A study on factors affecting the performance of speaking skill of the first year english major student at hung yen university of technology and education

Trang 1 GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS A STUDY ON FACTORS AFFECTING THE PERFORMANCE OF SPEAKING SKILL OF THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENT AT HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHN

HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS A STUDY ON FACTORS AFFECTING THE PERFORMANCE OF SPEAKING SKILL OF THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENT AT HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHỮNG YẾU TỐ ẢNH HƯỞNG ĐẾN SỰ TRÌNH BÀY KỸ NĂNG NĨI CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM KỸ THUẬT HƯNG YÊN) Supervisor: Pham Thi Duong Student: Tran Thanh Binh Student number: 11317006 Hung Yen – 06, 2021 HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS A STUDY ON FACTORS AFFECTING THE PERFORMANCE OF SPEAKING SKILL OF THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENT AT HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHỮNG YẾU TỐ ẢNH HƯỞNG ĐẾN SỰ TRÌNH BÀY KỸ NĂNG NĨI CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM KỸ THUẬT HƯNG YÊN) Student: Tran Thanh Binh Student number: 11317006 Supervisor: Pham Thi Duong (Ký tên) Hung Yen – 06, 2021 i DECLARATION I certify that this thesis entitled “A study on factors affecting the performance of speaking skill of the first- year English major student at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education” is entirely my own work I have provided fully document references to the work of others The material in this thesis has not been submitted for assessment in any other formal course of study Hungyen, June 2021 Signature Trần Thanh Bình ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to send my gratitude to all those who have supported and contributed to the accomplishment of this study Firstly, I thank my parents, all the family members and friends for their encouragement that enabled me to complete the study They gave me the powerful energy to overcome the stress of working days on the study Secondly, I am greatly obligated to my supervisor, Pham Thi Duong for her expert guidance She enthusiastically supported me during my completion of this thesis Ms Duong was the one who read all my draft copies, listened to my ideas, and hurried me to keep up with the research proposal timetable Moreover, she made some important suggestions which greatly contributed to the final improvements Finally, I wish to extend my sincere gratitude to all the first- year English major student at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education who contributed valuable data for the study Their outstanding cooperation helped to fulfill this study Hungyen, June 2021 iii ABTRACT Nowadays, English is considered as an international language all over the world If students are good at English, they can improve their opportunities to broaden knowledge, and get well-paid jobs in the future However, out of the four language skills, speaking is considered as the most important but difficult aspect to master The current study was carried out to investigate factors affecting students’ speaking performance The focus of this research was to investigate the factors affecting students’ performance in English speaking class room with the first - year students atHung Yen University of Technology and Education In the research, I combined the use of quantitative and qualitative methods to achieve the desired results Therefore, the qualitative data were collected through quantitative questionaire to the students and teachers at Hung Yen university of Technology and Education In this study, 80 first-year students from faculties were chosen randomly as the participants The researcher aimed to explore the learners’ speaking problems, find out the main factors causing them and give out some useful and effective suggestions for the learners, teachers to improve the students’ oral skills The findings proved that there were two main kinds of factors that affected the learners’ speaking skills called internal factors and external factors The internal ones related to the factors coming from the students themselves, such as anxiety, lack of selfconfidence Meanwhile, the external factors were from the outside aspects which were mainly about the linguistic factors like lack of vocabulary, poor grammar, and weak pronunciation Based on the findings of the study, some discussion and implications were made along with recommended suggestion for further research iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study Research questions Scope of the study Methods of the study Significance of the study Organization of the study CHAPTER : LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Speaking in foreign language learning and teaching 2.1.1 Definitions of speaking 2.1.2 Importance of speaking 2.1.3 Types of classroom speaking performance………………………… 2.1.4 Speaking problems 2.2 Factors affecting students’ speaking performance 2.2.1 Linguistic factors 2.2.2 Non-linguistic factors/ Affective factors 2.2.3 Teacher’s factors 11 2.2.3.1 Teacher’s role 11 2.2.3.2 Teacher’s method 11 2.2.3.3 Teacher’s characteristics 12 v CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY 13 3.1 Methodology 13 3.1.1 Participants 13 3.1.2 The materials and syllabus 13 3.1.3 Data collection instruments 14 3.1.4 Data collection procedures 14 3.1.5 Data analysis procedures 14 3.2 Data analysis of questionnaire for students 15 3.2.1 Research Question 1…………………………………………………15 3.2.2 Research Question 2…………………………………………………25 3.3 Major