Trang 1 --- ∞0∞--- LE THI NGOC THIEN TED-ED AS A TOOL IN ENHANCING SPEAKING SKILLS FOR THE 11TH GRADE STUDENTS AT VINH CUU HIGH SCHOOL MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL Trang 2 HO CHI MINH CITY
INTRODUCTION
Background to the study
There is no doubt that English has been a popular and effective communication tool, especially in the era of international integration Rao (2019) also states that English has become popular and essential in many fields, such as education, tourism, culture, science and technology, diplomacy, and economy, etc
In Vietnam, a large majority of people are well-aware of the role of English in promoting integration in regional communities in particular and global in general (Nguyen, 2018) This is the reason why English becomes one of the compulsory subjects in the Vietnamese educational curriculum from primary school to university Due to its significance, the teaching and learning of English are more and more appreciated
However, learning English in many schools in Vietnam, especially in high school is not really effective as Vietnamese high school teachers have a tendency to pay much attention to grammar and lexical They believe that being good at grammar points will lead to good communication skills (V C Le, 2011; G V Nguyen, 2013) Teachers at many high schools often teach grammar points in mechanical ways First, teachers show grammatical structures and then use their mother tongue to explain the grammar rules to students After that, the teachers give examples by putting these structures into sentences without having any context Finally, the teachers ask the students to do exercises and then write the answers on the board By applying this way, students do not have opportunities to communicate with each other (G V Nguyen, 2013) Moreover, the class size is too large leading to the fact that teachers cannot organize communication activities effectively (Hoang, 2010; G V Nguyen, 2014a) Also, with such a large size of the class, not all students have chances to expose to the target language Unfortunately, when being outside the class, students do not also have English-language environment to practice (V L Nguyen, 2011b)
As a consequence of focusing much on grammatical structures, more and more students cannot reach the requirements of the Foreign Languages Project 2020 (National Foreign Languages 2020 Project, 2015) This project requires teachers of high school to reach C1 level and students graduating from high school need to reach upper-intermediate level comparable to the B1 level of the Common
European Framework of Reference (MOET, 2014) To support teachers to enhance their proficiency and methodology, the project also has training programs in which teachers and students are instructed to use and to apply technology in their teaching and learning To be more specific, teachers are required to use presentation tools, social networks and educational websites to present their lesson and students are taught to utilize ICT to improve the second language (Vietnam National Institute for
Educational Sciences, 2011).The project indicates that employing technology in teaching and learning English enables students to practice more outside the classroom compensating the limited time in the class For the above-mentioned reasons, the researcher would like to conduct a research on applying technology, specifically TED-Ed in teaching and learning speaking at Vinh Cuu high school where students do not have opportunities to practice speaking in and outside the classroom.
Research problem
Speaking is one of the most important macro skills that students have to master as it helps them share information, ideas and feelings (Cameron & Hybel,
2001) Essential though this skill is, many students’ speaking ability is still far from expectation; thus is unable to achieve the objectives stipulated by the Foreign Languages Project 2020 (NFL 2020) Reality shows that many Vietnamese high school teachers invest much in grammatical structures and vocabulary as they suppose that it is structures and grammar taught in explicit ways will enable students to communicate in English In fact, too often, in traditional classes, English language teachers pay much attention to linguistic language such as vocabulary and grammar rules (Anjarani, 2016) Unfortunately, focusing much on grammar points leads to the fact that students lack opportunities for communication and exposure to L2 (Le, 2011; Nguyen, 2013) Consequently, students fear that they easily make mistakes causing them to lose face, to be criticized, and to get shy whenever they are asked to speak the second language in front of their teachers and their peers (Ur
1995) Some even are inclined to and prefer using their mother tongue to express their ideas in speaking periods
Recognizing the disadvantages of applying traditional techniques, a lot of educators and researchers have already employed in ICT technologies in teaching and learning such as educational websites, blogs, social networks, etc (OECD, 2016; Cueva & Inga, 2017) One of the educational websites supporting teaching and learning L2 is TED-Ed Martínez et al (2018) found that the use of TED videos provided students with all the communicative elements allowing them to use English to express their ideas, especially, giving them reasons and promotions to speak In addition, Anderson (2016) adds that the use of videos like TED-Ed can help students to feel more relaxed, which enables students to grasp the lessons easier In contrast, Riddel (2003) concludes that the actions and movement of the speakers or pictures from the videos can easily make students frustrated leading to the fact that they cannot understand the lessons Furthermore, Sachdev (2014) says that in terms of quality if the videos that teachers find are not appropriate with students’ level, students will get distracted
Obviously, although many studies have been done on using TED-Ed to strengthen English speaking, there exist numerous contrary views that need taking into consideration Besides that, my school (Vinh Cuu high school) has not applied this tool in teaching English speaking and many teachers are still using English textbooks as the typical approach in their English classes Thus, there is an urgent need to investigate the effectiveness of applying TED-Ed to improve student’s speaking skill which this research aims to pursue in the context of Vinh Cuu high school where no similar research is conducted This study is expected to suggest using TED-Ed This study is expected to suggest using TED-Ed in speaking and learning so that the 11th grade students at Vinh Cuu high school can enhance their speaking skills.
Research aims
In spite of the fact that many studies have examined the use of TED-Ed on speaking and listening, in Vietnam there are not many studies on the effects of TED-Ed on high school learners’ speaking ability Besides, the research on this field has not been conducted Therefore, the study is conducted to:
[1] Investigate the effects of using TED-Ed to practice speaking on grade 11 students’ speaking skill
[2] Explore the students’ attitudes toward the use of TED Ed in speaking class at Vinh Cuu high school.
Research questions
This research makes attempt to seek the answer to the following research questions:
1 To what extent, does TED-Ed video as materials improve the 11 th grade students’ speaking at Vinh Cuu high school?
2 What are the 11 th grade students’ attitudes toward learning English speaking with TED-Ed?
Research hypothesis
The following is the hypothesis of the research question 1
H1: There is a significant difference in the mean gain scores (μ) of the speaking skills after the application of TED-Ed
Significance level is set at α=0.05
Delimitation
The researcher is designed to teach class 11 at Vinh Cuu high school, so she would like to do the research on students at this grade However, this lead to the fact that the current research is limited only to Vinh Cuu high school and then it narrows down to two classes of grade 11 in the school.
Definitions of terms
There are different definitions of key terms like speaking, TED-Ed, and attitudes; and here is the understanding of the terms in this study
Speaking: According to the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (2016), speaking is ―the action of conveying information or expressing one’s feeling in speech‖
TED-Ed: According to Wikipedia, TED-Ed is a YouTube channel providing many animated short videos about many different aspects of life for learners
Attitudes: Attitudes are internal states to express what people feel, believe and behave toward something or somebody.
