an exploratory study on teaching and learning speaking english at binh gia high school - lang son problems and solutions

This minor thesis aimed at investigating some difficulties that students and teachers at Binh Gia High School have encountered in learning and teaching English speaking skill and suggest

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Thực trạng dạy và học nói Tiếng Anh tại trường Trung Học Phổ Thông

Bình Gia - Lạng Sơn: Những khó khăn và cách giải quyết

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Thực trạng dạy và học nói Tiếng Anh tại trường Trung Học Phổ Thông

Bình Gia - Lạng Sơn: Những khó khăn và cách giải quyết

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

SUPERVISOR: HOÀNG THỊ XUÂN HOA, Ph.D

Hanoi, 2014

DECLARATION

I certify that the thesis entitled “An exploratory study on teaching and

learning speaking English at Binh Gia high school - Lang Son : Problems and

solutions ” is the result of my own study and the substance of this research has not been

submitted for degree to any other university or institution

Hanoi, August 2014

Signature

Luong Thi Huyen

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, PhD for her precious instructions, helpful suggestions, and especially, invaluable critical feedback and correction during the research

I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all of my lecturers at the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University Ha Noi, whose support and considerations have enabled me

to pursue the course

I also wish to acknowledge the great support and precious help with the data collection and analysis of my colleagues and students at Binh Gia High School Without them, I could not have completed my thesis

Last but not least, my heartfelt thanks are due to my beloved family members who are always besides me to support and encourage me to fulfill my study

ABSTRACT

English speaking is an important skill and most used to express opinions, explanations, make arguments in daily life Students need to speak English fluently to get better result in learning English and get a good job in the future This minor thesis aimed

at investigating some difficulties that students and teachers at Binh Gia High School have encountered in learning and teaching English speaking skill and suggesting solutions to overcome these difficulties The subjects of the study were 120 students and 12 teachers of English The data of the research was collected from both students‟ and teachers‟ questionnaires, interviews The findings showed that students' difficulties in learning English speaking skill were low level of English proficiency, lack of motivation and using mother tongue problem Teachers' difficulties in teaching English speaking skill were insufficient communicative competence and inappropriate method In addition, other difficulties in learning and teaching English speaking skill of students and teachers were large and multi-level classes, current testing system and lack of class time From these findings, some recommendations were made with the aim to improve the teaching and learning English at Binh Gia High School

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 3

3 Method and procedure of the research 3

4 Scope of the study 4

5 Organization of the paper 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5

1.1 Speaking skill 5

1.1.1 Definition of speaking 5

1.1.2 Characteristics of speaking 5

1.1.3 The role of speaking in foreign language teaching 6

1.2 Teaching and learning speaking skill 7

1.2.1 Teaching speaking skill 7

1.2.2 Learning speaking skill 8

1.2.3 Problems in teaching and learning speaking skill 10

1.3.Using CLT in teaching speaking skill 10

1.4 Summary 12

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 13

2.1 The context 13

2.1.1 Overview of the English textbook 13

2.1.2 An overview of Binh Gia High School 13

2.1.3 The students at BGHS 14

2.1.4 The teachers at BGHS 14

2.2 Research questions 14

2.3 Participants 15

2.4 Data collection instruments 15

2.4.1 Questionnaire 15

2.4.2 Interview 16

2.5 Data collection procedure 16

2.6 Data analysis 17

2.7 Summary 17

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 18

3.1 Data analysis 18

3.1.1 Results of the survey questionnaires. 18

3.2 Findings 30

3.2.1 Difficulties from the students 30

3.2.2 Difficulties from the teachers 31

3.2.3 Problems from other factors 33

PART III: CONCLUSION 35

1 Conclusions 35

2 Solutions perceived by teachers and students to overcome teachers‟ and students' difficulties 35

2.1 Teachers‟ solutions 35

2.2 Students' solutions 37

3 Limitations of the study 39

4 Recommendations for further study 40

REFERENCES 41

APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 IV APPENDIX 3 VII APPENDIX 4 X APPENDIX 5 XI APPENDIX 6 XII

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CLT: Communication Language Teaching

BGHS: Bình Gia High School

%: Percentage

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES

Chart 3: Teachers‟ and students‟ opinions about students‟ passion of learning

English peaking skill

Chart 4: Teachers‟ and students‟ judgment about students‟ speaking competence

Tables

Table 1: Information about students and teachers participating in the survey

Table 2: Teachers‟ years of teaching English and students‟ years of learning English Table 3: Students‟ reasons for learning English speaking skill

