AN INVESTIGATION INTO DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING AND TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL AT TRAN QUY CAP SECONDARY SCHOOL IN NUI THANH DISTRICT

Kinh Tế - Quản Lý - Khoa học xã hội - Giáo Dục - Education QUANG NAM UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ~~~~~~~~~~ GRADUATION PAPER AN INVESTIGATION INTO DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING AND TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL AT TRAN QUY CAP SECONDARY SCHOOL IN NUI THANH DISTRICT Student: NGUYEN THI KIM YEN Student Code: 2113010846 MAJOR: ENGLISH Academic Course: 2013 – 2017 Supervisor PHAN THI DIEU HIEN, M.A Quang Nam, May 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................. LIST OF FIGURES................................................................................................................ STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ...................................................................................I ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ III CHAPTER I ........................................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Rationale..................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Aims and Objectives ....................................................................................................... 2 1.2.1 Aims ................................................................................................................................. 2 1.2.2 Objectives........................................................................................................................ 2 1.3 Research Questions........................................................................................................ 3 1.4 Scope of the Study ........................................................................................................... 3 1.5 Organization .................................................................................................................... 3 CHAPTER 2........................................................................................................................... 4 LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................... 4 2.1Theoretical Background ................................................................... 4 2.1.1 Definition of Speaking ................................................................................................... 4 2.1.2 The Importance of Speaking Skill................................................................................. 5 2.1.3 Difficulties in Learning and Teaching English Speaking .......................................... 6 2.1.4 Factors Affect the Process of Speaking........................................................................ 7 2.1.5 Fluency and Coherence................................................................................................. 8 2.1.6 Pronunciation ................................................................................................................. 9 2.1.7 Confidence .................................................................................................................... 10 2.1.8 Vocabulary.................................................................................................................... 10 2.1.9 Grammar Accuracy ..................................................................................................... 11 2.2 Previous Studies on the Difficulties in Teaching and Learning English............ 11 2.3 Summary ........................................................................................................................ 14 CHAPTER 3......................................................................................................................... 15 METHODOLOGY............................................................................................................. 15 3.1 Design of Research Method ........................................................................................ 15 3.2 Data Collection .............................................................................................................. 16 3.2.1 Participants ...................................................................................... 16 3.2.2 Questionnaires.............................................................................................................. 16 3.2.3 Interview........................................................................................................................ 17 3.2.4. Class Observation ....................................................................................................... 17 3.3 Data analysis .................................................................................................................. 18 3.4 Procedures ...................................................................................................................... 18 3.5 Summary ........................................................................................................................ 19 CHAPTER 4......................................................................................................................... 20 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ..................................................................................... 20 4.1 Students attitude to learning English speaking skill. ............................................. 20 4.2 Teachers’ Attitude towards Teaching English........................................................ 23 4.3 Students’ Interest in Different Speaking Activities ................................................ 24 4.4 Students’ Practice Speaking Skill .............................................................................. 26 4.5 Speaking Activities Used for the English Speaking Class..................................... 27 4.6 Students’ Difficulties in Learning English Speaking Skill .................................... 28 4.7 Causes of Difficulties in Learning Speaking ............................................................ 31 4.7.1 Objective Causes ............................................................................ 