Significance of the study
The study is expected to provide the overall view of TED-Ed’s impact on teaching and learning speaking skill at Vinh Cuu high school and students’ attitudes towards the use of TED-Ed in speaking learning Consequently, the outcome of the study will be able to give some following contributions First of all, this study can assist teachers to understand how to integrate TED-Ed into language learning speaking and to have a better view on learners’ attitudes towards this tool Expectedly, teachers at Vinh Cuu high school can apply them in teaching English speaking periods rather than using traditional methods Secondly, learners in EFL classrooms through TED-Ed are eagerly engaging in the lesson to improve their speaking skills.
Thesis structure
This study explores the effects of TED-Ed in enhancing students’ speaking skill There are five chapters consisting: [1] Introduction, [2] Literature Review, [3] Research Methodology, [4] Results and Discussion, and [5] Conclusion and Recommendations
Chapter 1 is the introduction including background of the study, the problem statement, the aims of the research, research questions, research hypothesis, delimitation, limitation, definitions of terms, the significances of the study and the thesis structure is also presented
Chapter 2 presents a selected recent literature which relates to the study about speaking skills, high school learners, attitudes, the introduction of TED-Ed and benefits and drawbacks of applying TED-Ed in teaching speaking and some previous studies on using TED-Ed in speaking classroom
Chapter 3 begins with detailed information about the research methodology used More specific, research design, research site and participants, instruments and measurement, materials, the study procedure, research data collection, analysis, validity and reliability are presented in detail
Chapter 4 presents the findings and discussion With the comparison of pre- and post-course tests in speaking, this chapter explores the effects of using TED-Ed in speaking periods Besides, it investigates students’ attitudes towards the use of TED-Ed Findings are based on the analysis of questionnaires The quantitative data will be presented to address the research questions
Chapter 5 summarizes the findings of the study and offers the pedagogical implications for applying TED-Ed in speaking periods to enhance students’ speaking skills It also makes some suggestions for application of TED-Ed in speaking English teaching in high schools in Vietnam
The introduction chapter has described background of the study and the research problem deriving from the research context and from the current relevant literature Moreover, research aims, research questions and research hypothesis of the study are stated And then, the definitions of terms have been provided to help avoid being confused The final part has been also introduced is the overall thesis structure.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Speaking skills
According to the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (2016), speaking is
―to say things; to speak in order to give information or to express feelings, ideas, etc.‖ Hybel (2001) agrees with this definition by stating that speaking is any process in which people share information, ideas and feeling, which involves body language manners and styles In a slightly different statement, Hughes (2002) points out that it is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving, and processing information Richards (2017) also gives more specific definition by sharing that speaking is the verbal use of language in original voice; uttering words; understanding and being able to use a language; expressing thought, ideas, and feelings and making a speech In short, speaking is the use of language in an active way to convey meanings or express ideas to make others understand them (Cameron, 2001) From the above definitions, speaking is considered a means to convey messages to others and simultaneously receive responses from them so that people could easily understand each other's wishes and contribute to each other
There is no doubt that speaking is an essential skill that students should master when learning a language The ability to communicate in a second language obviously and aptly is the main key to the success of the learner in school and success later in every phase of life (Brown, 1994) Besides, Richards (2001) also indicates the significance of this skill by stating that the mastery of speaking skills can bring language learners priority This means that learners are considered to be successful in language learning if they master their spoken language proficiency Moreover, in term of social activities, Fulcher and Reiter (2003) say that speaking is not only used to express ideas or give commands to others but to help form social relationships as well This results in many benefits for people in many aspects in life such as education, jobs, training activities, many other business purposes, and so on (Osborn, Osborn, & Osborn, 2008) However, to master this skill, it demands speakers’ many other minor skills such as listening, understanding, and responding
It fact, Cameroon (2001) confirms that speaking is a more important and demanding skill than other skills as it not only requires learners to understand but also to produce the language In this vein, Celce-Murcia (2001) agrees with Cameron by putting that speaking a language is considered one of the most demanding of the four skills
Learning speaking is harder than learning other skills as speaking happens in real-time and needs much time for speakers to prepare, revise and edit what they wish to say (Bailey, 2006) Nguyen and Tran (2015) conducted a study showing some related problems that high school students face during speaking learning periods, including the following ones:
The first and most problematic thing is that students have nothing to talk about possibly because teachers chose some topics which learners do not know a lot about For example, when talking about family, schools, friends and entertainment, students feel confident because the people and things above are familiar with their daily life However, students will be confused and fearful of speaking if they are asked to talk about what they have not experienced or read before such as travelling, culture and tradition Giving the same explanation, Bachman and Palmer (1996) state that speaker who has knowledge about the given topics will be more confident resulting in a better performance than speakers who do not According to Nguyen and Tran (2015), when being asked about which problems students encountered in speaking classes, a large majority of them (74%) strongly agree on the fact that they spoke very little or not at all
The second problem occurring in the class is the use of mother tongue Harmer (1991) explains numerous reasons why students use mother-tongue in class The first reason is that whenever students are asked to discuss a topic that they are incapable of and would like to express their opinions in their own language Another reason is that the use of mother-tongue is a natural thing to do Additionally, students will choose to use the first language to communicate with their classmates if there is no encouragement from their teachers The last reason is that if teachers frequently use their mother tongue, students will feel comfortable to follow the way teachers do
The last and also the most common problem is the fear of making mistakes when using the target language in front of classmates Ur (2000) claimed that learners are often inhibited from trying to say things in a foreign language in the classroom Also, students feel anxious and nervous when standing in front of the class to give a speech They always have the feeling that teachers will criticize them after they finish speaking This is caused by the lack of confidence and the fear of criticism
2.1.4 Teaching speaking with current technique in high schools
Teaching speaking in the eleventh grade largely relies on textbook designed by MOET Teachers and students often follow the three tasks in the English textbook including some of the activities such as practicing reading the dialogue, making similar conversation, talking in pair or groups basing on the given questions and then presenting in front of the class Textbooks are really the main resource that helps teachers to decide what to teach students So almost all students’ activities in the class and their homework are taken from and every student makes sure to have their own textbooks
The procedure that most of high school teachers follow in speaking periods is the PPP method, which stands for Presentation, Practice, and Production In presentation stage, teachers usually introduce or explain the goals of the lesson so that students know what they are going to learn and why For example, when teaching the lesson 10 ―Nature in Danger‖ in English textbook 11, teachers can show students a picture about animals and ask some related questions such as
―What animals are endangered and why?‖, then teachers can lead into the new lesson ―Nature in Danger‖ basing on students’ answer In this part, teachers can also show students new language including new words and structures supporting them in the next two stages: practice and production In practice stage students make use of the new language that teachers have just presented in making sentence, answering given questions, and repeating dialogues or conversation This helps to demonstrate whether students understand and use the language correctly or not Later, the students make their own sentences and conversation and this is considered production (Harmer, 2001) This stage gives students to have opportunities to communicate with their classmates by using their own languages
Although using textbook and following PPP provide students with opportunities to speak the second language in the class, it is not considered an effective way to teach speaking skill Spratt & Williams (2005) put it that if teachers only use textbooks without combining with other equipment such as videos, social media and etc can limit students’ creativity in doing and understanding the lesson So many studies have employed the use of Internet in learning and teaching languages Internet is considered one of the most essential inventions of humankind which ―helps to freely access to a wealth of information and content online and supports to find useful, high-quality information in an efficient manner‖ (Panto & Comas-Quinn, 2013, p.2) The use of the internet has a major impact on the student’s academic achievement and social life (Asdaque, Khan, & Rizvi, 2010) In fact, students can access various sources of knowledge through audio, videos, game shows, quizzes, podcast and so on In this way, learners can develop their speaking skills by getting exposed to a great amount of target language Moreover, students can connect with their friends, classmates, teachers and even native speakers, these ways of learning make great contributions to the improvement of their social relationships.
