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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES PHẠM THÙY DUNG DIFFICULTIES FACED BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLIS

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THÙY DUNG

DIFFICULTIES FACED BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH AT EQUEST ACADEMY (HANOI) IN LEARNING

IELTS SPEAKING SKILL

NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN NGƯỜI VIỆT HỌC TIẾNG ANH TẠI CÔNG TY CỔ PHẦN HỌC THUẬT EQUEST HÀ NỘI GẶP PHẢI KHI HỌC KỸ NĂNG NÓI CỦA IELT S

M A Combined Program Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

HANOI – 2012

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THÙY DUNG

DIFFICULTIES FACED BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH AT EQUEST ACADEMY (HANOI) IN LEARNING

IELTS SPEAKING SKILL

NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN NGƯỜI VIỆT HỌC TIẾNG ANH TẠI CÔNG TY CỔ PHẦN HỌC THUẬT EQUEST HÀ NỘI GẶP PHẢI KHI HỌC KỸ NĂNG NÓI CỦA IELTS

M A Combined Program Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

Supervisor: Dr Tô Thị Thu Hương

HANOI - 2012

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF SYMBOLS, ABBREVIATIONS AND TABLES vi

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1 1 The IELTS Test Battery and the Speaking Sub-test 4

1 2 Previous studies on the IELTS Speaking Sub-test 9

1 3 Factors influencing Speaking Test performance of EFL/ ESL learners 12 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 24

2 0 Research approach/questions 24

2 1 Research Participants 24

2 2 Data Collection Instruments and Procedure 26

2 2 1 Data collection instruments 26

2 2 2 Data collection procedure 28

2 3 Data Analysis 30

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 33

3 1 Types of difficulties that lower and upper-intermediate students encounter in IELTS Speaking preparation courses at Equest 33

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3 1 1 Difficulties encountered by lower intermediate students (IELTS A

students) 33

3 1 2 Difficulties encountered by upper- intermediate students (IELTS B students) 40

3 2 The extent to which IELTS A & B students shared similar types of difficulties 43

3 3 Reasons of Difficulties 46

3 4 Solutions by students in class 51

3 5 Teacher‟s helps in class 53

3 6 Students‟ expectation about themselves and the teacher in 6 classes 54

CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS 57

4 1 For Equest 57

4 2 For teachers of IELTS Speaking class at Equest 59

4 3 For students of IELTS Speaking class at Equest 61

CONCLUSION 63

REFERENCES 67 APPENDICES I

Appendix 1 - Profiles of research participants I Appendix 2 - Consent on participating in the research III Appendix 3 - Narrative Frame IV Appendix 4 - Guided questions for interviews VI

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EFL: English as foreign language

ESL: English as second language

L1: first language

L2: second language

3 Tables

Table 1: Format of the IELTS Speaking Sub-test

Table 2: Difficulties encountered by lower intermediate students (IELTS A

students) in IELTS Speaking preparation classes at EQuest

Table 3: Difficulties encountered by upper- intermediate students (IELTS B

students) in IELTS Speaking preparation classes at EQuest

Table 4: The extent to which IELTS A & B students shared similar types of

difficulties

Table 5: Reasons of difficulties encountered by lower and upper-intermediate

students in IELTS Speaking classes at EQuest

Table 6: Solutions by students in class

Table 7: Teacher‟s helps in class

Table 8: Students‟ expectation about themselves and the teacher in 6 speaking

classes

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1

INTRODUCTION

The International English Language Testing Systems (IELTS), since its born

in 1989, has been widely accepted in the world as a „must-take-exam‟ for those who want to study or work where English is the primary language of communication As the demand of studying and working in developed countries – those English speaking nations has been continuously increasing as a global trend, it therefore comes as no surprise that a large number of non-native English speakers, among whom students occupy a considerable part, sit for the exam every year The candidates, in fact, invest a lot of time and money for the preparation However, not everyone taking the preparation courses can gain satisfactory proficiency in IELTS due to the obstacles they face in learning for the exam Vietnamese learners are obviously the case

The following tables show the extent to which Speaking band score of Vietnamese candidates is lower than the other three skills

Listening Reading Writing Speaking OVERALL

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Looking at the statistics above, speaking is probably the area where there has been the least improvement over the year Though speaking band score is not the lowest, it still implies that Vietnamese learners may meet more difficulties in learning IELTS Speaking compared to learning Reading and Listening Comparing results against other countries in the region such as Thailand, China, Taiwan and Korea, it is noticeable that Vietnamese candidates‟ scores in speaking are generally lower than those from Taiwan and Thailand This is to explain that it is of great necessity to find out what difficulties Vietnamese learners face when learning IELTS Speaking skill, which more or less resulted in their unsatisfactory band score

Among the four macro language skills of English assessed by IELTS, speaking is without doubt the most problematic to the researcher who has spent four years as an undergraduate learning for IELTS and is currently teaching IELTS at an English center in Hanoi This problem of the reseacher is also shared by the vast majority of her learners It is not uncommon that when asked what the most difficult language skill in IELTS is, almost all of her students claim that it is the speaking skill that causes them the most trouble Furthermore, quite a few students advance

in other three skills, but remain „low level‟ in speaking This is, thus, necessary to find out what difficulties faced by learners for the sake of both teachers and students

Last but not least, few studies have ever been done in this field and in Vietnam in particular despite the seriousness of the issue This is to argue that the conduct of this research is apparently of certain help

In this study, the researcher made attempts to seek answers to the 3 following questions:

intermediate) students encounter in IELTS Speaking preparation courses at EQuest?