Table 4: jj Teachers‟ difficulties when teaching speaking skill

Table 5: Teachers‟ solutions to improve the speaking lessons

Table 6: Teachers‟ suggested solutions to improve the speaking lesson

Table 7: Students‟ difficulties when learning English speaking skill

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

O‟Malley and Pierce (1996) stated that speaking is an important skill that a learner should acquire It is very important in order to enable students to communicate effectively through oral language because the disability of the students to speak may lead them to be unable to express their ideas even in a simple form of conversation In addition, Burn and Joyce (1997: 54-55) stated that one of the aims of most language programs is to develop spoken language skills and most programs aim to integrate both spoken and written language Learning a language means using it in communication in oral or written form, and being able to express feeling, thoughts, and experiences in various contexts Lade (1964: 51) stated that to know the language is to use it He further stated that students do not know a sentence until he can speak it

One of the main tasks assigned to foreign language teaching at school is that of training students to be communicatively competent Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998: 13) In any second language teaching and learning, speaking is always believed to be the most vital skill Learning a target language makes no sense if you cannot communicate in it successfully For many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues However, with the rapid progress of globalization, English speaking skill is thought to be the key to one‟s success in his career The goal of teaching speaking should improve students' communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in each communicative circumstance Classroom activities that develop learners‟ ability to express themselves through speech would therefore seem an important component of a language course

However, in some places in Vietnam English teaching and learning has been strongly influenced by the traditional methods Teachers as well as students pay much attention to the grammatical items In these classes, teachers mainly focus on explaining the grammatical rules and structures to students who are considered as passive recipients

As a result, those students might be structurally competent but communicative incompetent That causes a lot of difficulties in using English in real-life communication

Speaking skill is a very important skill when learning English The real situation of English language teaching in Vietnam showed that this is the skill that students usually neglect and are not good at even though they have very good grammatical knowledge Students‟ learning methods depended much on teachers, students still were quite passive in their learning process In order to improve the students‟ speaking ability, teachers could use many kinds of communicative activities

There is a fact that students must pass examinations in English to graduate, but many of them fail to learn it successfully Students have lost their communicative competence on which means little attention has been paid to communicative skills such as listening and speaking In addition, under the effect of old-fashioned methods, students are believed to be indifferent to such skills They mentally withdraw or look for strategies to pass the required exams with minimum effort

Among the four skills known as listening, speaking, writing and listening, speaking skill plays an important part in language teaching in the context of Vietnam For many learners, speaking skill is the most important of the four skills in a second language in general and in English in particular However, it is the fact that most of students at Binh Gia High School seemed to consider speaking skill to be the most challenging From observations and teaching experiences, the author realized that students paid little attention

to communicative skills such as listening and speaking They lost interest in learning English and they were not active in participating in speaking activities They felt nervous

in speaking class and became demotivated in learning speaking These led to the underachievement and had a negative effect on students in learning English as a foreign language

There still exist many difficulties facing English Language teachers in Vietnam in general and English Language teachers at the Binh Gia High School in particular Many Vietnamese learners can write and read English quite well but they cannot speak fluently and correctly in communication Certainly there are many reasons for this As one teacher

of English I realized that although both teachers and learners tried their best to reach their goals to teach and study English speaking skills effectively, up to now the results have been still far from satisfaction

All the above mentioned reasons have inspired the writer to conduct a research

titled “An exploratory study on teaching and learning speaking English at Binh Gia High School - Lang Son : Problems and solutions ”

This study helps us to have a deep understanding about teachers' and students' difficulties in teaching and learning English In general, it can be affected by a variety of factors coming from teachers‟ side, students‟ side and classroom condition Through this study, the researcher expects to find out some appropriate solutions to overcome the difficulties for more successful teaching and learning speaking English skill at Binh Gia High School

2 Aims of the study

This study aims to:

Identify difficulties perceived by teachers and students in teaching and learning speaking skill

Suggest solutions perceived by teachers and students to overcome the difficulties for more successful teaching and learning speaking English skill at Binh Gia High School

3 Method and procedure of the research

With the aims of investigating difficulties of teachers and students in teaching and learning speaking skill at Binh Gia High School, survey questionnaires and interviews method were chosen