High school learners
2.2.1 Definition of high school learners
According Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (2016), ―high school learners are older children from grade 9 to grade 12, or aged approximately 14-18‖
In Vietnam, high school learners are also usually from fourteen to eighteen but this age group is only for grade 10 to grade 12 Research has shown that at this age, students are mature enough in terms of physical aspect but not completely developed in terms of personality Therefore, in learning and making some important decisions such as choosing their major or future career, high school students still need some certain helps from their families and teachers
Commonly, high school students in Vietnam in general and those in the countryside in particular do not have good performance in learning English speaking as they study in limited time at school, which lasts only 45 minutes per period Of course, this short amount of time is not enough for learners to practice the second language, especially when they are living in the integration period in which studying English is the need (Murphy, V 2014; Lason Hall, 2008) Consequently, teaching and learning English speaking in many high schools cannot reach success due to the lack of communication in the target language, the domination of L1, the lack of vocabulary, the fear of making mistakes and so on Therefore, finding out how to maximize English use in their classrooms is an urgent need for both learners and teachers
High school learners are classified as teenagers who are between children and adult At this age they reach the growth of self-consciousness, and the change of their bodies and minds (Brown, 2001) Knowing this, teachers need to make effort and have appropriate methods to teach them Instead of criticizing and making students confused with the mistakes students make, teacher should accept and help them recognize and correct by themselves Besides, teachers should discover and promote students' talents and strengths Obviously, teaching teenagers is difficult as it requires teachers not only to be good at their subject, but also to understand students' psychology
Shea (2021) also agrees that it is much more difficult to teach young adults because they are not fond of learning In fact, students these days are living in the age of technology that they can use to entertain rather than to learn Besides, research has showed that many high school students have a tendency to spend more time on social activities than academic ones However, it is undeniable that older language learners usually set their own goals when learning a language (Strong,
2009) To achieve these goals, it is necessary for teachers to know learners' characteristics because the more teachers get to know, the better they can teach them, in a way that they will learn (Schult, 2015)
According to Horwitz & Luo (2009), three main older learner characteristics found for language learning: motivation, anxiety, and beliefs about language learning Firstly, older learners have their own motivation for learning a language as well as the intensity of their feelings For example, some learners study the language because of a language requirement, while others expect to use the language in their future careers Knowing this, teachers easily make a decision in choosing appropriate approaches to teach language learners Secondly, older learners' anxiety includes uncomfortable feelings when learning or using a new language Several studies have found that approximately one third of foreign language learners experience anxiety in response to language learning (Horwitz, Tallon, and Luo, 2009) Most anxious language learners feel uncomfortable when speaking or listening to a new language Finally, older learners have established their beliefs in language learning And learners’ beliefs influence how student approach language learning and the language learning strategies that they choose to use Therefore, teachers need to clarify students' beliefs to encourage them or protect minority opinions within the class.
Attitudes
Definitions of attitudes can be explained in many ways but they have similar meaning According to Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (2016), ―attitude is the way you feel about someone or something, or the way that you behave towards something or somebody that show how you feel and think" Many psychologists also give definition of attitudes which is considered an evaluation towards things and human These evaluations can be positive or negative or even a mixed feeling toward people and issues Another definition from Lambert (1987, as cited in Porkaew, 2004), an attitude is defined as an original and consistent manner of thinking, feeling, and reacting to people and things such as social issues, or event in the environment These evaluations are based on affective, behavioral and cognitive information (Taylor, Peplau and Sears, 2006)
Wenden (1985, as cited in Al-Tamimi & Shuib, 2009) supposes that attitudes include three main components namely cognitive, affective, and behavioral Firstly, the cognitive component is related to the beliefs and ideas or opinions about an object According to Benson (2001), learner beliefs are what learners bring into the classroom learning environment based on their learning experiences He also states that learner beliefs may influence negatively or positively on learning and teaching practice and achievement For instance, the statement ―I believe that I can improve my speaking skill through TED-Ed‖ reflects the cognitive component which can be considered a positive attitude in learning Another component is the affective one which refers to feelings or emotion towards an object In other words, it expresses one’s likes or dislikes about an object (Nhapulo 2013) For example, when one says
―I like learning speaking with video‖, he expresses his attitudes of liking to learning speaking with video Finally, the behavioral component includes actions or behavioral intentions towards the object Jain (2014) also adds that behavior tendencies involve favorable responses favorable or unfavorable from someone towards people or things; for example when one says that "I will watch more TED-
Ed to improve my pronunciation" This implied that he is interested in learning speaking Regarding Wenden’s theory of attitudes, Van Els et al (1984, cited in Al-Tamimi & Shuib, 2009) claims that ―it does not really matter whether all or only one of the three components are measured; the relationship between the components is so close that sufficient information on an attitude can be obtained by measuring only one component, no matter which‖ (p 33).
The use of Internet in teaching and learning language
The Internet, known as the international network, is a vast network of computers around the world that are linked together via telephone lines or satellites to share information and resources Internet is a term encompassing other means of ICT such as e-mail, audio, video conferencing, television, video, film, discussion forums, and so on and so forth (Clarke, 2002) The Internet is described as a huge library without being limited which is much larger than any other library in the world (Ali.,2006) So without doubt, Internet brings a lot of benefits in providing valuable information and endless knowledge for human beings, especially teachers and students
With the continuous development of society and the accessibility of technology, students' use of Internet has changed a lot Today, students not only use Internet to entertain but also support their learning Indeed, Swanson and Walker
(2015) surveyed 235 students in the United States and found that they used social networks for both learning and entertaining purposes Similarly, after surveying 11 students in the UK about the use of technology by using a questionnaire, Strachan and Aljabali (2015) found that Internet was utilized in both inside and outside the classroom This tool enables students to engage in the lesson discussion, to communicate, to share the lessons with each other Moreover, internet helps students communicate and exchange knowledge no matter they live in the same or different country (Luambano and Nawe, 2006) This actually helps students a lot in improving their language because they can communicate and exchange knowledge with their classmates or the native speakers over the world through the Internet Indeed, Internet allows second language learners to find a ―place at a table‖ to
―express themselves‖ and talk to a global audience (Mitra and Watts, 2002) Furthermore, students can learn languages through educational websites such as TED videos These videos give students a "self-help" learning source which they cannot find in their textbook (Arsham, 2002) This enables students to enhance and make their language learning process easier (Wong, 2013)
For teachers, the Internet supports teachers to learn and to teach It provides opportunities for teachers to share their teaching experiences, construct valuable resources, and learn from each other Salmon (2005) agrees by stressing that the Internet creates chances for collaborative learning to develop through the share of teaching experiences, valuable resources, and the wonderful construction of knowledge Besides, teachers can take advantage of the Internet in teaching For example, teachers can design lessons, tests, and exercises for students to do online Teachers also use the Internet as a useful source to find documents such as pictures, and educational videos to support their teaching or to introduce to their students so that they can study by themselves This actually contributes to L2 improvement because 80-85% of the language appearing on the Web is the English language (Ali.,2006).
