Thực trạng áp dụng các hoạt động khoảng trống thông tin để giảng dạy kỷ năng nói cho sinh viên năm thứ nhất tại trường cao đẳng kinh tế kỹ thuật nghệ an

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale: Throughout the world, English has become necessary for a lot of people in different social positions It is regarded as the link between people and people, countries and countries Indeed, it is considered the most common means of communication in the world today Realizing that English plays an important role in the development of the country, Vietnam like any other countries, has paid much attention to the popularity of teaching English to its people The economic open-door policy in Vietnam has offered new conditions for the flourishment of foreign languages in general and of English in particular within its borders To keep pace with neighboring countries in the process of cooperation and development, Vietnamese government has considered English as a key to open the door to the whole world In Vietnam, English has become one of the compulsory subjects in all stages of education from primary schools to secondary schools, universities and greater efforts have been made to search for better teaching and learning methods A number of methods and techniques have recently been applied to the teaching of English in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning English The Communicative Approach has proved its superity through communicative activities: more languages are used and student's initiatives and active involvement are developed It can be said that the CA is designed to change the traditional way of presenting and practicing language and helps to shift the teacher-led class culture to the student-centered classroom atmosphere Although there have been considerable changes in language teaching in college, the dominant way of teaching, unfortunately, seems not to follow the Communicative Approach Thanh (2008) has found that less than 51.7% of the Vietnamese non-English graduates at tertiary level not meet the demand for English language skills This evidence shows a disappointing reality dominant in Vietnam at the present time: university and college graduates may be very good at grammar, but always feel embarrassed and confused in using English to communicate in daily situations They not know when and how to use the appropriate language forms in particular circumstances In short, their mastery of the structure of English is good but they not have the same mastery of socio-linguistics rules of appropriateness This reality is the consequence of the traditional way of teaching and learning in most Vietnamese non-English tertiary classes Secondly, at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques, the demand of teaching and learning English is not only for conforming to the national policy but also for satisfying practical requirements In recent years, the Government has paid more attention to invest in and develop economy in Nghe An Many projects and industrial zones are set up, which attracts a mass of foreign investors They rush into applying for studying at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques with the hope that they can get a job more easily Besides learning their specialized subjects, these students also focus on developing English competence They are expected to have not only General English but also ESP to communicate effectively with their boss and partners or to read materials Therefore, teaching English at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques aims to meet the requirements of Administrators, students’ expectations as well as regional economic and social development Nghe An college of economics and techniques is not an exception to the above situation of non-English tertiary programs To many teachers in this college, communicative activities are still very unfamiliar They only teach their students' speaking skills based mainly on the text book through mechanical drills Teachers still place a great emphasis on teaching language knowledge such as grammar, vocabulary, and phonology but not on teaching language use Although most of teachers acknowledge the usefulness of information gap activities in teaching speaking but the number of them who has applied these activities is very small If the proposition of CA is that learning a language is learning how to use the language to communicate successfully, mastering a language is not only the ability to remember the knowledge such as structures, grammar but also the ability to apply it in real life communication Therefore, the teaching methods must focus on both linguistic competence and communicative competence That is the way CA deals with language teaching Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) proposes that the goal of language teaching is learner’s ability to communicate All classroom activities should be reflecting as much real life communication as possible “Speaking in a second or foreign language has been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills" (Bailey and Savage 1994: 7) Bailey and Savage suggest that speaking is an activity requiring the integration of many subsystems as these factors continue to make speaking a second language a formidable task for language learners etc yet for many people, speaking is seen as the central skill Nunan (1991:39) states that to most people “Mastering the art of speaking is the single most important aspects of learning a second or foreign language” For that reason, the author would like to carry out this particular study to help teachers to develop their students’ speaking skills All students at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques come from different backgrounds Most of them come from the mountainous districts of Nghe An such as Thanh chuong, Quy hop, Nghia Dan Some of them have already learnt other foreign languages such as French or Russian According to the recent result of the speaking test of level A for the first year students, 40% of participants have marks, 25% get