● Research questions

1 How do teachers and students perceive concepts of speaking skill?

2 What difficulties do the teachers and students face in learning and teaching of speaking skill at BGHS?

3 What are solutions to improve the quality of the learning and teaching of speaking skill at BGHS?

To collect data for this study, 120 students and 12 teachers were invited to take part in survey questionnaires and interviews The students were from different classes The teachers participating in the survey were teaching English to students so that they can understand the students‟ difficulties in learning speaking skill

First, the survey questionnaires were carried out to find out teachers' and students' difficulties Then the interviews with teachers and students were conducted to clarify aspects which were inadequate and vague in the survey questionnaires

4 Scope of the study

The study aims at finding out the difficulties in teaching and learning speaking skill faced by students and teachers at Binh Gia High School There are many types of difficulties that teachers and learners met when they taught and studied a foreign language However, due to the limitation of time and the narrow scale, the study only focused on the most common difficulties in teaching and learning speaking skill faced by students and teachers at Binh Gia High School from the perspectives of students and teachers Then, this study also gave out some suggested solutions generated from the teachers in the interview for students to overcome those difficulties and improve their speaking skill

5 Organization of the paper

The minor thesis is composed of three parts: Introduction, Development, and Conclusions

Part A- Introduction presents the rationale, aims, method and procedure, scope and

organization of the study

Part B - Development consists of 3 chapters:

Chapter 1- Literature review gives the theoretical background of speaking skill

Chapter 2 - Methodology includes the description context of the study , research questions,

participants, research questions, data collection instruments, data collection procedure, data analysis)

Chapter 3- Data analysis and findings describes the data of the questionnaires and

interviews, then gives some findings through the data analysis

Part C - Conclusion suggests some solutions perceived by teachers and students to the

current problems and focuses on the conclusions of the thesis, some limitations and recommendations for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Speaking skill

1.1.1 Definition of speaking

There are many different concepts of speaking by many different linguistics, however, most of them agreed that speaking is very important to human communication According to Bygate (1997), speaking is a skill which is very important and requires as much attention as other skills, in both first and second languages In order to carry out most

of their basic interactions and transactions, learners need to be able to speak, and express

their ideas to other people He also emphasized that “interaction is the use of language for

maintaining communication between participants” and „interaction skills are skills of deciding what to say, when to say it and how to say it clearly” (Bygate, 1997, p.115)

Therefore, in learning speaking skill, learners are required to know not only how to produce specific points of language such as grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary (linguistic competence or grammatical competence), but also when, why and in what ways language is produced (sociolinguistic competence)

Brown (1994); Burn and Joyce (1997) suggested that speaking is an interactive

process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing

information 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

1.1.2 Characteristics of speaking

As for Bygate (1987), speaking has the following characteristics:

Firstly, 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

Secondly, the learners must know how to produce specific points of language such as grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary, but also they understand when, why, and in what ways to produce language

Thirdly, speech has its own features, structures, and conventions different from written language

Lastly, Bygate (1987) considered speaking as an undervalued skill in many ways The reason is that almost all people can speak, and so take speaking skill too much for granted Bygate also highly appreciates speaking skill by stating that speaking is the medium through which much language is learnt

To sum up, it is undeniable that speaking is the key to communication By considering what good speakers do, what speaking tasks can be used in class, and what specific needs learners report, teachers can help learners improve their speaking and overall oral competency

1.1.3 The role of speaking in foreign language teaching

In the view of language teaching, language has been divided into four macro-skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing based on the purpose of analysis and instruction It

is undeniable that speaking skill plays the most important part in foreign language teaching because it is fundamental to human communication (Ur, 1996) Knowing the language means being able to speak the language Furthermore, it is the vehicle to establish and maintain social relationships as well as to achieve professional advancement

Swan (2000) suggested that output might play several important roles in second language acquisitions The output's importance to learning is reported to push the learners

to process the language more deeply with more mental effort He admitted that the learner

is in control with output In speaking, learners can stretch their inter-language to meet communicative goals They need to create linguistics form and meaning and even discover what they can or cannot do Output may stimulate the learners from semantics, open-ended, strategic processing prevalent to incomprehension to complete grammatical processing for needed production Another role of output is promoted "noticing" Leaner notices "holes" in their linguistic knowledge and they work to fill them by various ways such as turning to dictionary, asking their peer or teachers or noticing themselves to pay attention to future relevant input

In the international relationship, English speaking ability is obviously crucial to be able to participate in the wider world of work The speaking skill is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the language For the reasons mentioned above, it

is really vital that language teachers should pay great attention to the teaching of speaking skill