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by research participants, limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies

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CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews relevant essential theoretical foundation for the current study The chapter starts with a brief introduction to the IELTS Test Battery and the speaking sub-test in particular in which the format, requirements and marking criteria are made clear, continues with previous papers relevant to the topic of the present research together with comments and opinions made by the researcher on the findings of those studies and ends with factors influencing the learning of speaking skill and speaking performance of EFL/ ESL learners

1 1 The IELTS Test Battery and the Speaking Sub-test

The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is an international standardised test of English language proficiency “designed to assess the language ability of candidates who need to study or work where English is the language of communication” (IELTS Handbook 2007, p 2) It is jointly managed

by University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations, the British Council and IDP Education Pty Ltd, and was established in 1989 There are two versions of the

IELTS: the Academic Version and the General Training Version:

 The Academic Version is intended for those who want to enroll in universities and other institutions of higher education and for professionals such as medical doctors and nurses who want to study or practice in an English-speaking country

 The General Training Version is intended for those planning to undertake non-academic training or to gain work experience, or for immigration purposes

IELTS is accepted by most Australian, British, Canadian, Irish, New Zealand and South African academic institutions, over 3,000 academic institutions in the United States, and various professional organizations It is also a requirement for

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immigration to Australia, New Zealand and Canada This is one of the tests that can

be used to satisfy English Language requirements for a long-term visa to the United Kingdom No minimum score is required to pass the test An IELTS result or Test Report Form is issued to all candidates with a score from 1 (no knowledge) to 9 (expert user) and each institution, employer or government agency sets a different threshold Institutions are advised not to consider valid a report older than two years, unless the user proves that he has worked to maintain his level

All candidates must complete four Modules - Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking - to obtain an individual band score for each sub-test and an overall one, the average of the four individual bands, which is shown on the IELTS Test Report Form All candidates take the same Listening and Speaking Modules, while the Reading and Writing Modules differ depending on whether the candidate is taking the Academic or General Training Versions of the Test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IELTS)

The Speaking Sub-test is one of the four skills-focused components which made up the IELTS Test Battery The Speaking Paper consiting of a one-to-one, face-to-face oral interview with a single examiner and candidate between 11 and 14 minutes aims to assess whether candidates can communicate effectively in English especially on programmes in English-speaking universities of “candidates who need

to study or work where English is used as the language of communication” (www.ielts.org.handbook.htm)

Table 1: Format of the IELTS Speaking Sub-test

After introductions and identity check, the examiner asks the

candidate questions about familiar topics

4 – 5 minutes

The candidate receives a task card with a topic S/He then has 1

minute to prepare and make notes before speaking about the topic

for 1 to 2 minutes

3 – 4 minutes

The examiner discusses with the candidate more abstract aspects of

the topic in part 2

4 – 5 minutes

(British Council IELTS Study Guide, p 23)

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All IELTS Speaking Tests are audio-recorded for monitoring and maintaining the objectiveness of the test There are three parts in the test (see Table

1 above), of which each is designed to capture different language functions in terms

of interaction pattern, task input and candidate output made by the test-takers

Research has shown that the speech functions which occur regularly in a candidate‟s output during the Speaking Test are: “providing personal information; expressing a preference; providing non-personal information; comparing; expressing opinions; summarising; explaining; conversation repair; suggesting; contrasting; justifying opinions; narrating and paraphrasing; speculating; analysing” (Taylor, 2001, cited in Seedhouse & Egbert, 2006, p 5)

Candidates‟ speaking performance in the exam will be marked based on the four analytical criteria contributing to an overall band score for speaking on a nine-point scale How the detailed speaking band scores are associated with these criteria can be found in the public version of IELTS Speaking band descriptors Since this study is concerned with difficulties encountered by IELTS learners in speaking preparation courses, it is therefore vital to discuss those marking criteria in detail so that the researcher is able to relate the difficulties found to the potential band to anticipate how serious the problems might be The 4 criteria on which IELTS speaking skill is assessed and marked are as follows

 Fluency and Coherence: As stated clearly in The Official IELTS Practice

Materials by British Council, Cambridge ESOL and IDP: IELTS Australia, this criterion refers to “the ability to talk with normal levels of continuity, rate and effort, and to link ideas and language together to form coherent, connected speech” (p 79) To be specific, Clark (2007) briefly proposed detailed minor points within the criterion of fluency and coherence as follows:

- Ability to produce long responses

- The amount of hesistation

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- The speed of speech

- Use of discourse markers / linking phrases / connectives

- The amount of self-correction

(p 18)

He also discussed the false belief held among quite a few candidates that Fluency score is purely based on the speed and flow of speech, which is obviously a part among many other points within the criteria of Fluency and Coherence Besides, Clark in his book named IELTS Speaking (2007) reported that many Chinese candidates could not gain high IELTS Speaking band score as they “focus too heavily on answering the quesion” but “lack the language to link the ideas together” (p 20) In brief, in the IELTS speaking test, “The examiner is looking at the speed of speech, the use of connectors and discourse markers, willingness to speak at length and topic development” (British Council IELTS Study Guide, p 23)

 Lexical Resource

The criterion of Lexical Resource refers to “the ability to use a range of vocabulary and to express meanings and attitudes with precision” (The Official IELTS Practice Materials, p 79) To be more detailed, candidates will be assessed whether they have

- Ability to use less common words

- Use of idiomatic language

- Paraphrasing (explaining words that you don‟t know)

- Ability to talk about unfamiliar topics

- Ability to convey precise meaning

(Clark, 2007, p 17)

Clark also indicated some common problems by Chinese candidates associated with this criterion such as their “overuse of common words” (p 23) All

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in all, in the exam, “The examiner is looking at the range of vocabulary, use of less common and idiomatic expressions, choice of words and ability to convey precise meanings in all situations” (British Council IELTS Study Guide, p 23)

 Grammar range and Accuracy

This criterion refers to “the ability to use a range of grammatical items accurately and appropriately” (The Official IELTS Practice Materials, p 79) Regarding the criterion of Grammar range and Accuracy, Clark (2007) also proposed the same basis with somehow more specific points as follows:

- Sentence formation

- Use of clauses (subordinate etc.)