marks.32 % get marks Only 3% get marks This is a disappointing result for speaking skills In addition, most of the teachers made complaints about the big size of class and constrained time of the course As Mrs Tu (personal communication, April 20, 2010) said” we only have 75 periods for 14 units and mid test so it is too difficult to teach speaking skills.” Moreover, most classes at Nghe An college of economics and techniques have an average class size of between 60 and 80 students Most teachers cannot use information gap activities in teaching speaking skills There are many communicative activities which are used in class to develop students’ speaking skills Among them, information gap activities are very efficient and useful The information gap activities have played a very important role in the communicative language teaching in recent years ”Information gap is an ingredient in most real life communication” (Hammer 1989: 95) The use of information gap activities in teaching provides an opportunity for intensive language practice, offers a context in which language is meaningfully used as a means to an end and acts as a tool for the teachers Information gap exercises can create communication That is why information gap exercises seem to be the most useful and effective tool for the teacher to bring feature of real life communication into classroom context As a teacher at the Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques, the researcher observes that using information gap activities, is in fact not an easy task for those language teachers who are on the point of applying a new way of teaching different from their traditional one The use of information gap activities in speaking classes and their effectiveness have been of great concern for practitioners in Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques The first year students at Nghe An college of Economics and Techniques have a basic knowledge of English The knowledge at this stage is the foundation for learning ESP and professional development Therefore, the improvements in teaching and learning English in general and in this stage in particular are urgent and necessary As a teacher of English for years, I find it quite essential to have more insights into the effective teaching strategies used by the teachers in Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques that may help the English teachers of our school to make the teaching and learning process more effective and practical in this particular context through the use of information gap activities The knowledge of this study could provide teachers of English with a lot of ideas of how to choose appropriate teaching methods and helps students become more efficient and successful For the reasons above, I have decided to choose the topic “An investigation into how information gap activities can be used to teach speaking to first year students at Nghe An college of economics and techniques “as the study of my proposal 1.2 Aims of the study: - To gain an insight into how information gap activities are used in teaching the speaking skills at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques - To clarify the teachers and students' opinion on information gap activities in teaching the speaking skills to first year students at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques - To find out the students’ and teachers' difficulties in using information gap activities in speaking class - To provide some practical teaching implications as well as professional advice on improving quality of using information gap activities in speaking class 1.3 Scope of the study: For speaking skills are important to all learners of English at all levels, and each level has its own characteristics that require the teachers to apply different methods in teaching, it is impossible for the author to conduct a research on all levels The scope of my study is limited to the application of information gap activities to improve the speaking ability for the first year students effectively at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques 1.4 Research questions: In order to fulfill the objectives, the study will be conducted to address the following questions: What are students and teachers’ attitudes and beliefs towards the use of information gap activities to teach speaking to the first year students at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques? In what ways teachers use information gap activities to teach speaking to the first year students at Nghe An college of Economics and Techniques? What are the difficulties faced by teachers in the use of the information gap activities to teaching speaking to first year students at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques? What are some suggestions to enhance the practice of information gap activities? 1.5 Significance of the study: The four research questions raised are worth studying for the following reasons: The findings will indicate the importance of information gap activities and its roles in developing speaking skills and communicative competence The findings will indicate the problems facing teachers in using information gap activities From these findings, some suggestions are made for teachers as regards the real situation of using information gap activities in teaching speaking 1.6 Design of the study; The thesis includes five chapters Chapter one: Introduction Chapter two: Literature review Chapter three: Methodology Chapter four: Findings and discussion Chapter five: Conclusion and Implications Chapter II: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Communicative Competence: 2.1.1 Definition and nature of communication Communication between human being is an extremely complex and ever changing phenomenon and it is impossible to examine all variables that are involved Communication process is defined in many ways Sandral and Weaver (1992:5) clearly indicate that, “ Communication is any process in which people share information, ideas and feeling that involve not only