1.2 Teaching and learning speaking skill

1.2.1 Teaching speaking skill

The goal of teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency Learners should

be able to make themselves understood, using their current proficiency to the fullest They should try to avoid confusion in the message due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, and to observe the social and cultural rules that apply in each communication situation

Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998, p 13) Speaking is a crucial part of second language learning and teaching Despite its importance, for many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues However, today's world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students' communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in each communicative circumstance In order to teach second language learners how to speak in the best way possible, some speaking activities are provided below, that can be applied to ESL and EFL classroom settings, together with suggestions for teachers who teach oral language

Teaching speaking is a very important part of second language learning The ability

to communicate in a second language clearly and efficiently contributes to the success of the learner in school and success later in every phase of life Therefore, it is essential that language teachers pay great attention to teaching speaking Rather than leading students to pure memorization, providing a rich environment where meaningful communication takes place is desired With this aim, various speaking activities such as those listed above can contribute a great deal to students in developing basic interactive skills necessary for life These activities make students more active in the learning process and at the same time make their learning more meaningful and fun for them

In the communicative model of language teaching, instructors help their students develop this body of knowledge by providing authentic practice that prepares students for real-life communication situations They help their students develop the ability to produce

grammatically correct, logically connected sentences that are appropriate to specific contexts, and to do so using acceptable (that is, comprehensible) pronunciation

1.2.2 Learning speaking skill

Practice for behaviorist is seen as a process of habit formation by reinforcing

"right" answers Practice should take central place because that is how language is learnt, i.e through extensive drill "without recourse to rationalistic explanation" (p.56 Hadley, 2001) They considered language acquisition a matter of practice or "operant conditioning" (Skinner, 1957 as cited in Hadley, 2001) "Behaviors that are reinforced will be learned." (Horwitz, 2008) UG dealt with acquisition of the first language, so their stand is

"environmental input" is crucial The child needs to hear the language spoken in order to select the appropriate parameter for his or her language environment (Horwitz, 2008) In the classroom the exposure to the language data helps students to set the value of parameters Krashen considers practice to consist mostly of comprehensible L+1 input with regard to affective filter They pay attention to the L1 and positive transfer (language universals) as well as the proximity of languages Practice in the form of learning is useful for beginners or those students who can't utilize their environment to acquire a language Students needn't be forced to speak; they will volunteer when they are ready to "People learn second language by using that language." (Horwitz, 2008) Cognitive theory considers active mental participation to be one of the crucial components of practice Practice is a rebuilding activity - new input brings new information restructuring an existing schema Practice is a good time for controlled processing and internalization of an explicit knowledge For conversation theories practice is taking place in a real conversation verbally or non-verbally Acculturation theory takes into account practice outside of classroom, putting additional emphasis on social environment

Behaviorism sees error fossilization as the worst sequence of not correcting an error, so overt correction must take place In UG error is probably a result of unmarked feature which is being neglected a result of interference Cook (2008) says that parents rarely correct their child's speech and do that for meaning not for grammar Conversely, in the classroom error correction occurs frequently, for the sake of additional evidence for learners Krashen assumes that error correction should be limited and used only when we focus on learning, otherwise it triggers affective filter and deters acquisition Cognitive theory doesn't take error correction into consideration as it mostly concerned with building

up a set of cognitive skills Congruent with their idea of controlled practice I might conclude that mistakes will be corrected from the very beginning Within the context of meaningful learning a mistake is being noted only if it prevents conveying idea Conversation theory sees errors as a good start for scaffolding Basically, they provoke learning process Acculturation theory emphasizes a role of low affective filter as a key factor in success of SLA, so it should deal with error correction gently as it usually affects the filter in a negative way

1.2.3 Problems in teaching and learning speaking skill

If the aim of the English course is to enable the students to communicate in English, then speaking skills should be taught and practiced in the language classroom However, it is true that when teaching speaking skill, the teachers can encounter many problems The most popular ones can be listed as follows:

First, the class size is one of the major concerns Teaching the target language for a class of 40 or 45 students is quite a hard job and not effective The teachers have to deal with many problems of large class, so the results of teaching and learning speaking skill are unsatisfactory

Second, students‟ lack of motivation also prevents the success of the speaking activities in class They almost have no interest in learning the foreign language They just take part in the communicative activities because of the teachers‟ presence, the requirements of the exams, etc