- Use of complex structures

- Range of tense use

- Error density (the amount of errors in each sentence)

- The level of errors (whether the errors occur in basic or complex structures)

(p 24)

He also argued that this criterion “is often misunderstood because many people believe that a high score is awarded if the candidate doesn‟t make any grammar mistakes” (p 24) In other words, the examiner is looking not only at accuracy but also at the range of grammar structures

 Pronunciation

This criterion refers to “the ability to use a range of phonological features consistently and accurately to convey meaning” (The Official IELTS Practice Materials, p 79) With respect to this, Clark (2007) argued that the most common mystery within the criteria of Pronunciation was that candidates pay too much attention to accent Rather, the pronunciation score is affected by many other following factors:

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This is to explain that in the IELTS Speaking test, “The examiner is looking

at clarity and accuracy in connected speech as well as individual words and phonemes.” (British Council IELTS Study Guide, p 23)

1 2 Previous studies on the IELTS Speaking Sub-test

The IELTS Speaking Sub-test was first reviewed during the late 1990s and the formal revised test was introduced in July 2001 Since then a significant number of research aiming to uncover various aspects of the speaking test module has been proposed and conducted In this section, such studies will be discussed for giving a background as well as the need to carry out the current research

There seemed to be three commonly-exploited research areas on the Speaking skill of IELTS, of which exploring the Speaking Test itself – it nature and dimensions has remained to be the aim of a siginificant number of studies since the time the revised test came into exist Noticeably, there were 4 studies published in IELTS Research Reports Volume 6 (2006) on the effectiveness and validity of planning time in Part 2 of the IELTS Speaking Test by Elder & Wigglesworth; difficulties of speaking tasks by Weir & O‟Sullivan & Horail; the interactional organization of the IELTS Speaking Test by Seedhouse & Egbert and the lexical dimension of the IELTS Speaking Test by Read & Nation

Elder & Wigglesworth (2006) had ninety candidates undertake three tasks of the IELTS Speaking Test Part 2 with no planning time, one minute or two minutes

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of planning time with a view to uncovering whether or not the unsimilarity in planning time would create any differences in performance They then found out that there had not been any significant differences in performance revealed by the analysis of scores and discourse analysis according to the amount of planning time provided The researchers, however, still suggested that one minute of pre-task planing should continue to be included on Task 2 of the test for maintaning the fairness and enhancing the validity of the test

Also taking Part 2 of the test into account, Weir & O‟Sullivan & Horail (2006), however, were interested in the task difficulty and how it can be manipulated using a framework based on the work of Skehan (1998) while working within the socio-cognitive perspective of test validation in particular 74 language students at a range of ability levels participated in their study and were asked to perform 4 versions of 4 equivalent Part 2 tasks in which one task was left unaltered and the other three were manipulated along three variables: planning time, response time and scaffolded support In the subsequent stage, the participants completed a brief cognitive processing questionnaire after each performance From the rate given by two IELTS trained examiners working independently of each other using the current IELTS Speaking criteria on the participants‟ performance, the researchers concluded that the original unmanipulated task verion tended to result in highest scores while significant differences could be found in the other three tasks, indicating that task difficulty may impact differently candidates of different ability Taking a broader view beyond Part 2, Seedhouse & Egbert (2006) employed Conversation Analysis methodology to analyze transcripts of 137 audio-recorded tests with the primary aim of uncovering the overall interactional organization of the test The researchers then concluded that the interactions in the test conform to the instruction and highly constrained

Likewise, Read & Nation (2006) captured broader scenes into the nature of lexis in the whole Speaking Test by analyzing a small corpus of texts created from

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transcriptions of 88 IELTS Speaking Tests recorded under operational conditions at

21 test centres around the world The results showed that there were great variance across the bands in term of the amount and sophistication of vocabulary use confirming the validity of the marking criterion of Lexical Resource

Recently, there was also a research taking the nature and validity of the IELTS Speaking Test itself into consideration by Ducasse & Brown (2011) By comparing transcription of taped IELTS interviews at band 6 and above to the data obtained from observing first year classes at an Australian university and interviewing lecturers, they found that there were overlaps between candidates‟ discourse and that at univeristy context implying that the candidates are prepared for their future study or training regarding interactive communication

Another research area on the IELTS Speaking Test is uncovering the job of examiners and bias if any Brown (2006), for example, made attempts to examine the rating process in the revised speaking test Having experienced IELTS examiners provide verbal reports after listening to and rating a set of of Speaking Tests, and complete a detailed questionnaire about their reactions to the approach to assessment, she found that the examiners adhered closely to the descriptors when rating indicating that there seemed to be no bias in marking the Speaking paper on the part of examiners