TED
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design They are the three broad areas contributing to shaping our world TED is a nonprofit and potential forum established in 1984 attracting inspiring leaders and lecturers in various fields from science, business to global issues to spread their ideas TED.com is a website in which educators can freely provide a lot of useful content related to educational environment These contents make sure to meet mission of promoting ―ideas that are worth spreading.‖ The talks from the TED videos are presented in the form of short and powerful talks lasting about 18 minutes or less (Coxhead and Bytheway,
2014) TED has a number of related projects and TED events such as TEDx, TED Books, TED Prize and so on Two useful and popular programs of TED supporting foreign language learners are TED Talks and TED-Ed
As mentioned above, TED-Ed is one of TED programs stands for TED Education TED-Ed is a program that follows on from the original TED Talks speaker platform So, similar to TED Talks, before gaining TED-Ed logo, its polished videos must have gone through a very strict process of checks (Edwards,
2021) Videos of TED-Ed are interesting and trustworthy because the people who are invited to deliver their speeches are professionally well trained including animators, educators, academic researchers, journalists, etc Generally, the time for a TED-Ed video is shorter than TED Talks only from 5 to 15 minutes, but it provides a wide range of reliable, interesting and educational information discussing facts and myths about every single topic It can be said that TED-Ed was born with the aim of supporting teachers and sparking the curiosity from the learners around the world In fact, Edwards, (2021) said that there were more than 250,000 educators joined in the global TED-Ed network to create the educational resources supporting students in their learning Batch (2014) put it that TED-Ed is a helpful and reliable material allowing teachers to use in their lessons and helping students to discover the world More interestingly, the way TED-Ed works is very simple as it is a web-based platform offering videos stored on YouTube Also, these videos have multilingual subtitles and learners can easily download them with a click Griffin (2015) Additionally, it has transcripts in many different languages including English making people all over the world access more conveniently
2.5.2 Advantages and disadvantages of using TED-Ed in speaking class
2.5.2.1 Advantages of using TED-Ed in speaking class
There are a number of skill advantages of using TED-Ed in teaching and learning languages in general and in speaking in particular Many researchers have evidence that the use of TED-Ed brings a great deal of usefulness in teaching and learning English speaking such as improving lexical resources, grammar, content, gesture, inspiring motivation and helping organize ideas
First of all, Idayani (2018) conducted a study on 56 students who were formed into 2 groups including an experiment group and a control group with 28 students in each group The aim of this study was to investigate students’ pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and content learning through the use of TED-
Ed When comparing the results on pretest and posttest of the two groups, the researcher found that the experimental group did better than those in the control counterpart As a result, the researcher drew to the conclusion that TED-Ed helped to strengthen students’ speaking skills in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar
Secondly, TED-Ed also enables learners to improve their gestures and body language when conveying their speech as students can imitate the speakers in the videos However, high school teachers focus much on the utterances which have to make sure about grammatical structures and correct pronunciation rather the useful non-verbal languages No one can deny the fact that teachers sometimes let students make presentations and show them how to adjust their expression, gestures after students' performance However, presentation like this cannot be carried out frequently because of the limited time at school Therefore, instead of spending time showing students to use appropriate gestures, facial expression and eye-contact, teachers can use TED-Ed to convey this useful knowledge, which is more time- saving and effective (Li, 2016)
Moreover, more than 90% of survey respondents admitted that they are more inspired to watch English videos than to read English books By watching these videos, students get to know more about the topics, which helps them to become more confident and better speakers In fact, Salem (2019) conducted a study revealing that the speakers invited to give the speeches in TED Talks inspired the participants to deliver public speaking appropriately
What is more, Li (2016) also admitted the effect of watching TED Talks on students’ motivation She concluded using TED Talks to teach made students more enjoyable Especially, using TED Talks really succeeds in transferring students from passive learners to the active ones who can discover knowledge by themselves
The use of TED-Ed not only improves learners' lexical resources but increases students' ability to organize ideas as well The reason for this is that when listening to TED-Ed speakers, learners can imitate their style, understand the use of language, and learn the way to organize their ideas through authentic examples from TED-Ed (Stevenson, 2013) Many Vietnamese speakers do not feel flexible and confident when speaking in public One of the main causes for this problem is the lack of idea-organizing ability They have a tendency to speak what they think without organizing and getting to the main points Some even jump to the second idea while they do not finish the first idea yet In contrast, English native speaker make their speech clearer by providing topic sentence and then continue with supporting sentences to make the main points as clear as possible Undoubtedly, by listening and watching TED-Ed often, learners can imitate the way the native speakers make their speeches (Li et al., 2016) Certainly, they learn to organize their ideas and divide their speech into 3 main parts: introduction, body and conclusion
Finally, Richards & Renandya (2002) recite that one possible method to stimulate and give students opportunities to talk is providing them with extensive exposure to authentic language through audio-visual stimuli such as videos, and films They allow teachers to introduce a new topic of a lesson, present content, provide remediation, and promote enrichment (Smaldino, Lowther, and Russell,
2007) What is more, in his thesis, Berk (2009) said that a short video clip may make an appreciable difference in the students’ moods, motivation, and attitude Also, Cakir (2006) put it that all audio-visual materials will make positive contributions to language learning as long as teachers use them at the right time, and in the right way
2.5.2.2 Disadvantages of using TED-Ed in speaking class
Instead of advantages as mentioned above, TED-Ed contains some disadvantages in it-self In his study, Riddel (2003: 223) concluded that the use of videos in the classroom can cause students to be frustrated due to speakers’ action and movement Moreover, the size of many schools is very big with more than 40 students in a class This leads to the fact that many of them cannot see the screen and grasp the content of the lesson Furthermore, Sachdev (2014) said that if quality of the videos is bad or low, students cannot completely grasp the contents of the videos especially primary and secondary pupils Another drawback is that almost all TED-Ed is difficult, so it takes time and effort to find videos that suit students’ level and prepare for the lesson taught with videos If the videos that teachers find are not appropriate with students’ level, it can discourage students’ learning spirit or cause them distracted.