the spoken and written words but also body language, personal mannerism and style, the surrounding anything that adds meaning to a message.” Richards & Platt & Weber (1985:48) defined communication as “ the exchange of ideas, information, between two or more persons.” Communication "is understood as the exchange and negotiation of information between at least two individuals through the use of verbal or non verbal symbols and written/visual modes” ( Richards and Schmidt 1983:4) Almost methodologists, especially, theorists of Communicative Approach have taken these above mentioned characteristics into consideration Many communicative activities have been efficiently designed for practicing speaking skills in language learning and teaching 2.1.2 Communicative Competence: In the traditional language methods, the teachers usually concentrate on grammar and structures and regard them as the priorities of language teaching and learning Most of the students at Nghe An college of Economics and Techniques often use their mother tongue in their English class so they haven’t successfully communicated in even simple situations Students' communicative competence is their ability to use the language correctly and appropriately in any particular circumstance of communication It is this ability that helps students to communicate successfully in real life According to Widdowson (1990:67), communicative competence is the way of “creating and re-creating discourse in different methods” To answer the question What is communicative competence? Johnson (1981:12) states, “It is something which involves systematic competence- the ability to form grammatically correct sentences Canale and Swain (1980), Canale (1983) list four components of communicative competence: - Grammatical competence: mastery of the language code (verbal and non verbal) - Socio - linguistic competence: addresses the extent to which utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors - Discourse competence: concerns mastery of how to combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken or written text in different genres - Strategic competence: is composed of mastery of verbal and nonverbal communication strategies Therefore, there are four aspects of competence and they are essential for communication The theory of communicative competence implies that teachers must more than just supply learners with a number of language structures to manipulate, they must demonstrate how language items are used and in what situations they are appropriate, they must show learners that a choice of words is possible etc However, in Nghe An college of economics and techniques, grammatical competence has been stressed while others have not much been appreciated in teaching English Therefore, it is necessary to develop the students' competence in teaching and learning English 2.1.3 Communicative Language teaching (CLT): Communicative Language Teaching starts with a theory of language as communication, and its goal is to develop learners' communicative competence Language is above all a mean of communication and therefore, it should be studied as a functional instrument of communication Language is first and foremost oral so foreign languages should be taught with emphasis on oral communication Linguistic competence, the knowledge of forms and meaning are however, just one part of communicative competence Communicative competence involves the ability to use the language appropriately to a given social context Therefore, students need knowledge of the linguistic forms, meanings and functions A CLT classroom is learner-centered Students are communicators They are actively engaged in negotiating meaning, trying to make themselves understood even when their knowledge of the target language is incomplete Students are more responsible managers of their own learning Students interact a great deal with one another Far from being a transmitter of knowledge, the teacher is a facilitator The main role of teacher is to facilitate the communication between all participants in the classroom and the initiator of the activities In this role, one of his major responsibilities is to establish situations likely to promote communication At other times, he might be a “co-communicator” engaging in the communicative activities along with the students Therefore, the teacher gives students opportunities to express their individuality by having them share their ideas and opinions on a regular basis This helps students “integrate the foreign language with their own personality and thus to feel more emotionally secure with it” (Littlewood, 1981:94) Activities in CLT typically involve students in realistic communication Where the accuracy of the language they use, is less important than the successful achievement of the communicative task they are performing They should focus on the content of what they are saying or writing rather than on a particular language form In other words, such as activities should attempt to replicate real communication Although different people have different concepts of CLT, all materials about it state that the goal of language is learners' communicative competence One of the most important points is that CLT stresses the importance of providing learners with activities to give them opportunity to practice their language for their communicative purpose These activities must involve real communication, carry out meaningful tasks and use language which is meaningful to learners Nunan (1991:279) offers five features to characterize CLT: * An emphasis on learning to communicative through interaction in the target language * The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation * The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the learning process itself * An enhancement of the learners' own personal experiences as important contributing element to classroom learning * An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom To sum up,” One of the most characteristic features of CLT is that it pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language.” (Littlewood, 1981:1) 2.2 Teaching Speaking in Communicative Language Teaching: 2.2.1 Definition and Nature of speaking skills: Of all the four skills, speaking seems intuitively the most important Ur (1996:56) states people who know a language are referred to as “speaker of that language as if speaking included all other kinds of knowing and many if not most foreign language learners are primarily interested in learning to speak” The nature of speaking is varied in the light of different point of views Bygate (1987: 6) suggests that speaking consists of four sub skills which are motor-perceptive skill, interaction skill, compensatory strategies and production skill Motor – perceptive skill concerns grammatical competence as it implies mastery of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and structure of sentences This is regarded as a 10 Table 4.7: The difficulties of using information gap activities to teach speaking at Nghe An college of economics and technology Questions 9: What difficulties you imagine or think you have to No Per 87,5 108 72 c lack of linguistic competence 87,5% d Lack of confidence and motivation 35 23% e The learners have not yet found suitable learning method 89% f Class condition 62,5 g Instructions are not clear and easy to understand 68 45% h.Lack of time 50% i College have few teaching facility 75% deal with when conducting an information gap exercise? a Students mixed level of English ability and class size b The teacher does not create activities to teach and practice sufficiently In this question the causes of difficulties were in three categories: classroom condition, teachers and students We can see from Table 4.7, most of the learners found difficulties in suggested answers When being questioned and interviewed, most of the teachers found it difficult to teach speaking There might have been several reasons to explain these responses All the teachers investigated considered students' mixed level of English and class size to be the biggest challenge Most of students come from many districts in Nghe An province such as Thanh Chuong, Nghia Dan Some of them have leant English but some of them have learnt other languages such as French, Russian Moreover, the total of each class is about 60 students Therefore, it is difficult in choosing and designing information gap activities Moreover, in such big sized class, it is difficult to organize pairs and group to conduct information gap activities Miss T 46 stated that " Teaching English in a big class with different levels is a big challenge In my class ,some of students speaks English very well while many students find really hard to learn English So, the teachers found it difficult to use appropriate activities that both strong and weak students were interested" However, the greatest cause is the internal one (the learners himself/herself) The lack of linguistic was a great source of these problems (87,5%) as well as they have not yet found suitable learning method (89%) Only 23% of the students considered that not having sufficient confidence and interest in learning speaking skills was the main cause of these difficulties Many of first year students had poor knowledge of English and lack of linguistic competence This might have had a bad influence on their English learning In fact, in some observed classes, the students understood their task clearly but their responses were full of wrong words and unclear pronunciation and inaccurate structure In addition, English was not considered as a major subject at the NACET, therefore, some of the students did not pay attention to learning it although they were aware of the importance of learning speaking in their future job These negative attitudes may cause certain difficulties to teachers Besides, the limit of time (50%) as a big barrier preventing the teachers from using information gap activities Mrs L H said " we only have 75 periods for 14 units We have short of time to cover grammatical points and practicing reading and writing skills It is very difficult for us to use information gap activities to teach speaking skills Teachers play an important part in students’ learning process Therefore, when learners encounter difficulties, teachers may be partly responsible for their problems 72% of the participants agreed that the teacher does not create activities to teach and practice sufficiently 45% of students affirmed that instructions are not clear and easy to understand So, creating new ways and giving interesting activities in teaching speaking skills to the first year students are very necessary 47 The third major obstacles to using information gap activities is classroom facilities/ the classroom facilities and condition which are considered as the objective factors that influence the effectiveness of using information gap activities Nghe An college of economics and techniques is a newly-established Therefore, there is lack of facility to teach English in general and to teach speaking in particular Undeniably, using technology is the essential factor makes the lesson more interesting and attractive It is the reason why up to 62,5% of the teachers stated this difficulty causes limiting the success of using information gap activities to teach speaking Mrs Th said that there are two cassette player One of them was out of order It is inconvenient for teacher to apply the new method in teaching English Moreover, there aren't not enough projectors as well as the video cats set players, lab room and visual aids for teachers to teach English 4.3 Teacher's suggestions for improving the quality of using information gap activities in speaking classes at Nghe An college of economics and technology 4.3.1 Students’ suggestions for using information gap activities Table 4.8 : Students’ suggestions for using information gap activities Question 10 In your opinion, should the teacher to make the use of information gap activities more efficiently? Responses Giving students a great deal of encouragement Have more interesting