Similarly, O‟Sullivan & Yang (2006) conducted a research trying to reveal any deviations made by the examiners from a set interlocutor, the nature of these deviations and their effect on the language of candidates After analyzing the transcription of 60 test recordings, the researchers uncovered that there appeared to

be no deviations in the first two parts of the test while some bias could be found in the last part in which the number of paraphrased questions used by the examiners are fairly noticeable This is to argue that examiners of the IELTS Speaking Test almost objectively do their job using the exam guides and occasionally produce some bias with relatively minimal effects on the performance of candidates

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A special attention, though not considerable, has been paid to the candidates and preparion courses for the IELTS Speaking Test Significantly, there were two studies carried out by Mickan & Motteram (2008, 2009) providing insights into IELTS preparation classes and the preparation practices of candidates After observing and recording the classroom practices in an eight-week program designed for students who planned to take the IELTS Test, the rerearchers reported that the preparation courses did offer students overall and profound information and practices helful for the whole exam in general and the Speaking sub-test in particular The other study conducted by the same researchers investigated activities candidates in Adelaide South Australia, particularly those whe were not enrolled in English language programs, used to prepare for the Test The results showed that the candidates employed a variety of strategies to prepare for the Test such as using practice materials and published tests

It can be then argued that though a significant number of studies ever done exploring different aspects having to do with the IELTS Exam and the IELTS Speaking Test in particular, hardly any of them did take the learners‟ difficulties in speaking preparation classes into thorough examination given the challenge of Speaking as a productive skill Needless to say, this is an under-researched area and should receive adequate attention and efforts to work out In Vietnam, there is only

a recent study by Nguyen (2010) on difficulties faced by teachers in teaching IELTS Speaking at university level This current research will, therefore, be likely to help birdge the gap and bring the potential research area into greater attention

1 3 Factors influencing Speaking Test performance of EFL/ ESL learners

Speaking, a productive skill, is commonly perceived to be more challenging to master compared to other two receptive skills There are a number of decisive factors to students‟ speaking performance, for example, in interview-speaking-test type such as topical knowledge, language knowledge, personal characteristics,

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strategic competence and affective schemata (Bachman & Palmer, 1996 cited in Shomoossi, 2009: 73) 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.” (Horwitz et al., 1986:

125, cited in Tanveer, 2007: 1)

First and foremost, it is linguistic difficulties including the students‟ inadequate command in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation that badly influence the speaking performance Dornyei and Scott (1995) classified the sources

of problems in language skills into four main categories: resource deficits, processing time pressure, own-performance problems, and other-performance problems in which the first issue refers to problems in producing a process of “self-expression‟ caused by a deficiency in the speakers‟ L2 linguistic knowledge In the first place, the most tragedic problem faced by EFL/ ESL learners is probable to do with pronunciation, a factor directly affecting learners‟ communicative competence and performance According to Burns (2003), it is important that speakers of English can achieve:

• Intelligibility (the speaker produces sound patterns that are recognizable as English)

• Comprehensibility (the listener is able to understand the meaning of what is said)

• Interpretability (the listener is able to understand the purpose of what is said) (cited in Gilakjani, 2012: 120)

The vital role of having intelligible pronunciation has been widely recognized since “Despite having a good grasp of vocabulary and the grammatical rules of the English language, speakers would be unintelligible if they have poor pronunciation.” (Nair et al., 2006: 27), and “Even when learners produce minor inaccuracies in vocabulary and grammar, they are more likely to communicate

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effectively when they have good pronunciation and intonation” (Burns, 2003, cited

in Gilakjani, 2012: 120) Ha in her research on common pronunciation problems of Vietnamses learners of English (2005), 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) Tanveer (2007) also found that “They [EFL/ ESL learners] feel difficulty, particularly when pronouncing those sounds that they have never produced or even heard in their own language.” (p 48) In this respect, Avery and Ehrlich point out that the sound system of

the native language can influence the learners‟ pronunciation of a target language in

at least three ways

First, when there is a sound in the target language which is absent

from the learners‟ native sound inventory, or vice versa, learners may

not be able to produce or even perceive the sound(s) Second, when

the rules of combining sounds into words (i.e., phonotactic

constraints/rules) are different in the learners‟ mother tongue from

those of the target language, they cause problems for learners because

these rules are language specific as they vary from one language to

another Thirdly, since the rhythm and melody of a language

determine its patterns of stress and intonation, learners may transfer

these patterns into the target language

(cited in Gilakjani, 2011: 78)

Another distincitve feature of English pronunciation likely presenting difficulties for learners is that it is stress-timed which “means that stress in a spoken sentence occurs at regular intervals and the length it takes to say something depends

on the number of stressed syllables rather than the number of syllables itself” (http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/english-sentence-stress) “Many ESL

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students who have attained advanced English proficiency levels are still having difficulty in communicating, due to low intelligibility Word and sentence stress are components that contribute greatly to intelligibility” (Fischler, 2005: 1) in which the former relates to the prominence given to a certain syllable in a word and the latter refers to that allocated to certain words within a sentence to convey emphasis, new information or intention by the speaker There is data presented that indicate misplaced stress resulting in miscommunication (Bansal, 1969; Hubicka, 1980; Tiffen, 1974; Banrabah, 1987, cited in Fischler, 2005) “For learners of English, managing stress is helpful if not necessary for clear communication” (Lee, 2001: 103)

Stress and rhythm are suprasegmental aspects that give the overall shape

to the word or sequence If easy intelligibility is to be achieved, it is important to give words their correct accentual pattern and rhythm Thus, the pronunciation of a word with the inappropriate accentual and rhythmic pattern makes the word unintelligible not only because the misplaced main stress distorts the shape of the word, but also because there is no unstressing of the other syllables with the consequent phonetic reductions