31 4.7.2 Subjective Causes......................................................................................................... 32 4.8 Teachers’ Difficulties in Teaching English speaking ............................................. 33 4.9 Suggestions for Effective Learning and Teaching English Speaking Skill ....... 36 4.9.1 Students’ Suggestions .................................................................................................. 36 4.9.2 Teachers’ Suggestions for Effective Teaching Speaking Skill ................................. 38 CHAPTER 5......................................................................................................................... 42 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................... 42 5.1 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 42 5.2 Pedagogical Implications ............................................................................................. 43 5.2.1 For Teachers ................................................................................................................ 43 5.2.2 For Students.................................................................................................................. 43 5.2.3 For the School .............................................................................................................. 44 5.2.3.1 Creating Speaking Environment for Students........................................................ 44 5.2.3.2 Reducing the Class Size............................................................................................ 45 5.4 Limitations of the Study............................................................................................... 45 5.5 Suggestion for Further Researches ........................................................................... 46 REFERENCES.................................................................................................................... 47 APPENDIX........................................................................................................................... 49 LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1 Students’ attitude towards speaking skill Table 4.2 Teachers’ attitude towards teaching English Table 4.3 Learners’ interest in different speaking activities Table 4.4 Teachers’ activities Table 4.5 Objectives causes of difficulties in learning speaking Table 4.6 Subjective causes of students’ difficulties in learning speaking Table 4.7 Students’ suggestions to enhance speaking skill Table 4.8 Teachers’ suggestions LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Students’ interest for speaking Figure 2: Importance of speaking for students Figure 3: The students’ opinion on the difficulty of speaking skill Figure 4: The frequency of students’ English speaking skill practice Figure 5: Students’ difficulties in speaking Figure 6:Teachers’difficulties STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP The thesis has been resulted from my own interest as well as difficulties in learning English of secondary students in Nui thanh district. I directly distributed the questionaires to the learners. Therefore, the entire statistics given must be reliable. Moreover, all the reference information was quoted or summarized with the clear original sources which have been shown in the references. I truthfully assure that the thesis has been complete by me. I ABSTRACT Speaking is one of the most necessary skills to communicate in the real life. In learning a foreign language, it is extremely important to learn this skill. Everybody knows that speaking is not simple, so the speaker has to make the listener understanding the message and responding in the right manner. Realizing the problems from learning experience, the author would like to do the research titled: “An investigation into difficulties in learning and teaching English speaking skill at Tran Quy Cap secondary school in Nui Thanh district” . The thesis will study the difficulties of the teachers and learners in teaching and learning the speaking skill. Then it will give some suggestions to overcome these difficulties. Therefore, the author will apply the qualitative, quantitative methods and descriptive methods to do the research. The results of the research will point out the difficulties that teachers and learner meet when they teach and learn the speaking skill at secondary school. More importantly, it helps the author find out the causes of those difficulties so that the author can work out the right solutions to the problems. With the hope of improving learners'''' speaking competence, the author has tried her best to do this thesis by her own experience and knowledge in English learning methodology. II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My graduation thesis has been completed with a lot of encouragement and support from my teacher, colleagues and family. First of all, I would like to express my deep great thank to my supervisor, Ms. Phan Thi Dieu Hien for her indispensable and useful advice, suggestion and support. And I wish to thank my teachers at Quang Nam University from whom I could get background knowledge to complete this thesis. In addition, I am grateful to all my friends in my class, who have encouraged me a lot to finish the thesis and shared useful information with me. I also wish to acknowledge the cooperation of the teachers and students at Tran Quy Cap Secondary school in contributing to the data collection presented in this study. Last but not least, my special thanks go to my parents who have, as it always goes, encouraged and supported me so much in all respects during my time of fulfilling this graduation paper. Quang Nam, April, 2017 Student Nguyen Thi Kim Yen III 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This chapter shows the rationale, the aim, the objectives and the research questions, followed by the scope and the organization of the study. 