Some benefits of using smartphones to enhance the english speaking skill of university students in viet nam graduation paper

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY _***** _ DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES GRADUATION PAPER EVALUATING THE BENEFITS OF ENHANCING ENGLISH SPEAKING THOUGH SMARTPHONE ON STUDENTS IN COLLEGES/UNIVERSITIES IN VIETNAM Instructor: La Thanh Triet, M.A Student: Ha Thi Thuy Linh Student’s code: 15DH710341 Class: TA1503 Ho Chi Minh City, June 18th, 2019 Full name: Ha Thi Thuy Linh Student’s code: 15DH710341 Email address: halinhlinh97@gmail.com Phone number: 0359498381 Subject: Graduation Paper Date submitted: June 18, 2019 Acknowledgments For this study, I have received a lot of precious help to complete it Firstly, I would like to thank Mr La Thanh Triet for his guidance during the writing of this paper with invaluable instructions, comments, enthusiastic support, and spiritual encouragement I could not finish my research without his assistance Secondly, I would like to thank my friends as well as those who contributed to my survey, helped me to complete the data and shared the questionnaires to others whom I have never met before I could not finish my research without your assistance Nextly, a special word of thanks is reserved for my fellow-friend, Pham Thi Nhu Quynh, who is doing another research together with me in this final semester Especially, I am so grateful to my parents with their support and encouragement for giving me an advantageous condition to carry out the research smoothly Last but not least, I would like to send my faithful thanks to my colleges and managers in JAVI Coffee Company and Galaxy Robot Education for creating a convenient condition for me to finish my paper I did the research all by my best; however, the shortcomings and mistakes in this research are unavoidable, so I would like to receive valuable comments from readers Again, I am sincerely appreciated your support and want to thank all of you much Advisor’s assessment List of table contents Acknowledgments iii Advisor’s assessment iv List of table contents v Abstract vi CHAPTER 1:INTRODUCTION 1.1 The purpose of the study 1.1 Research questions CHAPTER 2:LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Smartphone 2.1.1 Definition of smartphone 2.1.2 Characteristics of smartphone 2.1.3 The role of using the smartphone in learning language 2.1.4 Benefits of using the smartphone in language learning 2.1.5 Challenges of using a smartphone in language learning 2.2 Speaking skills 2.2.1 Definition of speaking 2.2.2 Aspects of speaking 2.2.2.1 9 10 Pronunciation 10 2.2.2.2 Grammar 10 2.2.2.3 Vocabulary 11 2.2.2.4 Accuracy 11 2.2.2.5 Fluency 12 2.2.3 Difficulties in learning English speaking skills and suggestions 12 CHAPTER 3:METHOD 14 CHAPTER 4:RESULTS 17 CHAPTER 5:DISCUSSION 27 APPENDIX 32 REFERENCES 36 Abstract Nowadays, the smartphone has become more widespread in daily life Most of the students are smartphone users and use a smartphone to communicate primarily Besides, communication becomes more important than ever when the integration among countries is growing, English is the common language which has been used to exchange information For this reason, the writer made a decision of studying the advantages of the smartphone in applying it to enhance students’ English speaking skill Furthermore, with the trend of technology recently, especially, industry 4.0, technology devices are capable of transferring the method of conventional studying in the future The research aims to illustrate the benefits of learning English speaking through a smartphone This current research was conducted by students from many different colleges and university in Vietnam, with sixty respondents Additionally, both qualitative and quantitative method was applied in this research through questionnaires and displayed the data in pie and bar chart The results revealed that most of the students evaluated the significant development in their communication by English thanks to the support of the smartphone CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION There was a saying that “Speaking is an indispensable action to exchange the information in daily life” People can express their meanings in many different ways through gestures, feelings, actions to interact mutually; however, oral speaking is still the most mode using words to communicate Indeed, speaking plays a vital role in exchange information clearly Nowadays, the smartphone has become more widespread, as the statistic report of Nielsen Vietnam (2017) stated there was 84 percent of Vietnamese using a smartphone, especially, this number is including young Vietnamese who are studying in colleges/universities This growing number of students using the smartphone in Vietnam is increasing day by day and there is no signal for the unstoppable of smartphone users because there are a lot of remarkable functions supporting to users’ demanding For this reason, a common question that whether or not students should apply smartphones to their English speaking learning and it will be clarified in this research, the following chapters In the literature review, the chapter refers to the relevant study for this research The detailed aspect relating the research also is exploited specifically There are some keywords such as smartphone and speaking and its other concerning aspects are defined clearly in this part In this research, the large segment of the survey objective is students from various colleges/ universities located in Vietnam The writer uses quantitative and qualitative method to collect data for research through a questionnaire with 60 respondents while people’ majoring who participating in this survey are languages 1.1 The purpose of the study The current study aims at achieving the following objectives: - Exploring the effect of the smartphone to apply it to enhance students’ English speaking skill in colleges/university in Vietnam to keep pace up with the development of technology nowadays, especially, the industry 4.0 and giving suggestions for using a smartphone to develop English speaking skill - Boosting students’ English speaking ability about vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, fluency, and accuracy by using smartphone strategy 1.1 Research questions - Evaluate the level of reasons why you study English speaking through the smartphone - Evaluate the level of your English speaking improvement through learning through a smartphone - Evaluate the level of challenges you are facing with when studying English speaking through a smartphone - Do you prefer studying English speaking through a smartphone to attending class? CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Smartphone 2.1.1 Definition of smartphone The appearance of a smartphone has been a remarkable turning point in social life Nowadays, a smartphone is considered as a tool containing many remarkable features in a device However, it is hard to give a definition of a smartphone According to Oxford University Press (2019) defines smartphone implemented plenty of computer’s functions including a touchscreen interface, Internet access and an operating system capable of running downloaded apps The innovation of smartphone adapts a numerous users’ demands needed thanks to its convenience as a handheld device providing wireless voice communications, data applications including messaging in text and multimedia, e-mail, audio players and Web surfing via a Graphical User Interface (GUI)-based browser (versus the more primitive type of handheld devices with textbased browsing), (Global Knowledge Training LLC, 2010) Meanwhile, Olivia (2011) explains more clearly that smartphone is a handheld mini-computer abilities to place it closer to a laptop, using an independent operating system to install and run advanced and complex applications, excepted its basic features as calling and receiving calls The advancement of the smartphone is getting smarter and more evolve due to more and more features added In Defining the smartphone done by Litchfield (2010) shows the top five definitions of the smartphone which constituted a smartphone as below: - Definition 1: ● A smartphone can be extended through hundreds of add-on applications (that run on an equal footing with the core operating system) ● A smartphone runs a proper (or ‘open’) operating system 10 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION Based on the described result above specifically, this research is in the pursuit of the benefits of applying mobile tools like a smartphone to improve learners’ English speaking ability including these aspects which are vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, accuracy, and fluency in speaking English In the development of technology nowadays, using a smartphone as a strategy to keep up with modern life; however, still, focus on the main purpose of enhancing learners’ English speaking skill As the result described in chapter 4, almost students owned a smartphone and they used their smartphone as an important part which is indispensable in their daily life Why is a smartphone unemployed as a tool for study? After a series of questions, focusing on the benefits as well as challenges when learning English speaking on a smartphone, asked in the questionnaire, it is obvious from the finding of the last question concluded that a number of students preferred studying their English speaking on a smartphone to attending class, up to 70% It strongly influences the performance of English speaking learner based on the overall achievement which students were benefited from that as follow: A smartphone is really a useful tool for helping learners acquire a wide range of vocabulary thanks to the usage of mobile applications in the process of English speaking learners since vocabulary acquisition is a crucial aspect in learning a language According to Helena (2010) emphasized the essential of vocabulary in learning English or a certain language as a foreign language because of its appearance in all skills of language as listening, speaking, reading and writing By way of illustration, people will have difficulties in expressing their ideas if they are limited vocabulary Even worse, they can be able to understand, write or listen to anything This is a reason why English learners must focus on vocabulary first for the more vocabulary you acquire the better result 33 you get As the findings, vocabulary is the most point which students develop It is really beneficial that students expand the vocabulary thanks to the effectiveness of smartphone Students are provided opportunities to correct their pronunciation accurately by means of listening then repeating what a native speaker pronounces through English video, English pronounce applications such as Tedtalk show, Duolingo applications, Oxford/Cambridge dictionaries and so on as they listed in the survey Besides, students can compare their pronunciation to the native speaker after recording Studied by Dinamika Ilmu (2015), also, illustrated that there were significant positive results as students became more interested and active in studying English, especially, pronunciation competency thanks to playing Go Fish Game and Maze Game installed on a device Based on the result analyzed, students had increased their pronunciation ability and participated in the game enthusiastically Another study by Rana Momani (2018), pointed out the ways used by English Foreign Language (EFL) the most was “making friends with native speakers”, they chatted, talked and communicated frequently to improve their pronunciation Next, by listening to sounds of English lectures, experts or watching TV shows, radio or movies, is one of the most ways which students applied to correct their pronunciations It can be seen clearly from the results that learning English speaking on smartphone raises the fluency and accuracy in the process of speaking English In terms of fluency and accuracy aspects, they are evaluated based on the ability to use correct grammar and vocabularies precisely to create correct sentences then the sentence was expressed naturally and concisely Also, being fluency and accuracy in speaking English will help students become more confident in communicating with their partners in English (by Hira from Allama Iqbal Open University) Actually, confidence in communication is one of those important 34 elements which absolutely