information gap activities Simplifying and elicit question and instruction Using information gap activities more frequently 48 N= 150 Per 30 20% 109 73% 75 50% 61 41% In order to improve the quality of information gap activities, the students proposed some changes 73% of the students expected that teachers should have more interesting information gap activities We know that more interesting information gap activities motivated students to learn and practice speaking So, item “Using information gap acuities more frequently" is chosen by many of students (41%) showed that they want to participate in more information gap activities and they expected the teachers to give them information gap activities more frequently As can be seen from the table 4.8, the collected data showed that 50% of the students expected the teachers to simplify and elicit question and instruction Some students affirmed that some teacher used long instruction that made them very confused in participating information gap activities the students need to know how to use information gap activities Moreover, they (20%) expect the teachers to give students a great deal of encouragement in using information gap activities so that they could take in and became more involved in the lesson This encouragement not only motivates the students’ previous knowledge to communicate but also refresh the atmosphere of classroom 4.3.2 Teacher's suggestions for improving the quality of using information gap activities in speaking classes at Nghe An college of economics and technology Table 4.9: Teacher's suggestions for improving the quality of using information gap activities in speaking classes Question 12 : What are some suggestions to enhance the use of N= Percentage information gap activities? (%) Make good preparation 50 use various kinds of activities 87,5 providing more teaching aids and teaching materials 75 adopt and adapt information gap activities from other teaching material 87,5 49 Exchange ideas with colleagues 50 Give good instructions 62,5 organizing more workshops for English teachers 75 Others 25 Table 4.9 shows some suggestions of the teacher to improve the quality of information gap activities to teach speaking Interestingly, 87,5 % of teacher suggested that they should use various kinds of activities Each activity has its own advantages In order to provide students with opportunities to participate in different types of activities and prevent them from being bored, using of various kind of activities is the best solution Exchanging ideas with other teachers was one of the best suggestions supported by 50 % of the teachers Besides, up to 87,5% of them found it necessary to adopt and adapt information gap activities from other teaching material One of the useful resources for selecting and designing these information gap activities is mainly from reference book The activities are designed based on the student's level and interest Mrs H stated, "We should be flexible in choosing and designing information gap activities to be suitable to student's level” The text book used is the Headway Pre-intermediate included not many interesting information gap activities Another suggestion recommended by 50 % the teachers are that teacher should carefully make good preparation such as prepare lesson plan, visual aids Lesson planning is considered as a key aspect of teaching a lesson successfully Significantly, lesson plans are maps for teachers to follow Furthermore, request of providing more teaching aids and teaching materials and organizing more workshops for English teachers were chosen by 75% and 75% of the teachers respectively The role of teaching aids in teaching English is undeniable 50 Giving good instructions is also chosen by many of teachers (62,5%) It is necessary to use clear instruction in English class 4.3.3 Teachers' evaluation on their success in the application of using information gap activities to teach speaking skills As can be seen from Figure 4.4, up to 25% of the participant teachers answered in a confident way that to some extents, their speaking skills lessons were very successful while 25% of the teachers thought that they were successful Moreover, four of teachers said that they were not sure about the success None of them provided a negative answer to the question The results from the figure indicate that information gap activities are being employed effectively, bringing about a number of benefits to compensate for several difficulties which the teachers are trying to overcome N= They think that they are not successful 0% They think that they are very successful 25% They are not sure about success 50% They think that they are successful 25% Figure 4.4 : Teachers' evaluation on their success in the application of using information gap activities to teach speaking skills 51 Chapter 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION This chapter will first present a summary of the main findings of the research Then, it will provide implications towards how to use information gap activities to teach speaking to first-year students Finally, the limitation of the study as well as suggestions for further research is also taken into consideration 5.1 Summary of the findings Research question What are students and teachers’ attitudes and beliefs towards the use of information gap activities to teach speaking to the first year students at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques? With respect to the teachers’ perception of speaking skills and information gap activities, the teacher participating in the study had positive attitudes toward speaking skills in general and information gap activities in particular They were well aware of the purposes, the necessity and effectiveness of information gap activities as well as the difficulties when using them Regarding students' perception about speaking skills, the data show some surprising aspects The most remarkable was that nearly all the student considered speaking skills are important in learning English Students were keen on the