skkn cấp tỉnh the use of facebook in enhancing students confidence in speaking skills among english majored students benefits and suggested activities

TABLE OF CONTENT

THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

LAM SƠN SPECIALIZED HIGH SCHOOL

– BENEFITS AND SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

The author: Nguyen Thi Bich NgaPosition: Teacher

Field (Subject): English

2.2 Theoretical basis of theexperiential initiative.

42.3 Applying the experientialinitiative to solve problems - Theuse of Facebook in teachingspeaking skills

2.4 The effectiveness of theinitiative for educational activities,for the writer, colleagues and theschool.

1.1 Rationale of the study

No one can deny the fact that technology nowadays has become a vital part of our life.Applying digital usage is no longer a trend, but one of the top priorities in education, especially inEnglish language teaching (ELT) This paper discusses the benefits of using Facebook enhancingconfidence in speaking skills for English-majored students Facebook is used as a tool in class aswell as outside the classroom to maximize the time of practicing speaking English It also creates areal English environment for students to interact with teachers and with other classmates Besides,the paper offers some suggested activities that can be used with Facebook so that teachers whowould like to try the idea can apply in their own classes.

1.2 Aims of the study

Speaking skills plays an important role in students’ foreign language comprehension.However, this skill frequently lacks sufficient attention due to the limited periods in the curriculumas well as the environment to practice Even for English-majored students, their speakingcompetency is listed as the skill that they find it hard to improve the most, especially among lower-level students or shy ones Herein, Facebook proves itself as a popular user-friendly platform forstudents to show off their identity and a place that they can interact freely with each other outsideclassroom Therefore, in this study, I want to present my findings about benefits of using Facebookto help students improve their speaking skills, which is beneficial not only for their examinationsbut also in their real life

1.3 Subject of the study

The subject of the study is class English 1 (21-24), which I was assigned as an additionalteacher alongside the main one I was responsible for 2 periods each week in this class As they areall English-majored students, their language competency is around B2+ -> C1 according to CEFR

1.5 New points of the study

- The initiative systematically builds theory, expands the issues related to enhancing students’speaking skills

- Develop a sample system of exercises in an appropriate and effective way to serve asdocumentation for teachers of various classes

- In addition, this is also a document for students of specialized schools and students of Englishmajors as well as highschoolers refer to and use for learning and scientific research purposes.

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

2.1 Current situation of the problem before applying the experiential initiative

Currently, from observation, I see that time allotment for developing productive skills,especially speaking one is insufficient for a class size of 35 students Although the teacher canarrange pair work or group work for students to practice speaking together, there still lacks theconstant detailed feedback and comment from teachers and peers Additionally, students also lackthe practice on a frequent basis

Besides, speaking skill requires a proactive environment where learners actively engage inconversation or self-talk to enhance their speaking skills Therefore, besides the traditionalclassroom-based environment, another platform is needed to encourage students to have intrinsicmotivation to practice speaking and interacting with friends in the targeted language

For lower-level students or rural students who are not as familiar with speaking in front of thewhole class as urban students, it is necessary to facilitate them to enhance their confidence in raisingtheir voice

From the listed above situations observed during the first two weeks of the semester, I findout that students are:

 Lacking a supportive and comfortable learning environment besides classrooms

 Lacking interaction and collaboration in a virtual world, which is now becoming common inthe age of globalization

 Lacking confidence and engagement in learning.

2.2 Theoretical basis of the experiential initiative.

Vietnam is the country where the number of Facebook users is increasing rapidly Thatnumber is expected to reach 33.86 million by the end of 2018, up from 29.29 million in 2016, whichmakes it ranked seventh among the countries with the biggest number of Facebook users Overall,our country has a 40 percent active social media penetration rate It is very common to see thatVietnamese people of almost all ages have Facebook accounts to interact online with their family,friends and business partners Thus, that triggers a question of whether Facebook should beintegrated into education and whether it brings about a number of benefits because learners canmaximize their learning at any time and place.

In fact, Facebook is currently used by mostly high school students and college students forsocial and academic purposes to extent that many educators and researchers are investigating theuses and effects of using Facebook in education so as to maximize the potential for using this socialnetworking site to archive educational aims (Aubry, 2013; Shraim, 2014; Shi, 2013; Ibrahim, 2013).The writer realizes that Facebook is a very helpful tool to help students develop their speakingskills, especially those who are lacking confidence to raise their voice Hence, it was integrated intoteaching right at the beginning of the term and the class’s Facebook group has become a platformwhere teacher and students interact with each other outside class effectively.

