Recently, due to the development of globalization, there has been increasing a demand for good communication. It is hence, speaking has been paid lots of attention. Being one of the leading institutions in Vietnam in Foreign language educating and training, University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS) has been making an attempt to enhance Speaking skills by including Forum as a compulsory activity in speaking lesson for second year Fast track students. With a lot of advantages, Forum is considered as an effective activity helping promote students’ speaking skills. Firstly, background of the study, consisting of definitions and descriptions of key concepts and related studies was given. Afterward, in order to achieve its purpose, quantitative and qualitative methods were employed in this study. In the first place, survey questionnaires were exploited to study 75 students in the Fast track group. After that, 8 participants were interviewed with the purpose of elaborating on students’ responses in the questionnaires and probing for more details from the students. Correspondingly, 2 teachers from Fast track group, who were in charge of teaching Speaking skills for secondyear Fast track students this academic year, were selected as participants for both survey and interview. The description of the methodology employed in this study was followed by the findings and discussions presented in the fourth chapter. Finally, it is teachers’ pedagogical suggestions to minimize the difficulties, together with the researcher’s pedagogical implications. The most remarkable finding of this research is that the aspects of Interacting with others and Sociolinguistic knowledge are most developed through Forum. Moreover, based on these findings, implications were made for teachers and classroom teaching. It is suggested that teachers should comment on both preparation and complementation stages of Forum.
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI University of Languages and international Studies FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION Graduation paper THE USE OF FORUM TO DEVELOP SPEAKING SKILLS FOR SECOND-YEAR FAST TRACK STUDENTS AT FELTE, ULIS, VNU supervisor: VŨ TƯỜNG VI, M.A student: TRẦN HOÀNG ANH year of enrolment: QH2009 Ha Noi, May 2013 ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH KHOÁ LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP NGHIÊN CỨU VIỆC SỬ DỤNG HÌNH THỨC DIỄN ĐÀN ĐỂ TĂNG CƯỜNG KỸ NĂNG NÓI CHO SINH VIÊN CLC NĂM 2 TẠI KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH, ĐHNN, ĐHQGHN Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Th.S VŨ TƯỜNG VI Sinh viên: TRẦN HOÀNG ANH Khoá: QH 2009 HÀ NỘI – NĂM 2013 ACCEPTANCE I hereby state that I: Trần Hoàng Anh class QH2009.F.1.E.1, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper. Signature Hanoi, April 25 th , 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude towards my supervisor, Ms. Vu Tuong Vi, whose long-term support as well as spiritual encouragement was an indispensible factor in the fulfillment of this research. Besides, I would like to give my special thanks to Ms. Nguyen Thu Le Hang, Ms. Pham Minh Tam, Mr. Nguyen Chi Duc and Ms. Cao Thuy Hong for their professional and expertise instructions and critical comments. Furthermore, I would like to send my heartfelt thanks to the teachers and students participating in both surveys and interviews. They have enthusiastically helped me to carry out the study with ease. My thanks also go to my beloved friends from class 09E1. They are those who completely understand the hard work of any student-researcher has to go through, thus giving me whole-hearted supports and encouragements. Last but not least, my sincerest thanks to my family members for their unconditional love and cares. 4 ABSTRACT Recently, due to the development of globalization, there has been increasing a demand for good communication. It is hence, speaking has been paid lots of attention. Being one of the leading institutions in Vietnam in Foreign language educating and training, University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS) has been making an attempt to enhance Speaking skills by including Forum as a compulsory activity in speaking lesson for second year Fast track students. With a lot of advantages, Forum is considered as an effective activity helping promote students’ speaking skills. Firstly, background of the study, consisting of definitions and descriptions of key concepts and related studies was given. Afterward, in order to achieve its purpose, quantitative and qualitative methods were employed in this study. In the first place, survey questionnaires were exploited to study 75 students in the Fast track group. After that, 8 participants were interviewed with the purpose of elaborating on students’ responses in the questionnaires and probing for more details from the students. Correspondingly, 2 teachers from Fast track group, who were in charge of teaching Speaking skills for second-year Fast track students this academic year, were selected as participants for both survey and interview. The description of the methodology employed in this study was followed by the findings and discussions presented in the fourth chapter. Finally, it is teachers’ pedagogical suggestions to minimize the difficulties, together with the researcher’s pedagogical implications. The most remarkable finding of this research is that the aspects of Interacting with others and Sociolinguistic knowledge are most developed through Forum. Moreover, based on these findings, implications were made for teachers and classroom teaching. It is suggested that teachers should comment on both preparation and complementation stages of Forum. 