Another difficulty in teaching and learning speaking skill is mother-tongue use In classes where all learners share the same mother-tongue, they tend to use it because: it is easier, it is unnatural to communicate in a foreign language and they feel less exposed in their mother-tongue If the students work in small groups, it can be quite challenging to get them - especially the less disciplined and motivated ones- to speak the target language

Nevertheless, teaching and learning English in non – English speaking environment such as Vietnam, the learners do not have many chances to practice English outside the classroom This picture can be described as almost every student only speaks English, discuss the English topics when they come to class After the lesson, they come back to their real life with their family and their work The learners never speak English to their relatives or their family members because all of them are Vietnamese and they only use Vietnamese in communication Therefore, when the learners use English in

communicating to Vietnamese, they may be laughed at and be thought that they are important Since English is a foreign language in our country, most students especially senior high school students are not familiar with it (Hetrakul, 1995) Kavin Hetrakul also said that they use English more frequent only inside the class and less frequent outside the class Whereas, students‟ have limited time to learn English in class, and they still do not have enough encouragement to practice English outside the class in order to get familiar with English This case brings a problem that make senior high school students have difficulties to communicate in English

self-Another difficulty in teaching and learning speaking skill is mother-tongue use In classes where all learners share the same mother-tongue, they tend to use it because: it is easier, it is unnatural to communicate in a foreign language and they feel less exposed in their mother-tongue If the students work in small groups, it can be quite challenging to get them - especially the less disciplined and motivated ones- to speak the target language Many other problems in the process of teaching and learning speaking skill will be discussed carefully in later part of this study

Many Vietnamese teachers feel that their circumstances oppose to attempts to use communicative practices For example, they have to prepare students for a grammar-based examination, and have to finish certain content in the textbook in a certain amount of time They may have classes of 45 students, many of whom are more concerned about the immediate goal – to pass exams, to get a degree, rather than the long term goal – to develop communicative competence Moreover, textbooks with the allocated syllabus in the time allowed are also the obstacle to the implementation of the communicative approach If teachers are committed to communicative methods, pre-determined syllabus worries them all the time

In conclusion, this chapter has mentioned popular ideas about the nature of speaking, the newly approved teaching approach - CLT, and the necessity of teaching and learning speaking skill in a communicative class These concepts and ideas will serve as the theoretical background for all the analysis and discussions of the data in the following chapter

1.3 Using CLT in teaching speaking skill

Language teaching is a dynamic process, which involves constant changes and shifting of different methods

Communicative language teaching aims broadly to apply the theoretical perspective

of the Communicative Approach by marking communicative competence the goal of language teaching and by acknowledging the interdependence of language and communication

According to Richards & Rodgers (2001), Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) originated from the changes in the British Situational Language Teaching approach dating from the late 1960s Stemming from the socio-cognitive perspective of the socio-linguistic theory, with an emphasis on meaning and communication, and a goal to develop learners‟ “communicative competence”

When using communicative activities, it is important to make students feel

comfortable and confident, feel free to take risks and have opportunities to speak As for

Harmer (2001) teachers should be aware that teaching speaking closely relates to receptive skill work Teachers should pay attention to: Output and input, Texts, Reception and

production Output and input: output is the language the students produce; input is the

feedback or prompters from students‟ interlocutor (teacher) Teachers can modify their

students‟ output Texts: offer students a model to follow, especially when working on

specific functions (agreeing, disagreeing, expressing surprise, approval ), also act as stimuli which then help create language production: discussion (from controversial reading

passage), response (after listening to a tape about a story or opinion Reception is a part of

production: conversation between two people is a blend of listening and speaking;

comprehend what‟s said is necessary for what‟s said next Production enables reception:

oral production works in a way that helps Ss with their listening comprehension as when they try to speak, they better adjust to understanding other people speaking in the same

context

Brown & Nation (1997) think that teachers should give students practice with both fluency and accuracy: teachers should provide students with form-focused and meaning-focused speaking activities that aim at fluency and accuracy development

Objectives for speaking are often given by the particular program in which the teacher must work In some cases, the syllabus will consist of a list of grammar structures

to be taught The teacher needs to be flexible in making best use of what is available for teaching purpose In other words, the teacher must have some freedom in deciding what objectives to meet, what content to cover, and what activities to use In this case, the

teacher can go beyond the more specific goals and objectives of the particular program to the speaking needs that the students have in the "real world"