1.1 Rationale In recent years, along with the quick development and cooperation of the world''''s economy, people need a common language to communicate with each other. Therefore, English is used more and more widely and becomes an international language. English is used as a second or foreign language in the workplace, international trade, global media, tourism, education, aviation, business, technology and on diplomatic occasions. As a result, the demand for speakers using English effectively is necessary in every country. Teaching and learning English, except for the native language, is thus crucial for communicative purposes to meet the demands of global economics and to cope with the growing local, national and international demands for English skills. In Vietnam, English is becoming more widely used in every field of life and it is an official and compulsory foreign language which has been taught in most schools all over the world. Many people are aware that English guarantees them to have good jobs if they are good at speaking English. People thus have a great concern about learning speaking skill. Learning English is becoming a must in this modern world. Students need to effectively obtain basic language skills such as reading, listening, writing and especially speaking. Speaking is the most important skill in communication because we are only able to communicate well effectively when we can make other people understand our message. It is also an important tool in helping learners to succeed in any fields. For students who want to become a tour guide, they must be fluent in speaking so that they can help visitors to understand the cultural and historic attractions. If they want to become a teacher, they have to be able to communicate with their students so that they can understand the class 2 materials easily. Even if they want to become a businessman, in order to expand the business market, they have to know how to use the international language to communicate with their foreign partners. However, speaking is a challenging task for students. Most secondary students in Vietnam in general and Tran Quy Cap secondary students in Nui Thanh district of Quang nam province in particular find it hard to be proficient in this skill. As a result, teachers and students in this school face a lot of problems in teaching and learning English speaking skill. As a student who used to study at this school and had many problems in learning English speaking. I have realized that secondary students cope with a lot of problems and difficulties when dealing with speaking because of some objective and subjective reasons while speaking becomes more important in the modern life. Thus, I would like to choose the title " An investigation into difficulties in learning and teaching English speaking skill at Tran Quy Cap secondary school in Nui Thanh district ” to point out the difficulties and their causes to help the teachers and students have effective methods in teaching and learning English speaking skill. 1.2 Aims and objectives 1.2.1 Aims The study aims at investigating into the real situations in learning and teaching English speaking skill of the students and teachers at Tran Quy Cap secondary school and helping them to find out the difficulties, causality as well as recommendations on how to improve their skills. 1.2.2 Objectives The study is intended : - To find out the common difficulties that the secondary students and teachers face when they learn and teach English speaking skill at Tran Quy Cap secondary school. 3 - To suggest some possible solutions to those difficulties. 1.3 Research questions These objectives could be summarized into some research questions as follows: 1. What are the difficulties the students and teachers face in learning and teaching English speaking skill at Tran Quy Cap secondary school? 2. What should be done to help them overcome the difficulties for better English speaking skills teaching and learning? 1.4 Scope of the study Due to the limitation of time, knowledge and materials, the study only concentrates on the difficulties in speaking skill and makes suggestions to solve problems related to speaking skills. The research is aimed at the students and teachers at Tran Quy Cap secondary school in Nui Thanh. 1.5 Organization The study is presented in 5 main chapters as follows Chapter 1: “Introduction” provides the overview of the research including rationale, aims and objectives, questions, scope and organization of the study. Chapter 2: “Literature review” – presents relevant essential theoretical foundation for the current study. Chapter 3: “Methodology” –the research introduces the participants, the data collection instruments as well as research methods, data analysis. Chapter 4: “Findings and Discussion” – analyzes the result of questionnaire and tape recorders. Based on what is found, this chapter discusses the answers to the research questions. Chapter 5: “Conclusion” – draws the conclusion of the research and some suggestions for teaching and learning IELTS speaking skill. It also mentions some limitations of the paper, and finally, this section makes some recommendations for further studies. 4 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter, the author will give an overview of the theoretical background for the study. It begins with the definition of speaking, the importance of speaking skill, speaking problems in learning and teaching, continues with factors affect the process of speaking. 2.1 Theoretical Background 2.1.1 Definition of Speaking There are many different definitions of speaking. According to Florez 1999, cited in Bailey, 2005:2, speaking is “an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information. It is often spontaneous, open-ended and evolving ”. Chaney 5,13 states that speaking is " the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts ". Brown 3:245 defines speaking as “ a process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information ”. Bygate (cited in Mackey, 1965:266) shows that “ oral expression involves not only the use of the right sounds in the patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also the choice of words and inflections in the right order to convey the right meaning ”. Speaking is “ an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and process information ” Brown, 1994; Burns Joyce, 1997. Its form and meaning are dependent on the context in which it occurs, including the participants themselves, their collective experiences, the physical environment, and the purposes for speaking. It is often spontaneous, open-ended, and evolving. However, speaking is not always unpredictable. Language functions (or patterns) that tend to recur in certain discourse situations (e.g., declining an invitation or requesting time off from work), can be identified 5 and charted Burns Joyce, 1997. For example, when a salesperson asks "May I help you?" the expected discourse sequence includes a statement of need, response to the need, offer of appreciation, acknowledgement of the appreciation, and a leave-taking exchange. Speaking requires that learners not only know how to produce specific points of language such as grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary (linguistic competence), but also that they understand when, why, and in what ways to produce language (sociolinguistic competence). Finally, speaking has its own skills, structures, and conventions different from written language Burns Joyce, 1997; Carter McCarthy, 1995; Cohen, 1996. 