5 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT Communicative Language Teaching FELTE Faculty of English Language Teacher Education L2 Second language ULIS University of Language and International Studies VNU Vietnam National University LIST OF FIGURES& DIAGRAMS LIST OF FIGURES PAGE FIGURE 1 Students' attitude towards the importance of speaking skills compared to the other 3 English skills 24 FIGURE 2 Students’ attitude towards the effectiveness of Forum activity in developing speaking skills 26 FIGURE2 Aspects of speaking proficiency Students had gained (as perceived by themselves) 28 FIGURE3 Facilitators’ difficulties in the facilitation stage 37 FIGURE4 Participants’ difficulties in the facilitation stage 40 LIST OF DIAGRAMS PAGE DIAGRAM 1 Schematic Representation of Communicative 10 6 Competence 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS 8 PART I. INTRODUCTION This first chapter states the problem and the rationale of the study, together with the aims, the objectives, the scope and the significance of the whole paper. Above all, the research questions are identified to function as the goals of the whole research. 1. Statement of the Problem and Rationale of the study Listening, speaking, reading and writing are known as the four major skills in teaching and learning any languages and English is not an exception. Nevertheless, because of the growing need for good communication skills in English, speaking is considered as the most essential skill to be mastered. Bygate (1987) even emphasizes that in order to deliver most of ideas or thoughts, learners need to be able to speak or communicate confidently. For this reason, speaking and the teaching of speaking are worth paying attention to. With the hope of serving the need for better communication, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been applied to English language teaching since the late 1960s. CLT is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. It is also referred to “communicative approach to the teaching of foreign languages” or simply the “communicative approach”. Hence, this method’s goal is teaching “communicative competence” including not only grammatical competence but also sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competence (Canale & Swan 1980). In the light of this approach, English is looked on as an international means of communicating. Globally, in terms of L2 teaching and learning context, especially in CLT, various activities which can promote speaking are provided in communicative method like role play, forum, simulations, information gap, storytelling, interviews, story completion, reporting and playing cards, etc. (Hadi 2011) Among them, yet, forum is infrequently used. It is commonly known that Forum is used as method helping aid 9 teaching and learning by providing a virtual space to share ideas, opinions related to the subjects in class. In the West, according to Garrison (1993), Gilbert (1995) and Gangel (2010), Forum is an ideal teaching method which enhances and extends the benefits of other information—transmitting approaches to learning. On the contrary, this method has not been paid too much attention in the Asia; there have been hardly any studies found on this topic. In Vietnam, it appears to have no difference from the Asian picture. Being one of the leading institutions in Vietnam in language education, the University of Languages and International Studies has been well aware of this issue. Forum activity has been included in speaking lesson for students in Fast track group right in the second year as a compulsory assignment. Moreover, this activity is designed with the aim of developing students’ speaking proficiency. Though Forum has been implemented for 10 years in Fast track group and it is claimed to be an effective activity helping develop speaking skills, there has been no research studying on this issue. It is, thus, completely needed an investigation on whether or not Forum activity benefits second year students in terms of improving their speaking ability. All of these factors encourage the researcher to conduct this study entitled “The use of Forum to develop Speaking skills for 2nd-year Fast track Students at FELTE, ULIS, VNU”. The study is an effort to investigate the application of Forum activity in Fast track group, FELTE, ULIS, VNU. 2. Aims and objectives of the study The primary purpose of the present research is to explore the use of Forum to develop speaking skills for 2 nd -year fast track students. This research also aims at giving suggestions made by the teachers to have a better use of forum activity. Specifically, the research seeks for answers to the following question 10 [...]