant and plays an important role in the study Nunan (2003) believes that questionnaire is more amenable to quantification, cheap and easy to answer Questionnaire was designed basing on the findings of some previous studies presented in the Literature Review Questionnaire is delivered to 40 English majored freshmen in the morning to collect the information in a short time It includes three parts Part one includes questions about the students’ learning background Part two is the table about the difficulties in students’ speaking There are 23 statements corresponding to a five-degree scale ranging from strongly agree, agree, no ideas, disagree to strongly disagree For each statement from the questionnaire, the participants are asked to respond by ticking ().Questions from1 to reveal the attitude of students towards speaking English skill, questions to 21 aim to find out difficulties related linguistic factors (vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar), sub skills (fluency, listening comprehension and ideas arrangement), background knowledge and psychology Part three includes questions about the solution that the students use to improve their speaking skill 4.3.2 Interview The interview is designed to collect information about the difficulties in the process of speaking (see Appendix B) It consists of questions First of all, question is to investigate the students ‘attitude about speaking English skill In question 2, students would point out the difficulties that they often get when speaking English Next, Question aims at surveying to know what the most problematic factor of students when speaking English Question is about how students can solve their problems The last question is a about new method which is recommended for students to improve speaking skill 4.4 Procedure This research was conducted within steps Duration(12 weeks) Step from the 1st to 5th week Step from the 6th to 10th week Activities in study process - Orienting the topic of research and writing an outline - Searching for materials to support the research - Designing and editing the questionnaire and interview - Delivering the questionnaire to collect data - Delivering the interview’s questions to get more insights about their problems in speaking English Step from the 11th to 15th week - Analyzing the collected data from questionnaire and interview - Writing the report PART EXPECTED OUTCOMES This research is expected to find out the difficulties of the students in the process of English speaking of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University These difficulties can be related to the linguistic factors (vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar), sub skills (fluency, listening comprehension and ideas arrangement), background knowledge and psychology Besides, the learners’ factors can be practice time, attitude and motivation in learning English speaking These research results can help the students recognize their problems and causes of these problems in English speaking skill as well as find out suitable solutions for students to deal with these difficulties The researcher also expects students would improve their speaking thanks to this research Furthermore, thanks to research, the students can be aware of the importance of speaking English, and focus more on English speaking Moreover, it is also expected that through the research results, English teachers can understand the difficulties of their students to change the teaching methods and suggest some possible solutions in order to help students learning and improving speaking English REFERENCES Anderson, A., & Lynch, T (2000:172) Listening Oxford: Oxford University Press Bachman, L, F & Palmer, A, S (1996) Language Testing In Practice Oxford University Press Boyle, Joseph (1984) Factors Affecting Listening Comprehension ELT Journal Vol.38/1.p37 Brown, H D (1994) Teaching by Principles - An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy Prentice Hall Regents Burns, A., & Joyce, H (1997:89) Focus on Speaking Sydney: National Center for English Language Teaching and Research Canale, M & Swain, M (1980) Theoretical bases of communicative approaches Chaney, A.L (1998) Teaching oral communication Boston: Allyn and Bacon Chen (1983) A Study of Pronunciation of English Learners in China By Fachun Zhang Vol.5,N.6 Clark, H, H.& Fox Tree, J, E (2002) Cognition: Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking Department of Psychology Building 420, Stanford University 10 Cook, V (1996:67) Second Language Learning and Language Teaching Lonson: Arnold 11 Dewaele, J, M &Furnham, A (2000) Personality and speech production: a pilot study of second language learners Department of French Berkeley College University of London 12 Diamond, L and Gutlohn, L (2006) Vocabulary Handbook Core Berkeley, California 13 Dimitracopoulou, I (1990) Conversational Competence and Social Development School of Social Sciences University of California Cambridge University Press 14 Frake, D, O (1980) The Complete Work of Montaigne: Language and Cultural Description Stanford University Press 15 Frank, A, F &Jaeger, T, F.