findings and discussion 26 3.3.1 The factors that affect the first- year English major students’ speaking skills at UTEHY 26 3.3.1.1 The internal factors 26 3.3.1.2 The external factors 27 3.4 Implications 28 3.4.1 For students 28 3.4 For teachers 28 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSIONS 30 4.1 Conclusions 30 4.2 Limitations and suggestion for further study 30 4.3 Suggestion for further study 31 REFERENCES 32 APPENDICES I APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS I APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS IV vi APPENDIX 3: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TEACHERS……………… V vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT: Communicative Language Teaching EFL: English as Foreign Language UTEHY: Hung Yen University of Technology and Education CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Rationale Undeniably, English is the most important international language and becoming an indispensable means of communication with the rest of the world It provides ready access to the world scholarship and world trade Thus, the demand of learning English is becoming more urgent than ever In Viet Nam, it is a compulsory subject at all levels of learners In learning English, the four skills namely reading, writing, speaking, listening are very important but speaking seems to be the most significant All learners of English want to achieve this skill All teachers pay much attention on speaking for their students However, the teaching and learning of English speaking in Viet Nam have encountered many difficulties In fact, although most of Vietnamese learners can be good at grammar, reading and writing skill, few of them can speak English correctly and fluently It takes learners lots of time if they want to be professional at it Since, the learners are often reluctant in speaking English.There have been variety of solutions given such as changing teaching method, changing textbooks, upgrading teachers’ qualification and so on, the poor performance of students in speaking remains a common problem in acquiring the language As a student as well as a researcher at the Hung Yen University of Technology and Education, I found that most of students encounter these problems They not often enjoy speaking English and they not actively contribute to the speaking lessons They feel hardly to express their thought in English and the safe way they choose is keeping quiet With their poor performance in speaking English, they lost their opportunities to get the good jobs of the competitive labor market All the above mentioned reasons have inspired the writer to conduct a research entitled “A study on factors affecting the performance of speaking skill of the first- year English major student at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education” 25 3.2.2 Research Question 2: What could be done to enhance speaking skills for the students? 3.2.2.1 Results from teacher’s interview Q1: Do you have any suggestions for the school/ the English teachers and the students in helping students to improve their speaking skills? By answering this interview questions, the teachers offered a lot of suggestions for the researcher Firstly, the school should have language policy in some areas such as library for English learners to speak English only; moreover, budget should be allocated for necessary teaching and learning resources, and the school should also organize some more English competitions and contests to motivate the students to learn English Secondly, the English teachers can improve their English speaking lessons by many ways They can use English only in the class by speaking slowly and using simple words, so that the students can understand what their teachers are talking Furthermore, the teachers also need to study more new teaching speaking methods to engage students into accomplishing learning tasks Last but not least, the students suggested to be harder to learn new words so as to improve their vocabulary 3.2.2.2 Results from students’ interviews Q1: How you think about the roles of teachers influencing in your English speaking skills? All the interviewed students agreed that teachers play a very important role in the development of their speaking competence They reported that when their English teachers used Vietnamese to teach or communicate with them, they tended to respond in Vietnamese instead of English This might be the reason students reported in the questionnaire that most of them lack of motivation in speaking English in the classroom Furthermore, the students believed that if their English teachers achieved good English pronunciation, then theirs will be correct However, the interviewees said that the pronunciation of their English teachers did not 26 sound like it was right sometimes, which made their pronunciation worse accordingly Additionally, the learners also admitted that they were not really interested in some of the learning activities that the teachers gave out As a result, their participation in the lessons was sometimes low Q2: Can you give any suggestions for yourself, and for other students to enhance their speaking skills? The interviewees were so enthusiastic to give the researchers some ways to help themselves and others to improve their English speaking performance Firstly, to achieve the fluency and accuracy of speaking, the students should make an outline for what they are speaking about In the outline, there should be some ideas to the topic and the words and sentence structures used to express the ideas Secondly, the learners should learn words in the same topic to make it easier to remember the vocabulary Finally, they should also listen to the English materials more such as English music, English films, English news, and so on to enhance their listening skills and their pronunciation 3.3 Major findings and discussion Based of the results of questionnaires delivered of 80 students, major findings of the current research are summarized and discussed below: What are the factors that affect the first- year English major students’ speaking skills at UTEHY? What could be done to enhance speaking skills for the students? 