... other four competences (To et al 20 12, p30-31) Diagram 2 Schematic Representation of Communicative Competence (Celce-Murcia et al 1995 cited in To et al 20 12) As for the sake of clarity and consistency, this paper will refer to Celce-Murcia et al’s classification whenever the term “communicative competence” is mentioned 1 .2 Speaking skills in L2 teaching and learning 1 .2. 1 An overview of speaking skills... (including the facilitating group) In the scope of this study, the researcher will focus on the facilitation phase and the reflection phase 2. 2 Data collection instruments 2. 2.1 Questionnaire 2. 2.1.1 Questionnaire for Students According to Brown (cited in Mackey and Gass 20 05), questionnaire was defined as “any written instruments that present respondents with a series of questions or statements to which... interviewed 2. 3 Data collection procedures 2. 3.1 Questionnaire procedure 2. 3.1.1 Piloting questionnaire Questionnaire before being delivered was sent to 2 students from Fast track group and these 2 students were asked to give comments on the content of the questionnaire By this way, the researcher knew which words were unclear or hard to understand Thus, adjustments were added in time 2. 3.1 .2 Main procedure... are appropriately, know how to ask questions during interaction, and know how to respond nonverbally according to the purpose of the talk (To et al 20 12, p.41) 22 All things considered, in this study, the researcher adopts this framework of To et al (20 12) 1.3 Forum 1.3.1 Definition of forum The term “forum”, in Oxford Advanced Dictionary, is defined as a place where people can exchange opinions and... their questions in their own words They were hoped to draw out more opinions from the participants 2. 2.1 .2 Questionnaire for teachers This questionnaire was also adapted from the one of Khuc (20 10) The questionnaire for teachers had a small difference from students’ The first two questions were as same as the 2nd and the 3rd questions from students’, which mean they asked for teachers’ perceptions about... communicative approach can 2 nd-year students gain through Forum as perceived by students themselves?” This question, according to Khuc (20 10), was designed following the multiple choice question, which was also one kind of close-ended question In this question, each aspect of speaking proficiency was an option In this case, as stated in the question, participants could choose more than one option... suitable for us because of its simplicity in term of process 2. 1 .2 Teachers For this sample, the researcher decided to choose the Purposive sampling strategy to collect data because in many cases purposive sampling is used to access “knowledgeable people”, those who have in-depth knowledge about the particular issues (Ball cited in Cohen et al 20 11) It is thought that these teachers also have chances... aspects of speaking proficiency students could achieve through Forum activity The last question asked for teachers’ opinions about students’ difficulties while complementing Forum 2. 2 .2 Interview According to Mackey & Gass (20 05), there would be at least two independents data collection sources to support the study as well as its conclusion Moreover, the fact is some participants were not willing to... performance” Chomsky further claims that language structure and its 16 acquisition are context-free, which means an innate language mechanism is sufficient to account for first language acquisition It can be seen that Chomsky’s linguistic view focuses too much on the “correctness” but does not pay adequate attention to the socio-culture of language In response to Chomsky’s concept, Hymes (19 72) argues... interview guiding questions with 1 teachers and 2 students Delivering and collect questionnaires from the students Time 2 weeks 1 week 1 week 3 Grouping data Delivering and collect questionnaires from the teachers 4 days Interview the teachers and the first-year students 2 Implementing 10 days Encoding questionnaires Transcribing interview records 1 week 1 week 2. 4 Data analysis method In the set of Questionnaire, . ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH KHOÁ LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP NGHIÊN CỨU VIỆC SỬ DỤNG HÌNH THỨC DIỄN ĐÀN ĐỂ TĂNG CƯỜNG KỸ NĂNG NÓI CHO SINH VIÊN CLC NĂM 2 TẠI KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH, ĐHNN, ĐHQGHN . findings together with in-depth analysis and discussion of the findings – gives answers to the two research questions proposed at the introduction chapter. Part III - Conclusion - summarizes the main. viên hướng dẫn: Th.S VŨ TƯỜNG VI Sinh viên: TRẦN HOÀNG ANH Khoá: QH 2009 HÀ NỘI – NĂM 2013 ACCEPTANCE I hereby state that I: Trần Hoàng Anh class QH2009.F.1.E.1, being a candidate for the degree