2.2.1 Benefits of Integrating Facebook into Teaching

A Facebook provides a comfortable learning environment

Hanif, & Rozilawati (2006) suggest that Facebook avoids the tension and boredom of theclassroom and increases students’ motivation Many researchers have found that students can showtheir best performance when they are in the comfort zones Facebook can be considered as a perfectplace for English language activity exchange and utilized to discuss their tasks and assignments

when they find the common thing in their needs, interest and ideas Facebook can raise the “sense ofcommunity in language classrooms” because it “creates the scope to develop language learners’socio-pragmatic competence” while being with peers (Blattner and Fiori, 2009, p.17) Hutchens andTimothy (2014) argue that Facebook communication can blur the personal and professionalboundaries that students and professors are accustomed to, taking into account the various benefitsof social media, which also leads to the fact that students feel more relaxed and comfortable whenthey work with their teachers on this social networking site It is also a wonderful place for thosewho are not yet confident or too shy to share their ideas face-to-face with their friends in class.Researchers have identified Facebook as a remedy for such group of shy learners as same groupshows “no objection to online disclosure” in Facebook rather feel encouraged to participate there inactivities like group projects, discussion on topic and course assignments (Lee and Ranta, 2014, p.27).

B Facebook encourages collaboration and interaction in learningCollaboration and interaction in a virtual community

According to Walsh (2012), Facebook group is a great way for a course or a class todistribute content and create a central place for communication and interaction because learners andteachers can share their knowledge and experience They can upload their assignments in multi-media forms, and share them with others on Facebook Li and Chen (2009) suggested the idea thatonline asynchronous discussion forums can enable students’ collaboration without meetingphysically in person Facebook is equipped with a number of features and applications like bulletinboards, Timeline, instant messaging, emailing, posting photos and videos, attaching files, ownloadable applications and the like, which makes it educationally attractive and appealing Thementioned applications can supplement the educational functions of Facebook It is undoubted thatnowadays, with the help of Facebook, instructors can connect with learners anytime and anywhere.

Shih (2013) adds more advantages of Facebook which can help users and learners interactand collaborate with each other actively in a virtual community This trend led the learning processto be transformed from in-class teaching into learning outside the classroom Therefore, studentswill be able to sustain the inter-relationship among the group members through effective groupcommunications and discussions in such a cooperative learning environment (Yang and Chen,2008).

Collaboration and interaction in a face-to-face community

Promnitz-Hayashi (2011) shows that with the help of simple activities on facebook, many ofthe more introverted students became more motivated in class and were actually talking more withtheir classmates It was also noticed that students began to express more opinions and give extendedreasoning in both their face-to-face interaction and their written classwork A direct relationshipbetween site use and out-of-class sociability was suggested by Ruiz (2011) that the more time astudent spent on Facebook, the more likely that student was to be involved in extracurricularactivities Miyasone (2007) found that cooperative learning could improve students’communication, friendship, trust, interaction, active learning, and learning attitudes, whichemphasizes the relationship between Facebook and cooperative learning The feature of the “like”icon on Facebook could moderately stimulate the students’ learning motivation for Englishspeaking.

C Facebook maximizes students’ engagement in learning

According to Heiberger & Harper (2008) and Morrin (2007), today’s students use Facebookat high rates, and Facebook intends to be an engaging platform going so far as to measure theirsuccess in terms of user engagement More specifically, we can conceptualize student use andinvolvement on Facebook along Astin’s (1984) five tenets of engagement:

1 Engagement refers to the investment of physical and psychological energy: Students invest agreat deal of psychological energy in using Facebook, as evidenced by usage statistics;

2 Engagement occurs along a continuum: Some students are more engaged on Facebook thanothers, while some don’t use social media at all;

3 Engagement has both quantitative and qualitative features: Students can spend a great dealof time using Facebook (quantitative feature) and may engage in a wide variety of activities on theplatform (qualitative features);

4 The amount of student learning and development associated with an educational program isdirectly related to the quality and quantity of student engagement in that program: It is possible thatFacebook use is related to real-world student engagement in some tangible ways.