2.1.2 The importance of speaking skill Ur 1996 considers speaking as the most important skill among four skills (listening,speaking, reading, and writing) because people who know a language are referred to as speakersof that language. This indicates that using a language is more important than just knowing about itbecause ―there is no point knowing a lot about language if you cannot use it. In learning English: It is the most important skill because it can not only help you speak and understand what others speak but also can use other skills in communication fluently. Therefore, as an integrative skills, speaking plays an important role of language learning or acquisition and facilities the emergence of other language skill. If you have good speaking skill, you will learn foreign language very well. In real life: It is one of the most vital ways that human beings feel the life and live. In the real life, everyone often speaks more than reads or writes. We speak at everywhere and every time. We speak to everything and everybody. For instance, at home, we speak to family member or other people. At school, students speak to teacher or their friends. At the meeting, the staffs speak to describe the new plan for everyone. Without speaking, people become backward in each minute of their lives. It is obvious that speaking is really important in the real life. 6 To sum up, most learners will spend more time for speaking than other skill. So training in speaking is really necessary. It helps students make the transition from English classroom to the English real life more easily and effectively. In psychology, speaking necessary skill to facilitate autonomous learning and encourage learns’ independence. Speaking is also the important forms of communication and learning language. 2.1.3 Difficulties in learning and teaching English speaking There have been numerous studies of the difficulties in learning and teaching English speaking. Munjayanah 2004 shows the following the problems Nothing to say: Even they are not inhibited, you often hear learners complain that they cannot think of anything to say: they have no motive to express themselves beyond the guilty feeling that they should be speaking. Low or uneven participation: Only one participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be heard; and in large group this means each one will have only very little talking time. This problem is compounded of some learners to dominate, while other speaks very little or not a tall. Mother tongue use: It is easier for the student to use their mother tongue in their classes because it looks naturally. Therefore, most of the students are not disciplined in using the target language in the learning process. Large class size: The size of class is one of the main problems influencing the teaching and learning in secondary class. According to Ur 1996 and Valentic 2005, large classes are almost invariably heterogeneous, and heterogeneous classes are most problematical when the classes are also large. In other words, the more students we have in the class, the greater differences among them may appear. Lack of motivation: According to Anslie 1994, motivation is widely recognized as an important factor in language learning success. Harmer 1991 points out that motivation is some kind of internal drive that encourages somebody to purpose a course action. When students have definite goal they will 7 be strongly motivated to do whatever is necessary to reach that goal. However, the motivation of each student in the similar class can be totally different. Lack of confidence: Nunan 1999 says that students who do not have any confidence about themselves and their English necessarily suffer from communication apprehension. This shows that building students’ confidence is an important part of teacher’s focus of attention. This means that the teacher should also learn from both theories and practical experience on how to build the students’ confidence. Fear of Mistake: As argued by many theorists, fear of mistake becomes one of the main factors of students’ reluctance to speak in English in the classroom Tsui in Nunan, 1999; Yi Htwe, 2007; Robby, 2010. Ineffective learning strategies: Learning strategies are the methods that learners use to obtain information; normally high achievers learners use more learning strategies than do lower achieving learners Dembo, 2004. Inappropriate teaching methods: Rababah 2005 points out that one of the problems of our education is teaching methodology which still depends on lecturing. The teachers'''' talking time is more than the students'''' talking time. Teachers do not give the students enough time to practice communication. 2.1.4 Factors affect the process of speaking Speaking, a productive skill, is commonly perceived to be more challenging to master compared to other two receptive skills. To speak English fluently, nicely and satisfactorily, it requires a variety of elements such as grammar, accuracy, fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary, self-confidence, etc. That is the reason why “Some language learners may be good at learning other skills but when it comes to learning to speak another language, they claim to have a mental block against it.” Tanveer, M. 2007. These factors play an indispensable role in speaking as they show the speakers'''' competence in English, their ability and profession of speaking. It also contributes to the appreciation of listeners to the speakers'''' level. For those reasons, I would like to 8 carefully consider the factors of grammar accuracy, fluency, pronunciation, and vocabulary as the main requirements for speaking effectively. 