(Sabater, 1991: 145)

Considering between stress at word and sentence level, the latter is much likely to have more impact on the intelligibility of speech since “in most cases the right form of the word can be reconstructed from the context” (Sabater, 1991: 146)

Sabater also gave an example that the sentence you should have come to the library

is less easy to understand when pronounced

than if it is pronounced implying that failure to follow sentence stress rules necessarily results in communication problems Given the importance of mastering word and sentence stress, it remains a difficult area to

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work on for learners and teachers alike

(http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/english-sentence-stress) Research has been done on rhythm indicating that acquisition of English stress patterns may be the most challenging facet of English pronunciation for speakers of other languages (Florez, 1998, cited in Fischler, 2005: 38)

A further feature of English pronunciation probably appearing problematic to ESL EFL student is linking sounds which “refers to the way the last sound of one word is joined to the first sound of the next word to produce connected speech.” (Gilakjani, 2012: 121) Avery and Ehrlich (1992:84) say that linking occurs between the following combinations:

1) Consonants and vowels (e.g., When we pronounce "Come on," we don‟t say the two words separately but we say /k@man/ as if they were one word This is known as "liaison.")

2) Consonants and consonants (e.g., When we pronounce "root beer," the stop consonant at the end of the first word is usually kept unreleased, and there seems to

be a pause or a sudden stoppage of breath in between This is known as "open juncture.")

3) Identical consonants (e.g., When we pronounce "red deer," the two identical and adjacent consonants are pronounced as one long consonant This is another case

of "open juncture.")

(cited in Okita, 1999)

Okia then went on arguing that this feature of English pronunciation would present difficulties for EFL/ ESL not having the same rules of linking sounds in their first language sound system This, once again, converges with what was claimed by Avery and Ehrlich (cited in Gilakjani, 2011) on the interference of L1 in L2 discussed earlier in this section

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The above mentioned difficulties regarding pronunciation, if arise, will certainly impact intensively learners‟ performance in speaking tests, let alone in the IELTS Speaking sub-test in which pronunciation is one of the 4 criteria for assessing candidates‟ speaking band score

Another serious aspect of language acquisition is to master lexical items in the language adequate for communication Regarding the importance of vocabulary acquisition, Mc Cathy (1990) asserted that no matter how well the students learn grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words

to express a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way Participants in Tanveer‟s research (2007) 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” (p 50) Tanveer also noted that many ESL/ EFL 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)

In addition, “With regard to linguistic difficulties, grammar has been found to

be the second most important aspect that ESL/ EFL learners find difficult when learning to speak a second/ foreign language”, noted Tanveer (2007: 49) Past research found a number of difficulties associated with grammar such as tenses, verb form and prepositions

Another problem probably hindering EFL/ ESL learners having good speaking performance is their failure to ensure the speaking fluency which is defined in a broad sense (“semantic density, sociolinguistic appropriateness, and creativity in language use,” Kopenen & Riggenbach, 2000, p 7) and in a narrow sense (”the speed and smoothness of oral delivery, “Lennon, 2000, p 25), cited in Gorsuch,

2011 There is no doubt that speaking fluency is implicated in judgments of whether

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an L2 speaker has communicative competence (Olynak, Anglejan, & Sankoff, 1990; Pawley & Syder, 1983; Riggenbach, 1989) cited in Gorsuch, 2011 There are some indicators of one‟s speaking fluency such as his or her “speech rate, articulation rate, frequency and length of pause, distribution of pause and mean length of run” (Hu, 2007: 607) implying that there more these elements are found, the less degree

of fluency he or she achieves There are a number of smaller problems associated with the ability to achieve fluency when speaking L2 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

A factor contributing to the success in speaking tests is having something to say, i.e, having ideas on topics asked That is why lack of topical knowledge needs mentioning as an element influencing speaking test-takers performance Topical knowledge (i.e., knowledge schemata, or real-world knowledge) - “knowledge structure in long-term memory” (Bachman & Palmer, 1996: 65) is considered as one of major factors influencing language users or test takers‟ performance

Of a significant number of factors affecting the performance of EFL/ ESL learners and students of IELTS in preparing for and taking the speaking test, anxiety and language and test anxiety in particular were very often persumed to be a serious element Anxiety, a phychological construct typically defined by psychologists as a

“state of apprehension, a vague fear that is only indirectly associated with an object” (Hilgard, Atkinson, cited in Scovel, 1991: 18, cited in Tanveer (2007: 3)) can be divided into two main types namely Trait anxiety and State anxiety in which the former refers to the situation in which a person feels anxious and nervous regardless of the exposed situation and the latter describes nervousness at a particular moment in response to some outside stimulies (Pappamihiel, 2002) Either of the two categories of anxiety may impede students‟ language learning and

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(Tanveer, 2007: 3)

Regarding this element in the IELTS Speaking Sub-test, Park also added that

From what I've seen, the speaking module in the IELTS (International

English Language Testing System) exam would have to be the one that

raises the most anxiety among candidates A lack of preparation, a fear

of speaking in English for an extended period, and a lack of awareness

of how the scoring scheme works contribute to this anxiety The impact

on a test taker's score for the speaking module can be significant

(http://www.idp.co.th/IELTS/A_SpeakingTips.aspx)