Nunan (2003) believes that teachers had better provide students opportunities to talk (by using group work or pair work and limiting teacher talk), plan tasks involving negotiation of meaning, design classroom activities involving guidance, practice for both transactional and interactional speaking Interactional speaking is to both establish and maintain social relationship while transactional speaking is to exchange goods or services Interactional speech is much more unpredictable than the other as it ranges over many topics with participants taking turn and commenting freely while the latter encounters of a fairly restricted kind (e.g telephoning for a taxi) Students should be taught and guided to speak the targeted language in both interactional and transactional settings

1.4 Summary

This chapter so far discussed issues and aspects concerning to the topic of the study It has discussed the concepts and ideas relating to speaking skill Such issues included definitions of speaking, characteristics of speaking as well as the role of speaking in foreign language teaching Given the purpose of the study, it was mainly focused on the discussion of learning and teaching speaking skill It included learning and teaching speaking skill and problems in teaching and learning speaking skill Besides, method applied in English language teaching have been presented as well

The following chapters will present the investigation, the findings and suggested solutions to the problems under the light of the above mentioned theories

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 The context

2.1.1 Overview of the English textbook

The main material for teaching English at BGHS is a new set of English textbook approved by the Ministry of Education and Training The textbook English 10 consists of

16 units including five parts: reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus The book was designed according to communicative approach For speaking skill, its objective

is to develop students competence and ability to exchange information at a simple level about the situations relating to the topics they have learnt Generally speaking, the new English textbook has proved to be more relevant and appropriate to the current context of teaching and learning English at high school in Vietnam However, it is also challenging for both teachers and students because of different students‟ English proficiency and teaching - learning conditions of each school

The new English textbook for grade 10 follows the two approaches dominating the

foreign language education and methodology all over the world - the learner - centered

approach and the communicative approach The teaching method chosen for this book is

task - based teaching The reason for this choice is that these two approaches consider students the centre of education and aim at developing their creativity In traditional teaching approaches, teachers are the centre of the teaching and learning process - the teachers speak and the students just listen In the learner - centered approach, the teacher is not only the provider of knowledge but also the organizer, advisor and facilitator; the students not only listen passively to the teacher but also actively take part in the learning activities through pair work and group work The traditional approaches consider such linguistic competence as pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar structures their final aims while the communicative competence with listening, speaking, reading and writing skills is the biggest concern of communicative approach; the linguistic competence is just the means for students to obtain their communicative competence

2.1.2 An overview of Binh Gia High School

Binh Gia High School is situated on Binh Gia District which is one hundred forty kilometers far from Ha Noi city, the school was established in 1966 and it has been reliable for training quality not only in the district but also in t he province for many years

This school has 32 classes (each has 45 students) and 12 teachers of English aged from 25 to 39 with at least 2 years of teaching Of these teaching staff members, four of them graduated from Vietnam National University, Ha Noi - University of Languages and International Studies, and two graduated from Thai Nguyen University of education and one graduated from Thai Nguyen Agricultural and Forestry University

2.1.3 The students at BGHS

Most of the students come from the villages in the district The majority of students are ethnic minority and live very far from school The teaching of English in general and the teaching of speaking English in particular has encountered with many difficulties Although most students are aware of the importance of English, few students have real interest in learning English In other words, the majority of the students do not pay much attention to English Their speaking skills are not quite good Although all students started learning English from grade six, their English proficiency is very low They study English just to prepare for the tests and exams, so what they need in learning English is to learn grammar lessons and to do exercises It seems that a lot of students can not communicate successfully despite knowing a lot about English grammar patterns Only a few students wish to take university entrance exams in English, which means few students have real interest in learning English In other words, not much attention is paid to English by the majority of the students

2 What difficulties do the teachers and students face in learning and teaching of speaking skill at BGHS?

3 What are solutions to improve the quality of the learning and teaching of speaking skill at BGHS?

2.3 Participants

The subject of the study was 120 students of grade 10 of Binh Gia High School and 12 teachers who are currently teaching or have taught speaking at BGHS These students were chosen from 12 classes of grade 10 in which 54 of them were female and 66 of them were male Most of them aged from 15 to 17 Most of them came from the countryside (97 students) while 23 were from town All these students were taught by Vietnamese teachers

of English 12 teachers who were teaching speaking skills to students at BGHS were selected as the participants of the study with the hope to find out difficulties in teaching speaking skill to their students at BGHS