Previous studies of using TED-Ed on students' speaking learning
In this part, a few pieces from the literature concerned with the use of educational videos like TED-Ed in teaching and learning speaking are presented The aim of reviewing some previous research was to support the writing of the research methodology and methods Although there was a great deal of research involving the topic, only a few studies below were highlighted
Nurhidayat, E & Syarifah, E (2019) researched the effects of TED Talks on learners’ voice and accent, which are considered a part of pronunciation To answer the research question whether TED-Ed helped to improve students’ voice and accent, the researchers did on 22 students from the second semester Interviews, questionnaires, and teacher journal were used to collect data The results of this study indicated that the students’ pronunciation, specifically voice and accent was much improved Furthermore, learning with TED-Ed enabled students to distinguish several English accents Additionally, they understood the messages which were conveyed in the videos they watched better Besides, the participants gave positive responses to the implementation of TED-Ed in speaking lessons Therefore, the research drew that TED-Ed were useful material for English teaching and learning, which helped to attract students’ attention and get them to relate to the language spoken in actual contexts
Ferid (2019) conducted a study named ―The Effectiveness of Using TED-Ed video in Improving Students Public Speaking Skills in Senior High School.‖ The aim of the study was to explore the effectiveness of using TED-ED video in enhancing students’ public speaking skill and their perception towards using this tool in speaking class To achieve this aim, the researcher used several instruments to collect the data including pre-test, post-test and questionnaires The tests were administered as the quantitative data to seek the answer whether TED talks could help to enhance students’ public speaking Close-ended questionnaires aimed find out students’ perception about the use of TED Talks Thirty four high school students were recruited to participate in the survey The results of tests showed that students had significant improvement in their speaking In addition, students had positive responses to questionnaire because the teacher used a lot of instructional methods and strategies to meet students’ need in speaking lessons Therefore, it was concluded that using education videos like TED Talks is a useful way to improve students’ public speaking skill
Nugraheni, (2017) aimed to find out students’ beliefs about the use of TED Talks in improving their speaking skills A study combining quantitative and qualitative method was conducted at Sanata Dharm School In which the instruments used to gather data for the research were questionnaire and interview The results indicated that the teaching and learning periods went smoothly, and the environment in the class became fun when learning with this tool Furthermore, students believe that they get knowledge about listening and speaking Also, they can be motivated because the speakers tend to tell about what they had been through, so students get a lot of ideas and valuable information Additionally, most students enjoy the videos that teacher uses to teach Basing on the result, it can be included that students have positive beliefs about the use of Ted Talks video to improve their speaking skills
Taking another perspective, Martínez et al (2015) also conducted a study in a public school located in Bogota Colombia with 31 students There were 15 girls and 16 boys studying grade 11 Their ages were between 16 and 18 years old This action research aimed to find out the impact of TED Talks on teaching and learning English The instruments used to collect data were interviews, questionnaires, and teacher journals The pedagogical intervention occurred in four sessions and each session was based on the principles of pre-watching, watching and after-watching activities After having given the treatment, collecting and analyzing the data, the researchers were able to conclude that the use of TED-Ed provided students with all the communicative elements allowing them to use English to express their ideas, especially, giving them reasons and promotions to speak
In the Vietnamese context, Nguyen et al (2020 carried out a research on using TED-Ed as authentic materials to initiate debates for students in the English classroom 170 English-majored students at Hanoi University of Industry (HaUI) in Vietnam participated in this study Data for this study included an online survey delivered to students who took part the experiment and a 15-minute semi-structured interview with seven randomly selected students After three months of teaching lessons by using TED-Ed, researchers collected data The analyzed results collected from the questionnaires showed the effectiveness of body languages gestures Also, they figured out that students are fully aware of the role of non-verbal language in making a debate Moreover, the researcher showed that concern about how TED enhances personal performance in debate activities Most interviewers can express ideas gained from the speakers, understand the issues to be discussed, take part in the debate and speak English more confidently and fluently after video watching In a word, the application of TED-Ed works successfully in motivating students as language learners and fluent debaters
The above studies confirm the effectiveness of using educational videos such as TED-Ed and TED Talks in speaking classrooms The improvement in speaking skills results from creating motivation, confidence, interaction, interesting activity and improving pronunciation and fluency Moreover, students have positive attitudes towards participating in speaking class using TED-Ed In the Vietnamese context, although only few researches have been done in this domain, the research paper examined the effects of using TED-Ed in enhancing students’ confidence and fluency
In short, although TED-Ed is proven to have had positive effects on students’ speaking abilities and attitudes by many previous studies, it still existed some drawbacks The first disadvantage is that the speaking materials between the two groups such as the content of the task, vocabulary, and structure are different Another shortcoming is involved in the research method as some studies are done with only 1 group of participants Therefore, it is not sure that whether learning speaking with TED helps to improve students’ speaking skills or not because, in fact, textbook also helps to enhance students’ performance In order to overcome these problems, this study investigated the effects of using TED-Ed on students’ speaking skill by using TED for EG and textbook for CG To make sure a reasonable comparison between the two groups, the two types of materials conveyed the same topics, tasks and time
This chapter has provided readers with the theoretical background and some previous studies First of all, the researcher presents some key concepts involved in speaking including the nature of speaking, some problems of this skill, and current techniques that are applied in many high schools Then the chapter continues with the introduction of TED-Ed by giving the definition and the benefits of using TED-
Ed in speaking class Another important part of this chapter is about learners' attitudes So the definition of attitudes, components of attitudes, and students' attitudes in language learning are also discussed The chapter ends with some studies that are relevant to the current one.
METHODOLOGY
Research design
Creswell (2012) stated that deciding what approach to use for any research is very important because there are many types of studies such as quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method In this study, the researcher employed a quantitative approach to collect and analyze numerical data According to Creswell (2012), a quantitative method is an approach dealing with numerical data and measuring in a systematic way of a certain phenomenon and its relationship
Phakiti (2014) put it that the researcher could select and assign participants randomly because this helped to minimize the potential effects of confounding variables on the results of research However, there are many cases where researchers could not apply random assignments For example, applying this assignment may disrupt classroom learning in the school (Creswell, 2012) Therefore, in this study, the researcher chose convenience sampling to assign participants into 2 groups composing an experiment group (EG) and a control group (CG) Consequently, a quasi-experimental research type was utilized because the researcher was assigned to teach the two classes at the school in the academic year 2021-2022 In the study, the dependent variable was the eleventh-grade students' speaking skills, while the independent variable was the use of TED-Ed The researcher applied the pre-and post-test and questionnaire to this quasi-experimental design
In details, the pre-test and post-test were used to assess the causality of TED-
Ed intervention between the treated and untreated group Both of them experienced the pre-test at the same time in order that the researcher knows students' current speaking level and makes sure their equal level in speaking skills They both learnt the same textbook Two groups went through the same stages and aims including pre-speaking, while-speaking and post-speaking In the first stage, the researcher would like to activate knowledge for two groups, so the researcher could provide vocabulary, phrases and structures related to the topics However, in the second the experimental group received TED-Ed treatment in which they worked in groups, pairs, or in individuals to watch TED-Ed and do some tasks such as filling in the blanks, choosing correct answers, doing role play and answering questions related to the TED-Ed that they watch On the other hand, the control group was taught with traditional teaching techniques such as making sentences with given words and structures, reading dialogue, making conversation basing on models and doing exercises in the students’ textbook In the last stage, the researcher create opportunities for both groups to speak by giving tasks like discussing and answering questions about the topics they learn The detail procedure of lesson plan was presented in Appendix page 99 to 105 At the end of the eight-week-quasi- experimental study, the post-test was distributed to the experimental group and control group to identify whether the students' speaking ability between the two groups after having applied TED-Ed was different or not The research design is succinctly depicted as follows:
Table 3.1 below succinctly depicts the research design:
Table 3.1: Quasi-experimental research design
Group Pre-test Treatment Post-test
Also, to explore students’ attitudes towards learning with TED-Ed, a five- point Likert-scale with 20 items was delivered to students in the experimental group.