When investigating anxiety in learning another language, it it worth then having insights into the so-called terms of language and test anxiety mainly originating from the students themselves Test anxiety is a “type of performance anxiety stemming from a fear of failure” (Horwitz et al., 1986, cited in Tanveer, 2007: 13) It is a commonly held belief among test-takers that the ultimate is to win, and this put them under a lot of pressure and nervousness before and while sitting for exams In context of foreign language learning, learners may feel anxious due to problems related to communication apprehension (e.g: difficulty in understanding the teacher‟s instruction), negative evaluation (fear of correction) and fear of making mistakes Bakkal (2010) in his research on the causes of speaking test

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anxiety experienced by EFL students and the effect of test format on speaking test anxiety found out the main reason for speaking test anxiety was students‟ lack of self-confidence because they have inadequate vocabulary or poor sentence structures, always think that they have weaker language skills than their classmates and tend to assess their abilities negatively most of the time It is vital then to get more understanding about those causal factors that cause test and language anxiety and hinder test-takers conducting satisfactory performance in speaking exams

The ability to give spontaneous responses affecting fluency score in speaking tests can also be explained by time constraint in real life communication felt by L2 learners when participating “Processing Time Pressure‟, according to Dornyei & Scott (1995) indicates the constraints faced by L2 speakers under time pressure of giving spontaneous responses This is obviously the case in Part 1 & part 3 of the IELTS Speaking test in which candidates are supposed to participate in a “real-like” conversation with an examiner for demonstrating his or her language proficiency This poses considerable challenges to EFL learners, who often have learned the target language in the classroom without any or with only limited opportunity to practice spontaneous L2 interaction Jamshidnejad (2011: 8) noted that “Although their knowledge of language is enough to communicate and exchange ideas, EFL speakers are unable to process language „on time‟- quickly enough to manage the conversation socially and to accomplish their communication goals” Dornyei (1995) believes that they require devices to give them the opportunity to save time

in communication and to get back “on-line‟, cited in Jamshidnejad (2011) L2 communicators need to plan ahead and to manage their problems, rather than just avoiding them

An additional problem with fluency for EFL/ ESL speaker might be due to their failure to use communication strategies effectively when speaking A common practice among L2 learners is that “they often tend to give up and keep silent when they are faced with a problematic situation in L2 communication, or might even

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21

switch to their first language (L1)” (Jamshidnejad, 2011: 8) Communication strategies can be understood simply as some kinds of techniques applied to solve an emerged communication problem (Zhang, 2007) To put in another way, 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

- Simplification – avoiding complex structures

- Ellipsis – omitting parts of a sentence

- Formulaic expressions – „chunks‟ and set phrases that are often functional

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It can be inferred that the use of such communication strategies above might

be of great help for L2 learners to compensate for their gap in language proficiency and enable them to „keep going‟ and maintain fluency in speaking

The seriousness of the above discussed difficulties in speaking ESL/ EFL may imply that errors having to do with those difficulties are likely enormously available This, therefore, brings about a call for finding out the reasons behind for figuring out the solutions later In brief, Norrish (1983, pp.21-39) identified many possible causes of language learners errors such as the following:

1 Carelessness: Carelessness is one of the important causes of error in language learning and it is related to a lack of motivation

2 First language interference: Learning a first or a foreign language is a matter

of habit formation Thus, if language is a set of habits and when the learner learns new habits the old ones will interfere with the new ones So, interference between learning the first language and learning the second or foreign language may cause language learning problems

3 Translation: Errors due to translation may occur when the learner translates words from the first language to the target language literally

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6 Errors as part of language creativity: Learners may make mistakes when they create new sentences, since they have limited experience in the target language

7 Foreign language errors: Learning the target language as a foreign language indicates that the learner learns the language mainly in the classroom Learners of a foreign language may make a number of different mistakes These mistakes are concerned with the formation of interlanguage In addition, FL learners‟ errors may happen as a result of weakness in the textbook or on the part of the teacher who may, for example, mispronounce words or make grammatical mistakes

8 Second language errors: Second language learning means learning the language in an environment where the language is in regular use outside the classroom Second language learners may make errors because there are different varieties of the target language that are used for communication purposes outside the classroom.” (cited in Al-ma‟shy, 2011: 30)

In conclusion, this chapter has presented a review of literature relevant to the current research, that is information on the IELTS Test Battery and the Speaking Sub-test, previous studies on the IELTS Speaking Sub-test and factors influencing Speaking Test performance of ESL/ EFL learners The review points to the need to explore the types of difficulties faced by ESL/ EFL learners in the IELTS preparation classes which the present research aims at, especially in the IELTS Speaking Preparation course The next chapter presents the methodology of the research

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This research aims to answer 3 research questions below:

1 What types of difficulties do lower and upper intermediate students encounter in IELTS Speaking preparation courses at EQuest?

2 To what extent do these lower and upper-intermediate students share similar types of difficulties?

3 What should be done to help students overcome the difficulties for even better teaching and learning of IELTS Speaking skill at EQuest?