2.4 Data collection instruments

In order to obtain in-depth, rich data and information for investigating the situation and difficulties that teachers and students met in teaching and learning speaking skill at BGHS, the study used various methods of data collection: questionnaire and interview In order to get information to fulfill the aims of the study, two survey questionnaires were designed The first questionnaire was administered to 12 teachers currently teaching speaking skills to students at BGHS as the participants of the study with the hope to find out the teaching methods and techniques they often apply in teaching English speaking skills to their students at BGHS The second questionnaires were administered to 120 students who were chosen from 12 classes in which 54 were female and 66 were male The researcher delivered the questionnaire to those students in order to investigate the problems facing the learning of English speaking skill students at the BGHS

2.4.1 Questionnaire

Basing on certain knowledge about the students‟ problems gained through 6 years of experience as a teacher of English at BGHS, the investigator designed two kinds of questionnaires which consist of both closed questions (students and teachers only choose one option) and open-ended questions (with more possibilities at their disposal) to find out difficulties which teachers and students encountered in teaching and learning speaking and what they done to overcome these difficulties

The teachers‟ survey questionnaire: The survey questionnaire for teachers consisted of 8

questions (see appendix 3) All these questions were focused on the following categories:

 Teachers‟ background (Question 1)

 Teachers‟ attitudes towards teaching and learning speaking skill

(Question 2,3,4,5)

 Teachers‟ difficulties in teaching speaking skill to students at BGHS

( Question 6)

 Teachers' suggestions in teaching speaking skill (Question 7)

 Teachers‟ solutions (Question 8)

 The students‟ survey questionnaire: The survey questionnaire for students consisted of

9 questions (see appendix 2) in which 9 questions were multiple choice All these

questions were focused on the following categories:

 Students‟ background and their learning experience (Question 1)

 Students‟ attitudes towards learning English speaking skills (Question 2,3,4,5)

 Reason for learning English (Question 6)

 Students‟ difficulties in learning to speak and their solutions to improve speaking skill (Question 7)

 Students ' suggestions in teaching speaking skill (Question 8)

 Students solutions (Question 9)

2.4.2 Interview

An interview was conducted in English with a group of 20 students and 5 teachers The questions in the interviews were basically based on those in the questionnaire, but were extended to include more open-ended questions to get more thorough understanding

of the reasons behind each student‟s choice Each conversation lasted for about 7 minutes The data were then transcribed and translated into English

2.5 Data collection procedure

In the first phase, questionnaires were administered to 120 students and 12 teachers at BGHS The participants were asked to complete the questionnaire at home and returned their responses two days later so that they would have as much time as they needed

After the collected data were analyzed, in the second phase, 5 teachers and 20 students with the most problems in teaching and learning English speaking skill were contacted for semi-structured interviews with the researcher in locations where they felt at ease and at a

time they suggested The interviews were all tape-recorded to free the interviewer to participate naturally in the discussion and to allow the content to be reviewed in details During the interview, the researcher modified the questions and procedures according to

the subjects‟ responses

2.6 Data analysis

Data analysis is not simply a single description of the collected data and information

In fact it is the process by which the researcher interprets the data and information collected from the survey questionnaires and interviews The scheme and coding table in this research emerged from an examination of the data rather than being determined beforehand and imposed on the data and information The information from the interviews was transcribed and major themes were identified with a view to clarify and supplement the statistical results

2.7 Summary

In short, the chapter has described in detail the setting of the study It concluded the context which involved overview of the English textbook, an overview of Binh Gia High School, the students at BGHS, the teachers at BGHS Then the setting of the study presented the research questions, participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedure and data analysis used in this study Major findings will be presented and discussed in Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 3.1 Data analysis

3.1.1 Results of the survey questionnaires

a General information

● General information about participants

The information about the students and teachers participated in the survey is

presented in the following table:

Teachers Students

Table 1: Information about students and teachers participating in the survey

The table showed that the number of teachers who participated in this study was 12 Among them, 3 teachers was male, which only made up for about 25% The rest of 9 teachers (75%) are female There were 120 students who participated in answering the survey questionnaires Among them, 66 students (55%) were male, and 54 students (45%) were female

● Teachers’ years of teaching English and students’ years of learning English

Teachers’ years of teaching

C more than 6-9 years 5 C more than 3-7 years 114

D more than 9 years 4 D more than 7 years 0 Table 2: Teachers‟ years of teaching English and students‟ years of learning English