2.1.5 Fluency and Coherence According to Wikipedia, fluency is a term that means the smoothness or flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are joined together when speaking quickly. Bewilderedly speaking or fluency disorder is used as a collective term for cluttering and stuttering. Both disorders have breaks in the flow of speech, and both have the fluency breakdown of repetition of parts of speech. Coherence is the logical organization, development and connection of ideas. Fluency and coherence are both concerned with "the flow of language" – fluency concerns the physical flow of language while coherence concerns the logical "flow of interconnected ideas". This is an area that is often misunderstood by students to mean that they just talk as fast as they possibly can or talking without pausing. If you listen to how native speakers talk they do not normally talk very fast and there are plenty of pauses. A candidate needs to satisfy the requirements for both fluency and coherence to get a particular score for this combined item. Mark Clark 2006 states the most important aspect of your “Fluency” score is the length of your response and your use of cohesive features such as linking words, discourse makers, connectives and redundant phrases. Mark clark also indicated that speakers often focus too heavily on answering the question. In other words theirs answers contain “ information content” but lack the language. Besides, there are a number of smaller problems associated with the ability to achieve fluency when speaking English such as lack of topical background knowledge, constraints stemming from psychological factors of the learners, the ability to give spontaneous responses and the amount of using communication strategies. Those refer to the employed techniques when speakers have problems in expressing themselves. Bygate 1987, 2011 identifies two main groups of communicative strategies as follows. “ Achievement strategies: Guessing 9 strategies, e.g. borrowing or foreignizing a mother-tongue word, literal translation and coining or inventing a word. Paraphrase strategies, e.g. circumlocuting around a word when we do not know the exact word. Cooperative strategies, e.g. when the speaker signals to the interlocutor for help. Reduction strategies: Avoidance strategies, e.g. changing one’s message to avoid using certain language or to make it more manageable. Compensatory strategies, e.g. organizing one message in order to buy thinking time.’’ It can be inferred that the use of such communication strategies above might be of great help for English learners to compensate for their gap in language proficiency and enable them to keep going and maintain fluency in speaking. 2.1.6 Pronunciation Lynda Yates 2002 states pronunciation involves in the production of sounds that speakers use to make meaning. It consists of concentration on the particular sounds of a language (segments), features of speech beyond the level of the individual sound, such as intonation, phrasing, stress, timing, rhythm (suprasegmentally aspects), how the voice is projected (voice quality) and, in its broadest definition, attention to gestures and expression that are closely related to the way people speak a language. When speaking, students usually forget the pronunciation, stress, and intonation, which make their speech not professional and limit them from developing the speaking skills. Tam 2005 in her research on common pronunciation problems of Vietnamese learners of English, for example, has identified a number of pronunciation errors made by the participants which could be attributed to the difference between the sound system of the mother tongue and the target language. She noted that “we do not have the same sound in our language, especially when this sound occurs at the final position of a word” p. 8. The above mentioned difficulties regarding pronunciation, if it arises, will certainly impact intensively learners’ performance in speaking skill. Therefore, 10 pronunciation is very fundamental to the progress of speaking skills. If students wish to speak English fluently, they need to practice the right pronunciation for each word before they can speak the sentences naturally and professionally. 2.1.7 Confidence According to Lynda Yates 2002, self-confidence permits speakers to handle any situation the speakers are faced with, without doubting the speakers’ abilities. It also makes it easy to convince others about speakers. Moreover, self - confidence makes speakers keep calm under extreme pressure, without being anxious. When speakers are confident, it transmits itself to the audience, who in turn respond the ways speakers expect audience to, further developing confidence in speakers. 2.1.8 Vocabulary Vocabulary is commonly defined as "all the words known and used by a particular person". Mc Cathy (1990) asserted that no matter how well the students learn grammar, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication just can not happen in any meaningful ways. Participants in Tanveers research 2007,p.50 shared their difficulties in recalling vocabulary items. They claimed that “I don’t have exact words to express my ideas”, “sometimes I am conscious I am not using the right word” and “I always feel nervous speaking English because I do not have enough vocabulary”. Tanveer also noted that many learners cannot utter out words quickly when required to speak in a hurry as “learners can only process only a limited amount of information at one time” Lightbrown Spada, 2006: 39, cited in Tanveer, 2007: 50. Therefore, knowing a word, however, is not as simple as simply being able to recognize or use it. There are several aspects of word knowledge which are used to measure word knowledge. A person''''s vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and 11 acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language. 