3.3.1 The factors that affect the first- year English major students’ speaking skills at UTEHY Basing on the findings of Chapter 3, we could say that there were a range of factors that impacted on the learners’ speaking acquisition at UTEHY The factors could be divided into two groups: Internal factors (factors from the students themselves), and external factors (factors caused by the outside things) 3.3.1.1 The internal factors Firstly, lack of proper use of vocabulary was one of the main factors that affected the participants’ speaking skills In fact, high proportion of the participants got troubles to choose 27 the appropriate vocabulary for a specific communicative context and were not able to translate given words spontaneously The second factor their poor grammar It was found out that the students paused their speech whenever they got grammatical mistakes Although, in fact, most students studied English for at least years at secondary school, their English language level of vocabulary, grammar were limited Becauseof lack of vocabulary, grammar they got troubles to choose the appropriate vocabulary for a specific communicative context and were not able to translate given words spontaneously When the pupils lost their vocabulary and grammar to speak, they would not be willing to share their ideas in front of the classroom They were very quite and always felt anxiety when teacher called them As a result, they did not dare to join in any speaking activities in class and communication was not achieved Finally, lack of social and cultural knowledge they may be bored or feel that the topic is unrelated to anything they know If this is the case, they can not confidently speak out much about anything other than the fact that they should be participating in it actively The next is students’ psychological factors were rather important for each student Most of students felt anxious, hesitant and not self-confident enough in front of the classmates and teachers Also they fear that they will be laughed at by the others if they make mistakes while speaking Therefore, they never dare to take risks to become extrovert people They always keep themselves safely in the concept of self-esteem or introvert people Besides, another finding is students’ motivation in speaking involvement Students’interest played an important role in students’speaking motivation The high interest students would be the high effort ones Students with high interest always put the aims for learning and always tried their best to achieve it The more positive motivation students had, the more actively students participated in speaking lessons 3.3.1.2 The external factors Thirdly, the findings referred to the teachers’ factors They are teachers’ roles, teachers’ knowledge and characteristics, teaching methods The first factor which affected students’ speaking performance most was teachers’ teaching methods Teachers’ boring teaching methods were the main factor preventing students’ involvement in speaking activities In addition, teachers’ knowledge and characteristics were also very important 28 Teachers were enthusiastic, friendly and helpful, they would feel more comfortable So, they could better participate in speaking activities One more thing relating to teachers’ factors was teachers’ roles Teachers had to be a facilitator, assessor and resource if they wanted students to speak much more Teachers had to give feedback and comments for students after each speaking task.They really needed teachers’ encouragement by giving them vocabulary, structures beforehand It means teachers’ roles were very important in order to increase students’ participation 3.4 Implications 3.4.1 For students In order to improve students’ speaking performance in English, students should take positive motivation to meat the goals of studying When they have goal they will know what they have to to reach it As result, they will actively contributing to speaking activities.Next, students should self-study outside class Apart from grammar, structures, vocabulary that they can learn from books, newspapers, listening skill must to be acquired by watching TV, listening to music on radio or cassette player Moreover, students should take all opportunities to practice speaking English by making friends with people who have the same interest of English speaking, with foreigners, or even they could talk with themselves in front of a mirror to practice their pronunciation Another suggestion for students is that they should be self-confident when speaking in public by some ways as mention above In addition, they should take risks to overcome all psychological factors of anxiety and nervousness If they dare to try one time successfully, they will have big motivation to take part in later activities The last but not the least is that, instead of dissatisfied with their family background, student should try their best to overcome all difficulties to catch up with others or study better to satisfy their family or to reach the goal of the good job in the future 3.4 For teachers Also for the aim of improving students’ speaking performance in English, first of