Research site and participants
The research site of this study was Vinh Cuu high school which is located in Vinh Cuu district, Dong Nai province The school was built in 1990 and then rebuilt in 2002 In the academic school year of 2021-2022, there were 36 classes with 12 tenth-grade classes, 12 eleventh-grade classes and 12 twelfth-classes Each class had around 40 to 43 students, so the total number of students was nearly 5000
At the school, English subject was one of the three compulsory subjects, which was taught by nine teachers of English The school required all students to have and learn ―Tiếng Anh 11‖textbooks which were designed by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) Upon the syllabus, these students had three periods for a week and each period lasted 45 minutes At the site of this research, all classrooms were well-equipped with a TV, louder speakers, blackboard and some other facilities These facilities enabled learning activities using TED-Ed to take place more conveniently
The participants were the two classes that the researcher was assigned to teach in the academic school year 2021-2022, namely class 11A10 and class 11A11 Class 11A10 was assigned as the EG and class 11A11 as the CG The number of participants in each group was 40 students The two groups were selected via convenient sampling method Creswell (2012) stated that participants in this type of nonprobability sampling are chosen based on availability and convenience Also, members of the target population meet certain practical criteria like easy accessibility, geographical proximity, availability at a given time, or the willingness to participate (Etikan, Musa & Alkassim 2016) Moreover, the participants of EG and CG share the same characteristics such as grade, years of learning, speaking practicing time per week and their current speaking level.
Research instruments and measurement
To find out the answers to the two research questions, two instruments were employed to collect data consisting of tests and questionnaires Pretest and posttest were designed to measure the effects of using TED-Ed in teaching and learning speaking skill And questionnaire was used to explore the eleventh students’ attitudes towards using TED-Ed The purposes of the instruments are described in Table 3.2 below
Table 3.2: The purposes of the instruments
Research questions Research instrument RQ1: To what extent, does TED-Ed affect the 11 th grade students’ speaking skills at Vinh Cuu high school?
RQ2: What are the 11 th grade students’ attitudes toward learning
English speaking with TED-Ed?
3.3.1 Pre-test and post-test
Administrating questionnaire, pretest and the posttest to two groups
After the study had been approved by the principle of the school, the researcher met the two classes and told them about the research purposes and procedure, and they were all voluntarily agreed to participate in the experimental course, some of them said that they were eager to join the course to practice speaking skills for their final exam
In the first week before the treatment, the first questionnaire was administered to 80 students in the two classes for their background information So as to get reliable and valid information, the researcher explained the purpose of the questionnaire and showed the participants how to answer each question All of the questions were fully answered within five minutes Then, all questionnaires were collected and the participants had a 05-minute break After the break, the participants took the pre-test The purpose, format, and requirement of the pre-test were clearly announced to the participants before delivering the pre-test papers It took the participants around 5 minutes to complete their speaking test under the supervision of two proctors who are the researcher’s colleague
To see the difference in listening comprehension between the two groups, the post-test was administered to both groups after the course The administration procedure of the post-test and the pre-test was almost the same After the post-test, the EG had a 10-minute break and then answered the second questionnaire to show their attitudes towards using TED-Ed in speaking learning To make sure that the data collected was reliable and valid, the aim of the questionnaire and the way to answer each question were carefully explained before the students marked their chosen options It took them 10 minutes to complete the questionnaire
The assessment of tests for students in this study based on Decision 26/2020/TT of MOET for the high school students Both pretest and posttest had the same format, allocated time and rubrics for marking The pre-test, given to students in the first class meeting and aimed to examine the two groups' current level of speaking skill, while the post-test aimed to investigate the students’ speaking improvement after 8 weeks of the treatment There were 2 parts in each test In the first part, students were given a topic and had 1 minute to prepare before speaking Then students had two minutes to present In the second part, the examiner asked students 2 questions related to the topic that they had presented
The topics of these tests were taken from English Textbook 11 The tests were all referenced from M c Carter, Easton & Ash’s book named ―A Book for IELTS 2 nd Edition‖ (2003) The researcher took the tests in this book to make sure that the format and the level of difficulty of the pre-test and post-test were the same
(see Appendix 2 and Appendix 3) Additionally, these tests’ also had similar format of the final speaking exams in Vinh Cuu high school However, before the participants took the tests, they had been well informed about the format and the time for the tests This helped students avoid being confused and nervous To score the pre-test and post-test, a 10-point scale was employed The maximum scores of the two tests were 10 marks, which was equivalent to B1- 4.5 points of IELTS according to Cambridge Language Assessment The scoring rubrics for students' speaking tests were adapted from the Teachers’ Training Course of the Department of Education and Training for all high school English teachers in Dong Nai province in the academic year 2021-2022
According to Cohen, et al (2011), ―a questionnaire is a useful instrument for gathering factual information, data on attitudes and preferences, beliefs and prediction, opinions, behavior, and experience-both in past and present time‖ (p.90) Questionnaire items can be open or closed-ended However, items in questionnaire are close-ended form in this study, because it is easy to analyze statistically
Table 3.3: Content of part I of questionnaire
3 Ways for learning speaking skill
4 Time of practice speaking per week
The first part of the questionnaire (see Appendix 1) included 5 questions about gender, materials to learn English, the number of years studying English, time practicing speaking English outside class, and students' self-evaluation of their
English level These questions aimed to obtain information on the general characteristics of 80 participants from two groups All of the questions were translated into Vietnamese so that students understand and answered easily
The second part of the questionnaires was designed by using a five-point Likert Scale format which ranged "1-Strongly Disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Uncertain, 4- Agree, 5-Strongly Agree‖ The aim of this second part of the questionnaire (see Appendix 6) was to investigate students' attitudes ( cognitive, behavioral and emotional attitudes) towards using TED-Ed in speaking learning; therefore, the questionnaire was given to the experimental group only Participants in this group had 30 minutes to read and to give the answer All the questions were also translated into Vietnamese to make sure that all students could understand and choose appropriately