2.1.9 Grammar accuracy With regard to linguistic difficulties, grammar has been found to be one of the most important aspects that learners find difficult when learning to speak a foreign language. Past research found a number of difficulties associated with grammar such as tenses, verb form and prepositions. Moreover, speaking with grammar accuracy means speaking without errors of grammar, and using the suitable words for specific situations. Some students can get good marks in grammar tests but when speaking, they make very simple mistakes like: "she don''''t go to school yesterday" instead of "she didn''''t go to school yesterday" or say "sorry, can I help you?" to help others but not "Excuse me, can I help you?".According to Mark Clark in Speaking 2007, many candidates just focus on “communicating” the answer to the question and as a result they make a lot of grammar mistakes. Another problem is the lack of perfect and continous tenses. Native speakers of English produce quite a lot of these tense when they speak. However Vietnamese speakers of English often neglect these important tenses.The next problem is the actual sentences type. Many candidates produce too many basic sentences. To sum up, Speaking with grammar accuracy is an important criterion for teachers or examiners to assess students'''' level in English. Therefore, students need to practice speaking a lot for giving their speech with the exact grammar. 2.2 Previous studies on the difficulties in teaching and learning English In this part of the study, some previous studies relating to this study would be reviewed. In Viet Nam, like in many other countries, the problem of speaking skills is crucial. A number of researchers investigated this field and came to the conclusion about students'''' low level of speaking ability and their inability to speak confidently and fluently. One among the many reasons to take into consideration might be the lack of confidence and anxiety about making errors as stated by Trent 2009 and in other related studies. Most college students are not 12 confident in their ability to learn to speak; teachers must overcome their reluctance in order to change this situation. Zaremba and Zhang 2006 hypothesize that, of the four macro English skills, speaking seems to be the most important skill required for communication (Zaremba, 2006). Students who study English as a foreign language usually have limited opportunities to speak English outside the classroom Zhang, 2009 and also limited exposure to English speakers or members of the international community. This might be one reason for teachers to provide more situations and activities for students to strengthen their speaking competence. Confidence and competence usually reinforce English speaking skills. Patil 2008 asserted that building up the learner’s confidence to eliminate their fear of making errors was a priority that a teacher should consider in order to make learners feel comfortable with their language use. Confidence and competence in speaking could be developed from appropriate syllabus design, methods of teaching, and adequate tasks and materials Bailey, 2005; Songsiri, 2007. Regarding speaking effectiveness, Shumin 1997 pointed out a number of elements involved, including listening skills, sociocultural factors, affective factors, and other linguistic and sociolinguistic competences such as grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence. Grammatical competence enables speakers to use and understand English language structures accurately and unhesitatingly, which contributes to their fluency, which, in turn, develops confidence in communication. For Ur 1996, there are some speaking difficulties that teachers can come across in getting students to talk in the classroom. These are: inhibition, lack of topical knowledge, low or uneven participation and mother-tongue use. The first problem that the students often encounter is inhibition. When students try to say things in a foreign language in the classroom they are often inhibited. They are worried about making mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face. They are shy of the attention that their speech attracts. 13 Park Lee 2005 examine the relationships between second language learners’ anxiety, self-confidence and speaking performance. The participants of their study were one hundred and thirty two Korean college students who enrolled the English conversation classes. The results of their study indicated that learners’ anxiety level was negatively related to their oral performance. Tanveer 2007 investigates the factors that cause language anxiety for twenty language learners in learning speaking skills and the influence of anxiety on communication in the target language and his result is similar to what Park Lee 2005 figure out. The findings suggested that students’ feeling of stress, anxiety or nervousness may impede their language learning and performance abilities. He cites that “the higher the anxiety, the lower the performance”. Rivers 1968 believes that the learners have nothing to express maybe because the teacher had chosen a topic which is not suitable for him or about which he knows very little. It is difficult for many students to respond when the teachers ask them to say something in a foreign language because they might have little ideas about what to say, which vocabulary to use, or how to use the grammar correctly Baker Westrup, 2003. Another problem in speaking class is that participation is low or uneven. In a large group, each student will have very little talking time because only one participant can talk at a time so that the others can hear himher. There is a tendency of some learners to dominate while others speak very little or not at all. Finally, when all or a number of learners share the same mother-tongue, they tend to use it because it is easier for them. Harmer 1991 suggests some reasons why students use mothertongue in class. Firstly, when the students are asked to have a discussion about a topic that they are incapable of, if they want to say anything about the topic, they will use their own language. Another reason is that the use of mother- tongue is a natural thing to do. In addition, using the first language to explain something to another if there is no encouragement from the teachers. Finally, if teachers frequently use the students’ language, the students will feel comfortable to do it. 14 Lukitasari 2008 conducted a study focusing on the students’ strategies in overcoming speaking problems in speaking class. The population of her study was the first semester students of Muhammadiyah University of Malang in Indonesia. The results of her study suggest that in speaking class, the students faced some speaking problems including inhibition, nothing to say, low or uneven participation and mother tongue use. The findings of the study also reveal that the students’ speaking performance was not good because they did not master the three elements of speaking namely vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. In the researches mentioned above, researchers have just conducted the difficulties in teaching and learning English of the adult learners. Therefore, in my research, I would like to find out the obstacles the secondary school students and teachers in the countryside have met in teaching and learning English speaking. 