2 1 Research Participants

This study investigated the difficulties encountered by Vietnamese learners taking IELTS preparation speaking course at EQuest in Hanoi - an Education joint-stock company whose job is offering English courses There were 2 IELTS preparation nine-student classes of 2 different levels (lower and upper Intermediate) namely IELTS A and IELTS B at EQuest participating in this study In order to attend the former, the students must pass the Placement Test – a sample IELTS Full Test achieving Band 4, and Band 5 is the entrance requirement for IELTS B students doing the same test An overview of The IELTS Preparation Course, the

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to the others is that they are more challenging and time-consuming for the learners

to be competent in IELTS A students, who are expected to achieve about at least Band 5 by the end of the course, must take a mid-course test and a final one This lower-intermediate course is typically taught by Vietnamese teachers who are qualified (having IELTS certificate with the minimum score of 7 and being experienced) except for the Speaking course in which there are 4 classes at the end covered by a native English teacher aiming to offer the learners a diversity of the course This means that the first 7 speaking classes are taught by the Vietnamese teacher A set of 4 course books in 4 skills compiled by EQuest from IELTS resources is available for the learners and teachers in this course Yet, there are some supplementary materials prepared by the teachers, especially in Speaking and Writing classes

Meanwhile the IELTS B preparation course for upper-intermediate students significantly differs from the above in the speaking class where all of the speaking lessons are covered by a qualified native English teacher emphasizing the distinction between IELTS B and IELTS A and there are only 6 classes altogether

in this skill The implication is that upper intermediate students are better at IELTS compared to their counterparts in IELTS A and require less time to acquire this skill Consisting of the same number of 10 Listening, Reading & Writing two-hour classes taught by a qualified Vietnamese teacher every Tuesday – Thursday –

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Saturday evening, the IELTS B course aims to help the students already at band 5 better their band score by the end of the course

The researcher carefully selected an IELTS A class and another IELTS B to

do investigation on The criteria of selecting included the same number of 9 students and the least variation regarding the background of the students in each class The researcher used a document in Appendix 2 to ask for students‟ consent to participate in the study and their basic personal information relevant to the research

Of 9 students in the IELTS A class, there were 6 males and 3 females, one of them already employed and among the other 8, a half was studying at high schools and the others were pursuing higher education 5 out of 9 IELTS A students ever took a 4 – month – course at Pre-IELTS level at EQuest beside learning General English as a compulsory subject at school and the others have never attended any extra English classes apart from school and workplace

Among the same number of 9 students in IELTS B class, there were 3 males and 6 females, one of them was also a worker, there were 3 high-school students and the other 5 were undergraduates Regarding the background in English learning

of these upper-intermediate students, 4 of them ever took an additional language course in English centers in Hanoi and the others just learnt General English at school Notably, the students in these two classes shared the same age range in their twenties and the marital status of being single

2 2 Data Collection Instruments and Procedure

2 2 1 Data collection instruments

Data for this study was collected using the two following instruments

Narrative Frame

In this research, a set of narrative frames (see Appendix 3) was created and distributed to all participants right after each speaking class they attended

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completing the first stage in data collection The frame was adapted from that of Barkhuizen & Wette (2008) and made some modifications to fit the research questions Looking at an excerpt of the frame by these researchers employing in their study to investigate the experiences of language teachers,

(Barkhuizen & Wette, 2008: 377)

the researcher found a number of sentences that might help her collect relevant data

in the current research The first sentence in the above frame, for example, was later

on modified into a new version of “In the speaking lesson today, I had difficulties trying to …” in the frame of this study

The researcher used Narrative Frame as a data collection instrument due to several advantages On the one hand, Narrative Frame suited the research context where the reseacher is working First of all, a large number of students when asked

to give opinions and share ideas consistenly prefer writing to speaking due to the nervousness and shyness of talking face-to-face to the researcher Besides, the use

of Narrative Frame with some sentence starters would also aid students who have undesired level of English not to mislead and be out of topic On the other hand, Narrative Frame was selected due to their strengths claimed by previous researchers (Bell, 2002, p 209; Wray & Lewis, 1997, p 122, cited in Barnard & Nguyen, 2010,

p 79; Barkhuizen & Wette, 2008) which facilitated the data analysis later In this study, the learners had a chance to think and write narratively and thus the researcher had an opportunity to look at their underlied diffculties correlated with the IELTS Speaking band score that the students may not fully aware of

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The design of Narrative Frame was in open-ended style aiming to offer participants more freedom to write their own stories and share more ideas In designing the Narrative Frame, the researcher made great efforts to ensure their reliability and validity The researcher avoided difficult and abstract words The Narrative Frame was simply and positively worded and structured so that it was not complex and confusing The Narrative Frame had been drafted and redrafted many times aiming to get the right ideas with both clarity of meaning and format There was only one consistent set of Narrative Frame throughout the study to get insightful data in certain issues relevant to the research questions

Semi-structured Interview

In this study, the researcher designed a set of 8 guided questions (see Appendix 4) for 15-minute semi-structured interviews aiming to triangulate consistency of the data obtained and that got from Narrative Frame and gain more insight into some critical issues essentially enabling the researcher to give as exact answers to the research questions as possible Semi-structured Interview, a non-standardized and most often used in qualitative research, was chosen because of the flexibility it allowed (Corbetta, 2003: 270; Lodico et al., 2006: 124) that enabled the researcher to collect relevant data

2 2 2 Data collection procedure

There were two stages in the process of collecting relevant data for the research

Stage 1: Distribution of Narrative Frame

As the participants may not be familiar with this type of writing, the real process of data collection commenced with a training section at the beginning of the speaking course in which they were instructed on how to write narratively based on the „skeleton‟ provided

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Every participant in the two selected classes then received a piece of paper

on which Narrative Frame was designed to write their own stories at the end of each speaking lesson (in order to ensure a maximum rate of return) throughout their first 6 speaking classes This means that each student would have a story consisting

of 6 „scenes‟ – snapshots of 6 lessons they took Yet some students were absent from class several times, and this made their story shorter than the others Their narratives could be „told‟ either in English or in Vietnamese as some students may find it comfortable to express themselves in the mother tongue The utmost aim of this was to collect as much and as in-depth data as possible Those stories in Vietnamese were then carefully translated into English for later data analysis