affects students’ fluency and accuracy Conducted by Trung Hieu (2011) showed most of the students are not confident in communicating in English because of being afraid of getting mistakes in communication though they spent six to seven years studying English at school Studying English online from English learning channels/ websites/ mobile applications also benefit to learners in comprehending grammatical forms and functional structures in sentences In the English language, each tense has a different function, so it creates a different meaning For example, a person wants to talk about her/his planned future schedule, she/he will use the simple future tense as follow: She is going to take an IELTS next month The findings in a study conducted by Nuhi Bllaca showed that a great number of people, up to 61 percent, evaluated the effectiveness of using a smartphone for the purpose of checking, learning English grammar through reliable websites, channels such as grammarly.com, oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com, dictionary.cambrige.org and so on Cultivating grammar knowledge should be the priority after acquiring vocabulary not only the English language but also other languages It could not be denied that using a mobile device in learning the English language is really convenient because of its mobility and accessibility Just a smartphone is connected to the Internet that students can access to find any information they want as having a mobile in hand is like having this whole world Rezaei and Neo (2014) stated that the factor of time and place were eliminated from education restrictions since students can access to the Internet for searching for information or participating in courses anytime Besides, multimedia of a smartphone allowed users to use different contexts, such as graphic, audio, animation, and interactivity On the other hand, it is obvious from the findings that respondents choose a smartphone for their English learning because there are a large number of various documents and lessons for people 35 to learn English speaking through a smartphone Popularly, youtube is known as a website which including a huge number of free English video that students can watch and learn from that As stated by Andrea (2015), “it is no secret that YouTube is an English language learner’s best friend” There are a diversity of English learning applications which are designed to specific topics help student’ learning process becomes easier, listed in her research as British Council Learn English, Anglo - Link, JenniferESL, BBC Learn English, are similar to the top learning English channels on Youtube in the rankings of FluentU as well Additionally, the fee-paying online English course is inexpensive even there are a lot of free online English learning courses aiming to encourage learning the English language which is sponsored for students in colleges/ university belonging to Asia area Astonishingly, thousands of free resources on Youtube were not known or used by English teachers as Ines studied, 2013 Learning English speaking through smartphone permits students to practice their education anytime and anywhere, out of class by way of communicating with native speakers through online course Especially, learning English speaking on a smartphone also reduces anxiety and the pressure and anxiety of learners because some people feel hesitating when communicating with others Karmila and Ridwan (2018) concluded the positive achievement of students in English speaking by being taught through smartphone was higher than by conventional teaching This will support students’ motivation in learning as which is the vital factor that can impulse students to increase their knowledge with the speed of technological development The ubiquitous of a smartphone is an advantage, yet it causes some problem for learners during the learning process This current study points out that most students were distracted in their English speaking lesson; in other words, they will lose concentration on what they are going to speak out if they not interact with another directly It is a noticeable problem when the popularity of using the social network is increasing which can lead students to be fallen According to the latest study conducted by Brian (2019) 36 alarms a noticeable number, 60% of college/ university students admit to smartphone addiction Even, people sleep next to smartphones, up to 71% However, with the advanced technology, colleges/universities can limit the websites which students can access to yet this only can be implemented in school but the outside Moreover, English speaking learners are able to be lack of motive in improving their English speaking skill because there is no force in this type of learning, as often, a lecturer will give students assignments with a specific topic attached to detailed instructions By this way of learning English speaking through a smartphone, students need to be initiated in enhancing their English speaking skill Positively, learning English speaking through a smartphone will make students be more independent and mastering in their education Consequently, it is undeniable that the benefits of smartphones bringing to people’s life, especial in education The unstoppable growth of the Internet has provided a large huge of documents for learners’ English speaking (Ines, 2013) and smartphone is as a tool including remarkable functions to support users’ demanding As stated by Cygnis (2014), the mobile application took the second-most popular category in July 2013, with a proportion of 10 percent of all apps being language learning apps The researcher also considered that English applications play an important role in reshaping the future of education Indeed, a significant number of those who participated in this study found that smartphones value for learning English speaking skill CONCLUSION 37 Summary Based on the results and the discussion of the current study, the writer specifically revealed the benefits of enhancing English speaking skill through a smartphone which students acquired The aspect of constituents supporting speaking English fluently is analyzed clearly in the results, the following conclusion can be made: - Students