2.3 Summary This chapter presented the theoretical background with the aim at clarifying the issues relating directly to the content of the study. Besides, a review of the previous studies and factors affect the process of speaking are also mentioned and discussed in order to point out the new and the different things of this study in comparison with the previous study. What shown in this chapter would be the foundation for the researcher to design questionnaire and criteria to evaluate interview as well as give the clear evidence necessary for the researcher to discuss the study results. 15 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY This chapter describes information of the research methodology. It contains the procedures followed throughout the study. Design of research method, instruments of data collection, participants and data analysis are also included in this chapter. 3.1 Design of Research Method The purpose of this study was to find out difficulties of the secondary students and teachers at Tran Quy Cap secondary school. However, due to the scope and the characteristics of the study, the methods that were used in this study were questionnaires, interviews and observations. In this study, the researcher utilized questionnaires for learners and teachers to get information about the fact of teaching and learning speaking skill at Tran Quy Cap secondary school. As for data collection and data analysis, the information from survey was analyzed in detail and the results were categorized to synthesize. The data obtained from the questionnaires were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Therefore, there were 120 students in four classes (6, 7, 8 and 9) and 9 teachers were chosen to give response to the questionnaire. In addition to quantitative approach, the qualitative approach to gathering information focuses on describing a phenomenon in a deep comprehensive manner. By employing qualitative methods, researcher can obtain a more realistic feel that cannot be experienced in the numerical data and statistical analysis used in quantitative research. To be more specific, interview were used to collect information for analysis. The result from teachers and students’ conversation allows the researcher to point out their difficults and later on suggesting several useful tips. Therefore, both quantitive and qualities approaches were chosen to obtain and deal with the data of research. The details of the participants, instrumentations, data collection and data analysis are as follows. 16 3.2 Data Collection 3.2.1 Participants The participants took part in the research for one or more of the questionnaire, class observation, and interview phase. They consist of 9 teachers and 120 students from four classes of grade 6,7,8 and 9 at Tran Quy Cap secondary school. After receiving the approval from the school to collect data, the researcher disscussed the study with the teachers so that the research could be implemented in reliable and valid manner. For the actual data collection period, the reasearcher had a meeting with the teachers and students, explained the aim of the research to them and then asked them to participate in the study. All the students of four classes and 9 teachers agreed to fill in the questionnaire as the participants. In addition, the data collection involved class observation. Therefore, the researcher also asked for permission to observe four classes. 3.2.2 Questionnaires Two sets of questionnaires were designed for my research, one for the teachers and one for the students. After completing their questionnaires, some teachers and students expressed their willingness to contribute further, and they were invited to participate in subsequent interview The questionnaires had clear instructions and the reasonable length to engage the participants'''' concentration. Furthermore, difficult and abstract words or acronyms were also avoided so that they were not complex and confusing. In addition, the questionnaires had been drafted and redrafted many times, aiming to get the right ideas with both clarities of meaning and format. During the stage of the questionnaire construction, suggested drafts were circulated among several people with experience for criticism to make sure it worked as intended. Questionnaire included closed and open-ended questions. The purpose for mixing of both closed and open-ended responses is that the former is easier to 17 collect and analyze and the responses to the later will provide more flexibility so that the respondent can give more accurate answer. 3.2.3 Interview Together with the survey questionnaires, interview was carried out to collect data for the study. To be specific, making an interview with students and teachers. This is a wonderful opportunity for researchers to get information objectively which also allow researcher to deeply investigate the students’ abilities. In order to have a valid result, the researchers will evaluate the student’s ability based on speaking. Thank to these interview the researcher would analyze and categories common difficulties that secondary students and teacher at Tran Quy Cap secondary school are likely to face when speaking by using qualitative as well as quantitative methods. Together with the questionnaires the interview will increase the objective of the data which helps the researcher to find out the real difficulties of the students as well as suggest appropriate proposals. Most of the aspects concerning the difficulties of students’ speaking skills will be considered carefully. The researcher hopes that these interviews would increase the validity of the data collected and provide greater confidence in the generalization of the results. 