(2008) SpeakingRationally: Uniform Information Densityas an Optimal Strategy for Language Production Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7d08h6j4 16 Freed, B, F (1995) Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context, John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam 17 Gilakjani, A.P (2012:97) The Significance of Pronunciation in English Language Teaching English Teaching Journal, 5(4) 18 Hartwell, P (1997) Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar Cross-Talk in Comp Theory Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/376562 1997 19 James, D.W (2005:2) The Teacher’s Grammar 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that cause language anxiety for ESL/EFL learners in learning speaking skills and the influence it casts on Educational Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Glasgow 27 Maximo, R (2000) Effects if rote, context, keyword, and context/ keyword method on retention of vocabulary in EFL classroom, Language Learning, 50, 2, 385-412 Murcia and Olshtain (2000) 28 Nagy & Anderson (1984).Big ideas in beginning reading Center on teaching and learning Retrieved February 26, 2016, http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/voc/voc_what.php 29 Nguyen, H, T & Tran, N, M.(2015) Factors Affecting Students’ Speaking Performance at Le ThanhHien High School Retrieved from: http://www.multidisciplinaryjournals.com/wpcontent/uploads/2015/03/FACTORS-AFFECTING-STUDENTS%E2%80%99SPEAKING.pdf 30 Nunan, D (2003:48) Practical English Language Teaching New York: McGraw Hill 31 O’Malley, J M and Chamot, A U (1990) Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 32 Oxford, R L 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http://www.academia.edu/776982/Students_Perception_on_EFL_Speaking_Skil l_Development 40 Stahl, S., &Fairbanks, M (1986) The effects of Vocabulary Instruction: A Model- Based Meta-Analysis Retrieved March 4, 2016,http://www.academia.edu/387250/Putting_the_Pieces_of_the_Puzzle_Tog ether_How_Systematic_Vocabulary_Instruction_and_Expanded_Learning_Tim e_Can_Address_the_Literacy_Gap 41 Thorburry, S (2002).How to teach vocabulary England: Pearson Education Limited 42 Underwood, M (1989) Teaching Listening [M] Longman group Limited, p.17 43 Ur, P (1996) A course in Language Teaching Practice and Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 117 44 Ur, P., (1998) A course in language teaching Cambridge University Press 45 Utami, W &Bambang, Y.C (2006) The Teaching of EFL Speaking in the Indonesian Context: The State of the Art Bahasa Dan Seni Journal 46 Wheeless, L R (1975:263) An Investigation of receiver apprehension and social context dimensions of Communication Apprehension Speech Teacher vol.24 47 Wilcox, K, M (2004:31) Language, Outside and In: Distance and the Evolution of the English Language and Studies Bozeman, MT: n.p APPENDICES APPENDIX A QUESTIONNAIRE On the difficulties in speaking English of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University Student’s full name: Age: Gender: Male Female Class: Please read the following questions and cicle the appropriate answer for each question Give specific answers if needed How long have you studied English? Years Where you come from? a Urban area/ city b Rural area/ countryside This bellow table is about your difficulties in writing English Please read the following statements and mark () in suitable column to express your opinion Strongly Statements You are interested in speaking You like speaking English English speaking is not easy for you You cannot express your ideas and thoughts well because you not have enough vocabulary You have problems in choosing suitable words to express ideas You make grammatical errors in speaking Youhave problems in using verb tense correctly You translate your ideas into English word-by-word when you speak Your pronunciation is not good Strongly No Agree Agree idea (1) (2) (3) Disagree (4) disagree (5) 10 You often miss final sound when you speak 11 You often make mistakes in words which have similar sound 12 You cannot communicate with native speakers well 13 Your wrong make pronunciations other people misunderstand 14 Your listening comprehension is good 15 You can speak English fluently 16 You cannot arrange your ideas well when you speak 17 You are confident in your background knowledge 18 You have difficulties about technical term in economy, politic and technology 19 You only use simple words to speak 20 When speaking or presenting in front of many people, you often feel shy and anxious 21 Having good strategies help learners respond to speaker easily and quickly in speaking 22 You put more effort into improving speaking skill 23 You usually practice speaking at school Please read the following questions andgive specific answers How often you practice speaking? (one time per day/ two times per day/etc) How much time you practice speaking? ( hour per day/2 hours per day/etc) Who you practice with? (Friend/sibling/ foreigner/ alone/etc).In which ways? (joining English club/taking Communication course/etc) THANKS FOR YOUR HELP! APPENDIX B INTERVIEW QUESTIONS On the difficulties in speaking English of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University Student’s full name: Age: Gender: Male Female Class: Do you like speaking English? Why/Why Not? ……………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… What are your difficulties in speaking English? ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… In your opinion, which one is the most difficult? ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… What you to get over these difficulties? ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… Do you think practicing English regularly is a useful way to improve speaking skill? Why/ why not? ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!