5 The effectiveness of any educational practice is directly related to the ability of that practiceto increase student engagement: If Facebook indeed increases engagement, it is possible forFacebook to be used in educationally relevant ways to improve student academic outcomes.

Indeed, two published studies focusing specifically on social media and student engagementhave found a relationship between time spent online and student engagement in the real-world (asdescribed by Astin (1984) and measured through single survey items) Participants in the studyconducted by Heiberger and Harper (2008) were 377 undergraduate students at a Midwesterninstitution, while those in the research done by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI,2007) were over 31,000 students at 114 colleges and universities The Heiberger and Harper (2008)study focused solely on Facebook use, while the HERI (2007) study focused on all socialnetworking websites Both the studies reported positive correlations between social networkingwebsite use and college student engagement For instance, a higher percentage of high users ofsocial networking websites participated in and spent more time in campus organizations than lowusers Additionally, more of the high users reported that they interacted daily (in the real-world)with close friends and felt strong connections to them (HERI, 2007)

However, those abovementioned researches carried out in universities and colleges, whilethere has been a dearth of studies conducted in high schools Noticing this gap and similaritiesbetween undergraduates and high school students, I would like to propose the use of Facebook inenhancing students’ confidence in speaking, especially high schoolers, and the effectiveness ofapplying that initiative into my classroom

2.3 Applying the experiential initiative to solve problems - The use of Facebook in teachingspeaking skills

With the mentioned benefits above, Facebook can act as a very useful platform for teachersand students in speaking skills With the belief that Facebook will make teaching and learning moreinteresting and effective, the writer has made use of this popular social networking site as a place topost supplementary activities for students in class Anh 1 (21-24) who are learning speaking skills asan integral part in their curriculum in Lam Sơn Specialized School The focus of speaking is

presentation skills which include body language, language use and delivery, contents andorganization, visual aids and question handling Teachers and students work together once a weekfor 2 periods to cover the practice of the above criteria The fact that there are normally 35 studentsin a class with only 2 periods a week means not all students have a chance to perform in class andget feedback from the teacher and friends even though they may have time to practice in theirgroup It is undeniable that students really need extra time practicing outside class and show friendsand teacher their products so that they can get feedback from them for improvement Also, it isnecessary for students to watch their performance again to realize what needs improving such aspronunciation, voice projection, fluency, vocabulary, grammar and body language With a series ofvideos made by themselves, it is easy and effective for students to keep track of their progress inpresentation skills.

This part shows how I have made use of Facebook in and outside the classes.

Procedure of Facebook implementation

Step 1: Raise students’ awareness of the importance of self-studying and extra practice outsideclass.

Step 2: Set the rules of homework and participation scoresStep 3: Introduce the use of Facebook group

Step 4: Create a Facebook group that includes all the class membersStep 5: Post the homework requirements in the group after the lessonStep 6: Check the posts before class time and send feedback

Step 7: Show 1-2 typical clips in class to analyze and give comments

Strategies for enhancing students’ confidence in speaking skills

Confidence is refined once learners understand the concept and go through multiple practical

assignments, one of which is homework Homework as a good means of reactivation helps students

to practice language items and consolidates the knowledge and skills they have learnt It is anindispensable tool for students to step forward in the subject.

Homework is assignment that students are required to complete at their home Cooper (1989, p 86)defines homework as “tasks assigned to students by school teachers that are meant to be carried outduring non-school hours” Cooper points out a number of benefits of homework such asimprovements in factual knowledge, understanding concept, attitudes to learning, study skills, self-discipline, and problem-solving skills Homework develops study habits and makes learnersautonomous in language learning Homework serves as a diagnostic tool that allows teachers toregularly monitor their students’ progress (West Allegheny School District, n.d.).

In this part, basing on observation and other research, I will suggest some strategies forincreasing homework completion rates and making homework meaningful for the students so thattheir confidence level will increase hereafter.

 Homework must be relevant to what has been taught in class: It is obvious that if

homework is closely related to what the students have learnt, they will see the necessity

for practice and consolidate the language items and skills Also, the tasks that are notbeyond their knowledge and ability often give them more motivation.

 Instructions for homework must be clear: If students are given clear instructions, they

may find it easier to do homework, which will contribute to their interest in completing itto some extent Hence, the students need to be provided comprehensible instructions to dohomework (Harmer, 2008).