3.2.4. Class Observation Along with the questionnaires and interviews, the researcher observed four classes included 9 teachers and 120 students at Tran Quy Cap secondary school. For each class, the researcher observed 4 periods with the aim of cross- checking and clarifying the information collected from the questionnaires. According to Gorman and Clayton (1997), "Observation is employed as a means of determining patterns of behavior, contextual factors affecting behavior and interaction between subjects". By doing this, the researcher could directly observe the real process in teaching and learning at Tran Quy Cap secondary school. 18 3.3 Data analysis Firstly, the data from questionnaires and observation were categorized, processed and analyzed in form of statistic frequency and percentage. Then charts were used to demonstrate the results. In addition, results from interviewsand observations were used for analysis. All the difficulties faced by the students and teachers were analyzed which would provide valid information about difficulties in learning and teaching speaking skills for the secondary students at Tran Quy Cap secondary school. 3.4 Procedures The research was carried out in the following steps: Firstly, the researcher collectted and investigated previous works and theoretical background relating to the thesis. Secondly, the researcher designed questionnaires, class observation form and criteria to evaluate interview. Thirdly, the questionnaires were delivered to 120 students at Tran Quy Cap secondary school. With some difficulties and abstract items in the questionnaire, the researcher explained them carefully for students to make sure that all participants could understand the questionnaire clearly. Fourthly, the researcher would receive and evaluate the interview result from those students. Fithly, the data collected from questionnaire were categorized, ordered, processed and analyses in form of statistic frequency and percentage. Then the results were presented in the tables and charts. Besides, the data gathered from the interview and class observation were best examined by the mean of the qualitative methods to provide an insightful description of the research issue. Finally, basing on the results getting from data, the researcher would give some suggestions to help them overcome the difficulties and improve the quality of learning and teaching speaking at Tran Quy Cap secondary school. 19 3.5 Summary In brief, the methodology and procedures of doing this study were mentioned in this chapter. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches with the instruments for data collection (observations, questionnaires and interviews) were applied to collect and analyze the data. The results from the data analysis were presented in charts. The analyzed results were discussed in response to the aims of the study. 20 CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION This chapter focuses on findings from analyzing the data gathered by means of questionnaires and interview as well as relevant discussions made by the researcher. Data from these sources are statistically calculated and presented through tables and charts. From this, feasible solutions will be made to improve those found problems later in this paper. 4.1 Students attitude to learning English speaking skill Items Number of response Percentage () Total A. Do you like speaking English? Yes 85 71 120Neutral 25 21 No 10 8 B. How important is speaking skill for students? Very important 20 18 120Important 95 78 Not important 5 4 Table 4.1 Students’ attitudes towards speaking skill 21 71 21 80 Yes Neutral No Figure 1: Students’ interest for speaking 18 78 40 Very important Important Unimportant Figure 2: Importance of speaking for students The statistics in the table indicate that among 120 students, up to 85 students making up for 71 had passion for speaking English whilst the number of students who dislike speaking were only 10 students making up for 8 and 25 students chose the opinion neutral (21). The illustrations describe the students’ attitude towards speaking as a secondary student. Luckily, most of the students responded that speaking played an essential role in studying English. That is respectively, 78 and 18 students 22 though speaking was important and very important. Only a tiny number of students thought speaking was unimportant (5 students - 4). The pie chart below illustrates the percentage of students who have a variety of opinions in learning speaking skill. It can be seen from the graph that speaking skill is a difficult skill to learn. To be specific, over six out of ten students supposed that speaking skill was difficult. Moreover, the number of students who agreed that learning the speaking skill was very difficult accounting for 20. The number of the students who found learning speaking skill normal and easy was13 and 4 respectively. In fact, as what can be seen in the figure, the best students confirmed that it was easy to learn the speaking skill. However, the number of students confirmed that it was easy to learn the speaking skill was small. In short, the survey proved the assumption about the difficulty in learning speaking skill. Figure 3: The students’ opinion on the difficulty of speaking skill 4.2 Teachers’ attitude towards teaching English 23 Items Occurrence Percentage() Total A. What do you think about teaching speaking English? Difficult 6 66 9Normal 2 22 Easy 1 12 B. Do you think Speaking is important? Very important 7 78 9 Important 2 22 Unimportant 0 0 Table 4.2: Teachers’ attitude towards teaching English The table shows the teachers’ attitude towards teaching English speaking skill. It can be seen from the table that speaking skill was really difficult for teachers to teach. More than half of the teachers (66 ) supposed that teaching speaking was difficult while just 12 of them thought it was quite easy to teach speaking skill. Only 22 of te...

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