variety of types of information gap activities in speaking lessons Most of them expressed their preference for information gap activities Moreover, the type of information gap that attracts most students was memory game and guessing game The data also reveal that the majority of the students want to have exciting and communicative games Research question In what ways teachers use information gap activities to teach speaking to the first year students at Nghe An College of economics and Techniques? Although the teachers and the students have positive attitude toward the speaking skills and information gap activities, the teachers’ and students’ perceptions of information gap activities and their applications did not appear to match The 52 teachers did not use enough interesting information gap activities to attract the students' attention Research question What are the difficulties faced by teachers in the use of the information gap activities to teaching speaking to first year students at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques? The teachers’ efforts in using the information gap tasks did not have expected results for students’ achievement This might be due to students' mixed level of English and class size and the lack of linguistic ability 72% of the student agreed that the teachers not create activities to teach and practice sufficiently 45% of students affirmed that instructions are not clear and easy to understand Meanwhile, two of the eight questioned teachers thought that mastery of the grammar and vocabulary and the traditional methods of teaching are more suitable for non-major students Observation shows that some of teachers still focused on grammar rather than speaking skills Moreover, insufficient information gap activities from teachers and lack of linguistic competence were the major reasons for the students’ low motivation and passive attitude toward speaking lessons Research question What are some suggestions to enhance the practice of information gap activities? Concerning solutions to the use of information gap activities, 87,5% of the teachers suggested that they should use various kinds of activities Besides, to adopt and adapt information gap activities from other teaching material were also emphasized Good preparation such as lesson plan preparation, and visual aids was important From the students’ perspectives, 73% of the students expect that teachers should have more interesting information gap activities They also state that a great deal of encouragement from teachers to students has the strongest effect for student's confidence in taking in information gap activities 53 5.2 Implications and suggestions 5.2.1 For teachers: A successful speaking lesson requires the teachers to have sufficient knowledge about information gap activities and how to conduct it as well as creative teaching methods and high enthusiasm It seems important that teachers should be careful about the frequency of information gap activities Moreover, they should use information gap activities which put the responsibility for students, enhancing their autonomy and facilitating participation The other noticeable implication for conducting information gap activities is that teachers should make good preparation such as careful lesson plans and visual aids Visual aids play an important role in teaching English In addition, classroom interaction needs to be more learner-centered Teacher's talking time needs to be minimized Moreover, with the limited time (75 periods), the teachers should be flexible and adapt the teaching material in their own teaching context The teachers should share experience and exchange their ideas on the teaching method as well as the measure to aid the teaching speaking skills Classroom atmosphere is improved when students have confidence to participate in speaking class Teachers must regularly change teaching methods by participating in workshops, conferences or observing colleagues to share teaching experiences Another way to increase students motivation is using interesting topics, showing visual aids, pictures associated with these topic in the teaching process.The teacher should use familiar topic with the student's life because students have chances to tell each other about their own lives, interest ,experiences etc One of the difficulties that faced by the teachers was the large class It is not easy for teacher to conduct these activities in the speaking class It is advisable for teacher to get students work in pairs or groups to create a cooperative environment Pair and group work can help students increase their participation According to Ky P 54 L (2002) "Through pair and group work, students, especially shy ones, can work together and have a chance to practice English" Classroom management is defined by David Nunan (1999) as: "Techniques and procedures employed by the teacher in the classroom to control student behavior, including setting up different kinds of tasks, dealing with disruptive behavior, establishing and moving between different kinds of learning groups, and using audio- visual aids and other forms of realia and equipment efficiently" To deal with large multilevel classes, the teachers should develop communicative competence, emphasize on collaboration and interaction, emphasize on individualizing and personalizing instruction, rather than teach all the students the same way 5.2.2.For students: Firstly, the students’ awareness should be raised of the importance of speaking in language acquisition as well as in communication It is the awareness of their studies that helps to increase their motivation and preferences for learning Once they have realized its importance, they will be responsible for participating in the learning actively 5.2.3.For Educational administrators: It is advisable to have more workshops on information gap activities The speaking section should be a part of English assessment at the Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques so that the 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