all, teacher should use suitable teaching methods in the real teaching context However, 29 Communicative Language Teaching method has been proved to be the best methods in teaching language speaking Instead of teacher-center approach, it is student-center one Therefore, students have more opportunities to speak The teachers can adjust this method or can combine some methods to have the best effective method in teaching speaking Next, teacher should use various speaking activities such as games, role-play, discussion, information gap, and picture description to stimulate students or involve them into speaking activities in class and to avoid students’ boredom of repetition Furthermore, according to context, teachers can show variety of roles including controller, organizer, assessor, prompter, participant, resource, tutor and observer They could be resource when students need help of words, phrases or directions They could be organizer to organize speaking activities such as dividing group or be prompter if students were be stuck in a situation At last, teachers should be enthusiastic, friendly and helpful, create a pleasant and supportive class atmosphere and establish close relationship with students As the result, students will feel more relaxed to express their opinion in front of a lot of people In short, teachers should well aware of their responsibility of improving students’ speaking performance Summary Based on the results attained from questionnaires, interviews the researcher would like to summarize as well as suggest some recommendations to the learners, teachers and schools to improve the students speaking skills There were a plenty of factors affecting the pupils’ oral competence However, there were some major ones which were lack of vocabulary, grammatical problems, weak pronunciation, anxiety, etc All of those factors will be categorized into two separate kinds namely internal factors and external factors By finding out the students’ speaking problems, and asking the participants to give out some suggestions to developing the learners’ speaking skills, the researcher would provide some recommendations The researcher hopes that the implications will be beneficial to all language teachers and learners 30 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSIONS In this part, conclusions of the study, its limitations and suggestion for further study will be presented 4.1 Conclusions The study aims at finding the factors affecting students’ speaking performance of first – year English major students at UTEHY The study was conducted 80 freshmen of the foreign language department at UTEHY were randomly selected as participants In the study, questionnaire for students were used as research instruments The researcher used the results of questionnaires to answer the research question: “What are the factors affecting students’ speaking performance at UTEHY?” “What could be done to enhance speaking skills for the students?” In order to answer the research questions, the researcher studied categories of theory of factors affecting students’ performance, including students’ speaking performance and took it as the framework to investigate what are the factors that really affect students’ speaking performance in the real study’ context There were a plenty of factors affecting the pupils’ oral competence However, there were some major ones which were lack of vocabulary, grammatical problems, weak pronunciation, anxiety, etc All of those factors will be categorized into two separate kinds namely internal factors and external factors Based on the finding of this study, some suggestions to improve students’ speaking performance were given 4.2 Limitations and suggestion for further study Although the researcher has made efforts toward carrying down the study, due to the limitation of time, lack of sources, and lack of researcher’s experience in doing research, shortcomings are unavoidable Firstly, the study is carried down with 80 first year students so to some extend, the results of the study can not cover for all students Secondly, the researcher used questionnaires and interviews as the research instruments, it might restrict the variety of data source 31 Despite of above limitations, the researcher hopes that this study will be valuable and beneficial to the learning and teaching speaking skill at UTEHY 4.3 Suggestion for further study This study only concentrates on factors affecting students’ speaking performance Basing on the findings and the limitations of this study, I would like to continue the study with the following topics: - A study on strategies to improve students’ speaking performance - A study on impacts of students’ speaking performance on speaking assessments in class In order to pilot the effectiveness of the study, the further research should be implemented by an experimental or an action research 32 REFERENCES Bailey, K M (2005) Practical English Language Teaching: Speaking: McGraw – Hill Companies, Inc Baigate, M (1987) Speaking Oxford: Oxford University Press Barry, K (1993) Beginning Teaching (2nd ed.) Wentworth Falls: Social Science Press Breach, D (1985) Exploring the Vietnamese concept of a “good teacher” Teacher’s Edition Brown, H D (1994) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents Brown, H D (2000) Principles of language learning and teaching White Plains, NY: Longman Brown, H D (2007) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (5th ed.) San Francisco: Pearson Longman Brown, G., & Yule, G (1983) Teaching the spoken language: An approach based on the analysis of conversational English Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Brumfit, C J (1984) Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching Cambridge:Cambridge University Press Bygate, M (1987) Speaking Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press Byrne, D (1986) Teaching Oral English: Longman Chaney, A L B., & Burk, T L (1998) Teaching Oral Communication Boston: Allyn &Bacon Dornyei, Z (2001) Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Downs, M (2000) Increasing Student Motivation Teacher's Edition, 4, 8-13 Ellis, R.