The questionnaire consisted of three scales which measured three different components of attitudes, namely cognitive, behavioral and emotional attitudes which were adapted from Pour-Mohammadi, Aibidin & Alzwari’s study (2012) It included 20 items divided into 3 clusters The first cluster concluding item 1 to item
6 aimed to find out students' cognitive attitudes on using TED-Ed in speaking learning The second cluster including item 7 to 12 were about the students' behavioral attitudes about using TED-Ed in speaking learning And the last cluster- item 13 to item 20 aimed at measuring students' emotional attitudes towards speaking learning with TED-Ed
Table 3.4: Content of part II of questionnaire
Research Question Items Variables to measure
11 th grade students’ 1-6 Students' cognitive attitudes on using TED-Ed in speaking learning attitudes toward learning English speaking with TED-
7-12 Students' behavioral attitudes about using
TED-Ed in speaking learning
13-20 Students' emotional attitudes toward speaking learning with TED-Ed
Piloting the questionnaire for students
The questionnaire consisted of 2 parts Part 1 with five questions designed to investigate students’ general information including years of learning English, materials to learn, time for practicing per week and students’ self-evaluation Part 2 with 20 questions dealt with students’ attitude towards leaning speaking with TED-
Ed The original version of questions was written in English and delivered to students on paper Ten students voluntarily helped the researcher to pilot the questionnaire by reading and answering the questions on the paper Besides, the researcher also had 2 colleagues to proofread and give comments for the questionnaire After students completed the questions, the researcher asked students some questions to find out whether students understand the content of the questions clearly For the first part of the questionnaire, students did not understand the meanings of the words ―proficiency‖, and ―fair‖ For the second part of the questionnaire, 2 colleagues suggested more words related to emotional attitude: prefer and enjoy and revised the structures of question 4 and 5 so that they were clearer in meanings Besides, when being asked about any difficult words, all students could not understand the words ―innovative‖ and ―accents‖ Six students could understand two-thirds of the questionnaire items while the rest of students could not know the meaning of the items They almost chose ―uncertainties‖ because they did not understand the items Therefore, all questionnaire items were translated into Vietnamese when delivering students to make sure that all students could understand well and complete them.
Materials
The material the researcher used for the EG and CG was the textbook ―Tiếng
Anh 11”, published by MOET This book consisted of 16 units learned in 2 semesters It meant that students studied 8 units for each semester There were 5 sections for 1 unit which was equivalent to 5 periods including Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language Focus period Unfortunately, due to the Covid 19- pandemic in the academic year 2021-2022, the researcher’s school was allowed to reduce the syllabus in the second term So the researcher only taught 3 sections a week which were Reading, Speaking and Language Focus In this study, the researcher selected 8 Units of the second semester which were presented in Table 3.5 below:
Table 3.5: Teaching materials for the two groups
Week Date Activities EG CG
Reviewing for pre-test Giving pre-test to two groups
Work TED-Ed Traditional method
Environment TED-Ed Traditional method
Population TED-Ed Traditional method
Teaching Unit 8: The Wonder of the World TED-Ed Traditional method
Giving post-test to two groups
Delivering the questionnaire to the experimental group
The researcher started each face-to-face lesson of the experimental group by greeting and questions related to their health, their weekend and weather, etc The next step was watching a TED video Basing on the topics of the English textbook for grade 11, the researcher found suitable educational videos The procedures of the lesson with TED-Ed consisted of pre-watching, while-watching, and after- watching stages
Pre-watching stage: at this stage, students guessed the main topic of the video or teachers asked some questions related to the topic Additionally, teachers could provide students with some new words appearing in the videos To facilitate the vocabulary teaching process, teachers need to well prepare at home the way to teach For example, teachers could ask students to guess the meanings of the words through pictures or the context of sentences taken from a TED-Ed and then students could make sentences so that they remembered the new words
While-watching the video: teachers asked students to watch TED-Ed and filled in the blanks while watching This helped students to pay much attention to the speech and understand the main ideas of the video In fact, if teachers did not give any task while students watched, some of them might not focus on watching Besides, such a task like this enables students to decode and recognize individual words in the speech of a native English speaker
After watching videos: teacher prepared some activities to help students practise speaking as much as possible For example, teachers asked students some questions about the general and key points of the videos These kinds of questions helped teachers to clarify whether students grasp the main ideas from a large amount of information in the video Also, teacher asked students to summarize the main ideas of the videos, make similar presentation or do role-play like the speaker in TED-Ed’s discussion Or teacher asked some questions related to content of TED-Ed such as ―Do you agree with the speaker? Do you have the same experience with speaker?‖ This allowed students to express their own opinions and use their own English
During such a lesson, students not only improved their speaking skills, but listening skill as well Moreover, they can improve the way they work in groups and support each other, enhance their vocabulary and pronunciation and broaden their knowledge about a certain aspect from the TED –Ed
Eight lessons of the control group covered the same topics as experimental one Activities of each lesson mainly based on English textbook which were presented in the lesson plans (see in Appendix 7.1 and Appendix 7.2) However, the researcher adapted some activities in the "Tiếng Anh 11" for CG to make sure that the activities of the two groups were assigned similarly.
Training procedure
After having obtained permission from the headmaster of Vinh Cuu high school, the researcher told the participants about the research purposes and procedure All of them agreed to take part in the experimental course enthusiastically The next important thing to do was administering the questionnaire to 80 students in both CG and EG so that the researcher could get their background information After explaining the purposes and showing participants the way to answer, the researcher delivered to the participants and asked them to finish in 5 minutes Then, the researcher collected all questionnaires and had participants take a short rest After the break, the participants were informed about the purposes, format and requirement of pretest and took the pre-test After the pretest, the EG studied speaking skill with TED while the CG studied with traditional techniques basing on English textbook 11 called ―Tieng Anh 11‖ After 8 weeks’ treatment, the posttest was delivered to both groups in order to examine the difference in speaking skills between the two groups The administration procedure of posttest was the same as the pretest Finally, to measure students’ attitude towards the use of TED Talks in speaking lesson, questionnaire was distributed to the participants of the EG only The questionnaire was translated into Vietnamese and explained carefully to the participants before handing out to them.