Stage 2: Conducting Semi-structured Interviews

The interviews were conducted after the receipt and preliminary analysis of the Narrative Frame After obtaning the data from Narrative Frame, the researcher conducted the interviews with all of the participants individually a week after the 6th speaking class aiming to triangulate the data collected in Stage 1 on the one hand and gain more insights into some outstanding issues revealed by the Data from Narrative Frame on the other hand The interviews took place in an informal atmosphere (at a quiet café at the weekend) so that the students felt free to express themselves The participants were also told to feel free to share their ideas in Vietnamese if necessary targeting at facilitating and reducing their pressure as well

as collecting as much data as possible Those ideas in Vietnamese would be carefully and faithfully translated into English by the researcher The English version would be then passed to a colleague of the researcher for triangulating the reliability The final version functioned as eligible data The researcher took notes during the interviews and got them recorded for later check with the agreement of the participants The researcher tried to encourage the participants to express their ideas spontaneously in their own words and only gave leading questions in case the participants got stuck in expressing ideas As an interviewer, the researcher also

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endeavored to be patient, sensitive and sought to interfere as little as possible, letting the interview run itself

The procedure of conducting interviews was as follows

 The researcher introduced herself, explained the purpose of the interview and asked for the participants‟ permission to take notes and record the interview

 The researcher followed the guided questions (Appendix 4) and sometimes changed the wording of the questions in case the participants misunderstood or failed to understand The researcher also asked some additional questions flexibly to some students when necessary for getting more relevant information

 The researcher thanked the participants for their sharing

2 3 Data Analysis

This study employed the qualitative data analysis approach named

„interactive synthesis‟ (Huberman & Miles 1994: 436), “a phenomenological approach in which synopses of individual cases are written, followed by a cross-case narrative with themes” (Brown, 2008: 190) Using this approach which combined both case-oriented and variable oriented strategies, the study begin with a

variable-oriented strategy of „finding themes that cut across cases‟ (Huberman &

Miles 1994: 436) to compose a „general condensation‟ (Fischer & Wertz 1975; cited

in Huberman & Miles 1994: 436) of the data, then returned to individual cases for configuration within each case, and performed comparative analysis to arrive at findings for the two narrative frame themes of Difficulties in Accuracy and in Fluency

Table below depicts the metamatrix used as a starting frame of reference for data analysis in the study Key words and phrases extracted from the narrative frame were then inserted in the corresponding cells for further analysis and eventually, generation of findings

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nciati

on

Vocab ulary

Gra mma

r

Topica

l backgr ound knowle dge

Psychol ogical factors

Autom ation

Commun ication Strategie

Phase 1: Analizing data from Narrative Frame

After collecting the first set of Narrative Frame after the first class of both IELTS A & B, the researcher coded data manually by categorizing information into different main themes marked by colors The data gained from the first cue in the Narrative Frame asking for the participants‟ general dificulties in speaking classes, for example, was put into 2 big themes of Difficulties in Accuracy (hightlighted by Red color) and in Fluency (Green color) This first data input was then aranged in a table in which there were 9 rows equivalent to 9 students coded A1, A2 A9 in IELTS A class and B1, B2, B9 for IELTS B orderly The procedure was done the same for the other 6 lessons in each class Finally, the researcher summarized the data and put in a table displaying the whole „pictures‟ of 6 speaking lessons in both classes to see the extent to which they shared

Phase 2: Analyzing data from semi-structured Interviews

After the interviews, the researcher reviewed her notes taken and re-listened

to the recorded tapes coded with each participant accordingly and then gave her notes back to each participant for confiming the accuracy of data Based on the

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Summarizing Table in Stage 1, the researcher inserted one more row named Interview below Subsequently, „=‟ was put in that row where the consistency between the two groups of data (from Narrative Frame and Interviews) was found, and additional details obtained from the interviews were added beside

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CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter focuses on findings from analyzing the data gathered by means

of narrative frame and interviews as well as relevant discussion made by the researcher The findings will be drawn to visualize the difficulties encountered by lower and upper-intermediate students of IELTS speaking preparation course at EQuest and the extent to which they shared the similar types of problems From this, feasible solutions will be made to improve those found problems later in this paper

3 1 Types of difficulties that lower and upper-intermediate students encounter in IELTS Speaking preparation courses at EQuest

3 1 1 Difficulties encountered by lower intermediate students

(IELTS A students)

It is immediately clear from table 2 (overleaf) that lower-intermediate students (IELTS A) met more number of difficulties regarding Accuracy than in Fluency during IELTS Speaking preparation classes at EQuest Noticeably, almost all of the research participants in this class reported on their difficulties and frequent mistakes in Pronunciation, especially pronouncing the ending sounds of words, stress at both word and sentence level and linking sounds A common claim shared

by the students was as follows

“I could pronounce the ending sounds of words such as ed-ending and ending quite accurately in isolation, but I don‟t know why I forget having them heard when speaking a continuous chunk of sentences.”

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s Pronunciation Vocabulary Grammar

Topical background knowledge

Psychological factors (Perception &

Socio-Nervousness)

Spontaneo

us response/

interactio

n

Communic ation Strategies (Ability to

- Limited vocabulary to express ideas fully

- Using less common words

- 50% chance of ideas input

- Using less common words

1

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- Retrieving Vocabulary

- Retrieving Vocabulary (especially in Part

1 & 2)

- Present perfect &

Past perfect tenses

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