 Homework should be on the basis of students’ interest: No one can deny the fact that the

more interested students are in the task, the more motivated they will be to complete it.Teacher can observe, interview or make a survey to know what is interesting, enjoyableand relevant for students so that he or she can assign homework as their interests andusefulness Then, homework will become something that students want to be involved in.

 Both teacher and students should have a sense of respect towards homework; Harmer

(2008) points out that students should take homework as for their betterment and teachershould take it as their professional duties and responsibilities The students need to knowthat teacher will reciprocate the effort they have made in completing the tasks Teachershould be willing to provide praise and encouragement if the students fulfil homework.Teacher should give feedback to students’ tasks because when students are left on theirown with the homework, they can hardly have progress.

 Teachers should make provision of reward to those who submit homework regularly If

teacher provides rewards to students, they will be more motivated to do homework It can bethe source of inspiration to others, too.

Some suggested homework for students in speaking skills

English coursebook Grade 121 Make an introduction for an informal

presentation about a historical figure

Applying the understanding ofelements of successfulintroduction

2 Make a full video introducing your favoritehistorical figure

Practice the structure of apresentation

3 Make an interview with an expert to discuss

key features of urbanization How to handle questions andrespond

4 Make a conversation with a friend to expressopinions about a preferable place of living

Express opinions and clarifythem

5 Interview classmates about their lifestylechoices and decide if they are environmentallyfriendly

How to analyze the informationthat you have gained

6 Make the dubbing for a video clip – VoiceoverProject

Use social media to complete theassignment

7 Presentation about a new culture Cultural identity

8 Suggest ways to maintain cultural identity Cultural identity

9 Make a call to action to protect endangeredspecies

How to make a call to action inspeech

10 Make an interview with an employer to discuss

skills and qualities needed for getting a job

Practice body language

11 Giving a presentation about ambitions and how

to keep learning throughout life

Practice the impact techniques

2.4 The effectiveness of the initiative for educational activities, for the writer, colleagues andthe school.

Data Collection Instrument

I employed questionnaires as the tool to provide insights into the research topic.Questionnaires enabled researchers to obtain a large quantity of data that are likely to containdisclosures while permitting subjects investigation with modest expenses within a relatively shortamount of time (Sarantakos, 2013) Additionally, close-ended responses from questionnaires areeasy to summarize and analyze with the assistance of calculation softwares

The designed questionnaire was constructed in accordance with the reviewed literature andthe setting of the study Instead of maintaining the five-point scale, I employed a six-point Likert-scale with six different levels of agreement as the omission of the “neutral” option assisted me inacquiring valuable responses

Data Collection Procedure

The questionnaire administration process followed three steps:

Step 1: Ask for permission: I announced the students about the surveys and distribute

Step 2: Instruct the participants: I made a brief introduction, including the purpose of thestudy, the instructions on how to respond to the questionnaire and the confidentiality promise beforerequesting the agreement to participate from the participants in the survey.

Step 3: Collect the data: I collected the questionnaires after they have finished the surveys

Data Analysis Procedure

After the data were collected, I listed the score of each item and then used Google Surveysto check the reliability of the result After the results-checking stage, I conducted the data analysis.First, different factors were evaluated regarding which ones were considered the most influentialfactors and in reverse that could be achieved by calculating the level of agreement of each item ineach factor If the levels of agreement were high, the results would indicate that the factor positivelyinfluenced the subject Likewise, the high level of disagreement would signify the negative impactof the factor

Results and Discussion

The following section discusses the research findings, which are divided into 2 subsections,namely support from instructors, and presentation skills

Support from Instructors: The three first questions in the questionnaire were designed to discover

student’s perception of teacher support effectiveness The result of the question is exhibited anddiscussed hereafter.

Table 4.1:

Students’ overall opinion on the teacher’s support efficiency

Disagree SlightlyDisagree

1 I experience lessanxiety with thesupport fromthe teacher

0 0 0 31.33 43.57 27.24

I receive specific

guidance on the assignment from the teacher.The teacher is highly

responsive towards our questions.

Table 4.1 presents the distribution of students’ responses on the subject of instructor support

efficiency Specifically, among 35 students who were asked to rank the level of agreement, mostrespondents showed the strong approval to the three statements

Presentation skills: body language, language use and delivery, contents and organization,

visual aids and question handling.

Table 4.2: Students’ overall reflection on their presentation skills over the term

ItemNo.