expand their vocabularies the most that accounted for the highest proportion Students can use vocabulary appropriately and adequately It notices a positive signal that makes the process of communication in English become more effortlessly since vocabulary is the core point influencing on other skills as the same as Helena stated in 2010 This result of the current research is consistent with other studies of Wenyuan (2017), Emma (2014) - Pronunciation competency is also demonstrated intelligibly This is essential for English learners, especially for English beginners to correct their pronunciation at the beginning of learning the English language since good pronunciation will enhance learners’ listening and speaking (Astha) Most learning English apps are set word sound, so the learner can listen and repeat the word as the recordings exactly Hence students can boost their pronunciation competency easily - The speed of learners’ reaction in a conversation has been faster and they become more confident when using a new word in the interaction process Students feel being attracted to a conversation because they are able to understand the meaning of their partners, so it makes the information exchange be fluently and more effectively 38 - The result shows a number of students are able to follow grammatical rules correctly by means of self-studying on a smartphone This increases writing skill and also speaking skill of the writer; therefore, listener and speaker can avoid misunderstanding the meaning and context of each other as Dalil (2013) said grammar forms plays an important subject in almost all the syllabuses in the world Additionally, there are many other elements that make students choose to learn English speaking instead of conventional learning Students can take a smartphone anywhere and study anytime because of its mobility and accessibility Also, the diversity of lessons on smartphones that students can refer online or offline That is convenient for students to ensure that they can have a thorough grasp of knowledge at their colleges/universities and balance time for work and study Especially, learning English on a smartphone can help students economize their budget significantly Recommendations During the process of conducting this current study, the writer has some recommendations as follow: 2.1 Curriculum developers should: - Invest mobile technology for practicing spoken English through an application that managing students’ result as well as feedbacks will be easier - Design a technological curriculum on smartphones to support collaboration and interaction students and lecturers or students and their partners 39 - Creating an electronic dictionary of colleges/universities for students to access - Increase using social media applications for students and lecturers to be more flexible - Implement native lectures to support student realistically 2.2 English lectures should: - Provide online activities, homework, and tasks using appropriate and adequate vocabulary for students - Design authentic situations based on theory to develop the selfconfidence of students with the purpose of help students overcome their anxiety in the communication process - Follow the speed of improvement of students frequently and increase the interaction between lecturers and their students 2.3 Spoken English learners should: - Employ smartphone’s functions to apply it to practice speaking English with native speakers - Restrict using a smartphone for privacy while practicing spoken English language Another word, students must focus on their study in a stable time to avoid being distracted from lessons - Be initiative in developing English speaking ability through using a smartphone because of its convenience Limitations 40 After proposing this research, the writer has realized some limitations - Although there was much research about the benefits of using smartphones in learning the English language, research of each English skill had been not studied profusely - To methodology of the research, the writer just applied the quantitative and qualitative method to conduct the survey on students in colleges/universities without using English speaking applications to collect data Besides, those questions in the questionnaires unexploited the elements to improve speaking English effectively Additionally, as a number of students who participate in this research were only 60 respondents, so the findings were just objective opinions 41 APPENDIX 1.What is your gender? - Male - Female Which year are you in? - First/Second year - Third/ Fourth year - Others What is your major? - Languages - Technology - Economics - Others Have you ever studied the English speaking through a smartphone? (If not, stop doing this survey Thank you!) - Yes - No Which type of methods you study English speaking through smartphone? (you can choose more than one answer) - Entertainment (film, music, video, ) - English Applications - Online Courses Which channels/ apps/ websites have you used to study English? How much does it cost for learning English speaking through a smartphone per month (VND)? 42 How much time you spend on studying English speaking on a smartphone on a day? - 1-2 hours - 3-5 hours - more than hours Evaluate the level of reasons why you study English speaking through the smartphone Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Disagree Totally Agree a Low payment b Convenience c Various lessons d Flexible time 10 Evaluate the level of your English speaking improvement through learning through a smartphone Really Bad Neutral 43 Good Excellent bad A Pronunciation B Grammar C Vocabulary D Accuraccy E Fluency 11 Evaluate the level of challenges you are facing with when studying English speaking through a smartphone Strongly Disadgree Neutral disagree Agree Strongly agree A Being distracted B Getting anxiety C Low interaction D Lack of confidence E Lack of 44 motivation 12 Do you prefer studying English speaking through a smartphone to attending class? - Yes - No REFERENCES Harper & Row (1975) Nursing Research Retrieved from https://nursing.utah.edu/research/qualitative-research/what-is-qualitative-research.php Alan and Paul (n.d.) 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