As presented in table 2, most of the teachers at BGHS have had several years of teaching English Only one teacher has the shortest periods of time working as a teacher 2 out of 12 teachers (17%) have worked as an English teacher for 3 to 6 years 4 teachers (33%) have worked in this school for more than 9 years and 5 teachers (50%) have worked at Binh Gia High School for 6 to 9 years

As we can see from the second column in table 2 most of the students at BGHS have learnt English for quite a long time 95% of the students (114 out of 120 students) have studied English for more than 3 to 7 years They had to learn English as at secondary school and high school The other number of students claimed that they have learnt English for less than 1 year to 7 years is quite small The number of these students was only 6, which made up for 0.5% in total

b Teachers’ and students’ opinions about learning speaking skill

● Teachers’ and students’ opinion about the importance of English speaking skill

0 10 20 30 40 50

Teachers Students

Note: A1: Very essential, A2: Quite essential, A3: Essential, A4: Not very essential, A5:

Not essential at all

Chart 1: Teachers‟ and students‟ opinion about the importance of English speaking skill

It can be concluded from chart 1 that most of the students (97.5%) thought that English speaking skill was essential Only a small number of students found that English speaking skill was not very essential or was not essential at all

When being asked about the importance of speaking skill a half number of teachers (92%) thought that English speaking skill was essential One of seven teachers (8%) found that learning and teaching English speaking skill was not very essential to the students The reason for these positive attitudes toward teaching and learning speaking skill derive from their understanding that their country is on the way of integration so that they need to use English to communicate both in the students‟ future jobs and in their everyday life Thus the teachers wish to help the students enrich their background knowledge, increase their vocabulary and grammatical structures, improve their speaking skill and gain their confidence when communicating in English

In the interview, most of students also stated the importance of speaking skill and gave reasons for their attitudes After accumulating their points of views, the researcher found the most common and significant ideas as follows:

" In today's global word, the importance of English can not be denied and ignored since English is the most common language spoken everywhere With the help of developing technology, English has been playing a major role in many sectors including medicine, engineering, and education Particularly, as a developing country, Vietnam needs to make use of this world-wide spoken language in order to prove its international power"

● Teachers’ and students’ opinion about the importance of English speaking skill in comparison with other skills

0 20 40 60 80

Teachers Students

Note: A1: More important than others, A2: As important as others, A3: Less important

as important as other skills Only one teachers though that it was less important than others In student group, only 15.8% of the students considered that English speaking skill was more important than other skills while 71.6% considered it was as important as other skills The number of students who thought that English speaking skill was less important than other skills is very small (only 15 out of 120 students), which only made up for 12.5%

Chart 5.1: Teachers' opinions

● Teachers’ and students’ judgment about students’ speaking competence

Chart 4: Teachers‟ and students‟ judgment about students‟ speaking competence

As presented in chart 4, very few students judged that their English speaking competence was good, quite good and very good The percentage of these students only took up for 17,5% In contrast, 99 out of 120 students which took up for 82,5% found that their speaking competence was bad, quite bad and very bad This information should only

be used as reference because some students did not tell the truth about their English

competence In teachers‟ opinion, 16,7% teachers said that their students had good speaking competence 10 out of 12 teachers (83,3%) thought that their students‟ speaking competence was bad, quite bad and very bad

● Students’ reasons for learning English speaking skill

In the seventh question, the participants were asked to response to questionnaire items showing reasons for learning English The result was presented in table 7 below:

Students’ reasons for learning English speaking skill Number of

students

Percentage (%)

A I learn English to pass examinations 54 45

B Because English is an international language 6 5

C I learn English to communicate with foreigners 10 8.3

E It was a compulsory subject 34 28.4

F Others (please specify) ………… 0 0

Table 3: Students‟ reasons for learning English speaking skill

The statistics in the above table showed that the majority of students (45%) learnt English because they wanted to pass examinations Quite a large number of students (28.4%) really needed it because it was a compulsory subject It can be seen from statistics that not many students (13.3%) really loved English and learnt it as a hobby

There is only a small number, 5% of the students studied English for the reason that English is an international language From this result, we can see that most students are not willing to acquire English They learnt it for academic purpose Therefore, the teachers should raise students‟ awareness of learning English not only for their study, but also for their life in the future Some of them added the reasons for not working on it as follows:

I learnt English to pass the exams This is the most important thing for me If I get low

mark or fail the exams my parents will be sad and they will scold me