(1985) Understanding Second Language Acquisition Oxford: Oxford Universtiy Press Fisher, R (1990) Teaching Children to Think Basil Blackwell Gardner, R C (1985) Social psychology and second language learning: The role of attitudes and motivation London, UK: Edward Arnold 33 Harmer, J (1999) The Practice of Engish Language Teaching Malaysia: Longman Hayes, (1997) Helping teachers to Cope with Large Classes, Retrieved June from ELT Journal Volume 52/2 Oxford University Press Horwitz, E K., & Cope, J A (1986) Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety The Modern Language Journal, 70(2), 125-132 Kayi, H (2006) Teaching Speaking The Interenet TESL Journal, XII(11) Le Phuoc Ky (2002) Problems, Solutions, and Advantages of Large Classes Teacher's Edition, 9(9), 8-11 Lightbown, P M., & Spada, N (1999) How Languages are Learned Oxford: Oxford University Press McDonough, J., & McDonough, S (1997) Research Methods for English Language Teachers London: Arnold Nunan, D.(1989) Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom Cambridge: Cambridge Universtity Press Nunan, D (1992) Research Methods in Language Learning Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Nunan, D (1999) Second Language Teaching & Learning Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers Pattison, P (1992) Developing communication Skill Cambridge: CUP Richards, J C., & Rodgers, T S (2001) Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Rivers W.M (1968), Teaching Foreign – Language Skills, The University of Chicago Press Spielberger, C (1983) Manual for the State - Trait Anxiety Palo Altro: Consulting Psychologists Press Stern, H.H (1983) Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching Oxford: Oxford University Press Hutchinson, T (2002) Lifelines Elementary, Oxford University Press 34 Tui A B.M (1996) Reticence and anxiety in second language learning In Underwood, M (1987) Effective Class Management NewYork: Longman Ur, P (1996) A Course in Language Teaching Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press I APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS This survey questionnaire is designed for the study of factors affecting the performance of speaking skill of the first- year English major student at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education Your assistance in completing the following items is highly appreciated All the information provided by you is of great use and solely for the study purpose Thank you! Please circle the answer where necessary PART I PERSONAL INFORMATION Your gender A Male B Female How long have you been learning English? … years PART II FACTORS AFFECTING STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE IN LEARNING SPEAKING ENGLISH How is speaking skill important to you? A very B rather C normal D little E not at all How often you speak English in English class time? A always B usually C sometimes D rarely E never except when asked by teacher What are your problems in speaking English? A Lack of subject matter B Lack of vocabulary and grammar structures C Poor listening skills D Bad pronunciation E Other What you feel when speaking in front of class? A I always fell shy and nervous when speaking infront of the crowd B I am afraid of making mistakes and being laughed by other students C I am ready to speak without concerning with people around II D I always feel confident to speak in the front of class Why you want to learn English speaking? A To get high marks B A compulsory subject in the syllabus and the final exam C Interest in English language, people and culture D To sing and listen to English songs E For the future job F To study abroad Which of the following activities you like most in a speaking lesson? A Working individually B Working in pairs C Working in groups (of to students) What you think about your teacher’s teaching method and characteristics? (You can choose more than one option) A Teacher uses appropriate method B Teacher talks too much in class C Teacher speaks so quickly D Teacher always speaks English without translation E Teacher does not carry out various speaking activities F Teacher does not build up pleasant and positive learning atmosphere I Others Which of the followings you think your teachers should to motivate you to take part in speaking activities? (You can have more than one choice) A Not interrupting you when you make mistakes B Accepting a variety of your answers C Encouraging you with marks and rewards D Being enthusiastic, friendly and helpful E Creating some interesting games and activities F Creating pleasant class atmosphere III G Having clear instructions IV APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS Q1: Do you think what the roles of teachers in improving your English speaking skills ? Q2: Can you give any suggestions for yourself, and for other students to enhance their speaking skill V APPENDIX 3: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TEACHERS Q1: In your opinion, what are the factors affect student’s acquisition of English speaking skills? Q2: Do you have any suggestions for the school/ the English teachers and the students in helping students to improve their speaking skills?