Data analysis
Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), version 26 was used to analyze the data of pretest, posttest and questionnaire
3.6.1 Data analysis of the pre-test and post-test
To seek the answer for the first research question whether the eleventh grade students enhance their speaking skill after learning with TED or not, the researcher collected the data of pretest and posttest However, it is the condition the data should meet normal distribution
Table 3.6: Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality
Table 3.6 showed the pretest’s Sig of both EG and CG was 078 and 032 respectively Similarly, the posttest’s Sig of the two groups was 060 and 059 They all were bigger than 05, which showed that the data set was normally distributed Therefore, parametric tests including independent samples t-test and paired-sample t-test was used In details, Independent Samples T-tests were run on the pretest of the two groups to examine whether there was a significant difference in speaking skills between EG and CG before the treatment After that, based on each group's scores on both pretest and posttest, the researcher ran the Paired Samples T-tests Finally, Independent Samples T-tests were conducted to check the scores of the post-test performed by both EG and CG From that, the researcher could conclude whether the treatment helped the EG get better results than those of the CG or not
3.6.2 Data analysis of the second questionnaire
To seek the answer to the second research question, descriptive statistics was employed to analyze 20 questionnaire items collected from experimental students’ responses First, the reliability of the questionnaire was checked by computing Cronbach’s alpha Then, the researcher measured students' cognitive, behavioral and emotional attitudes towards using TED in speaking class in turn based on the Frequency (F), Percentage (P), Mean (M), and Standard Deviation (St.D) of each questionnaire item run by SPSS In detail, Brown (2001) put it that frequency helped to count the times that individuals did the same things The percentage was a sort of tool integrating with frequencies to describe a phenomenon in a comprehensible and clear way In addition, Mean (M) was the learners' responses to the items analyzed according to the below levels of agreement:
Reliability
Creswell (2012) stated that reliability refers to the stability and consistency of the measurement There are many kinds of reliability such as test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and inter-rater reliability In this study, the researcher used a pretest, posttest, and questionnaire to seek the answers to the two research questions So, the reliability of the tests and questionnaire were measured by using the inter-rater reliability and internal consistency
Reliability of pretest and posttest
To make sure the reliability of the pretest and posttest, the researcher employed inter-rater reliability Specifically, the researcher had two colleagues rate the tests They scored 80 pretests and posttest separately based on the speaking rubrics including four criteria which are content, fluency, coherence, pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar (see Appendix4) The scoring rubric was adapted from the Teacher’s Training course of Department of Education and Training for all high school teachers in Dongnai province This rubric was also applied at the researcher’s school, so two raters were trained how to score basing on the rubric before At first, all students sat in waiting room, the researcher had one colleague observe students to make sure that the topics of the exam were not revealed Then, the researcher would call students one by one to go to the exam room to take speaking test Here, two other colleagues worked as raters here would give students topic and gave them 1 minute to prepare and then 2 minutes to present After that, the examiners would ask two related questions to the topic and score them Students finishing their speaking test could go home Two raters scored separately, and then the researcher used the average scores of these two raters as the data to analyze The researcher worked as a supervisor during rating As she taught two groups and knew who were good and not good, which easily affected the justice of scoring process Thus, a high inter-rater reliability was found Besides that the researcher took the tests from the book named ―A book for IELTS‖ of M Carter, Eastin & Ash’s book edited in 2003 This helped to make sure the same format and level of two tests
Reliability of the second questionnaire
Besides, to measure the reliability of the second questionnaire, the researcher utilized Cronbach's alpha to check whether each scale was reliable or not Pallant
(2011) said that the results of Cronbach’s alpha would be good if it were above 70 Conversely, it was lowly reliable if the value was under 30 The Cronbach’s Alpha of 20 Items in this research was relatively high (a=.819), which suggested that all of the Items were sufficiently reliable for the research (see Table 3.7) Moreover, questionnaires were adapted from Pour Mohammadi Aibidin & Alzwari’s (2012) and Hanh (2018) These questionnaires suited with this current research’s objectives So they enabled researcher to measure what she would like to measure
Table 3.7: Reliability of the Items
Validity
"Validity refers to what we believe reflects, meaningful, significance, to a broader, relevant population" (Wiersma and Jurs, 2009, p 355) Some types of validity are construct validity, content validity, criterion validity, internal validity, and so on This study was ensured internal validity, which was defined as the degree of the differences of the dependent variable after the treatment related to independent variable (Mackey and Gass, 2005) The internal and construct validity of this research was showed through:
Fraenkel and Wallen (2009) stated that construct validity refers to the degree to which evidence obtained is consistent with theoretical expectation To ensure this validity, the researcher defined attitude and adapted the questionnaires of the previous researches Besides, the researcher asked two other English teachers check whether the items could measure the construct attitudes or not Furthermore, the results of 819 indicated that the three scales had goo internal consistence
Internal validity refers to the extent that differences have been found for the dependent variable directly related to the independent variable (Mackey and Gass, 2005 This validity was made sure through the following work:
The researcher taught both the experimental group and control group with similar teaching methods including topics of the lessons, content, and activities for the two groups This made sure that no group experienced the better teaching method
The research had students sit in the waiting rooms with the observation of the two proctors to ensure that students do not reveal the topics of the speaking tests Additionally, the waiting rooms and the room for testing were spacious, cool and equipped with fan, air conditioner and light to make sure that students felt comfortable
The proctors told participants the purposes of the tests so that they feel relaxed and comfortable to complete the tests without feeling worried, shy, or embarrassed when they got low marks
The participants’ characteristics of the two groups were similar as they had nearly the same time of practicing English and level of speaking skills So it can be concluded that thanked to the treatment, the students' speaking ability is statistically significant different
Chapter 3 has described the research methodology specifically The chapter began with the description of research design, research site and participants Then, the two instruments including pretest, posttest and questionnaire helping to seek the answer to the research questions were clearly presented Additionally, material and training procedure for the experimental course was also described Finally, the chapter ended with data collection, data analysis and the examined qualities consisting reliability and validity of the instruments.
DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
Data analysis
The aim of the first part of the questionnaire was to obtain information about participants’ characteristics such as years of learning English, practicing time for speaking outside the class per week and students' self-evaluation of their English level To begin with, the number of students of the two groups was equal with 40 students in each group Especially, the number of male and female was also nearly the same Particularly, in control group, there were 19 male and 21 female while in experiment group, 21 students were male and the rest was female Next, the number of year that students had learned English in the two groups was almost the same In details, more than 90% of students of both groups had studied English for at least 7 years to 10 years Only 2 students in CG and 1 student in EG learned English over
10 years Besides, the time students in both groups practicing English outside the class per week was slightly different Specifically, the hours practicing English outside the class per week of the CG ranged from 1 to 4, while those of the EG range from 2 to 3 Finally, students’ current level of speaking skill of the two groups was similar Particularly, none of the students evaluated themselves at very bad or excellent rate Additionally, only 1 student in each group thought that their speaking skill was poor Moreover, almost all students of the two groups specifically 85% of the CG group and 87 % of the EG evaluated their speaking skills at a fair rate So it was concluded that students’ speaking ability between the two groups was not significant different
In conclusion, the participants’ characteristics of CG and EG were similar to each other because they had nearly the same years of learning English and level of speaking skills So the statistically significant differences in the students' speaking ability, if any, are thanked to the treatment
4.1.2 Data analysis of the tests
Before these tests were implemented, the researcher conducted a test to determine whether the results of pretest and posttest are normally distributed or not
As the number of participants was small, (N