Factors demotivating students to participate in English speaking lessons at Viet-Hung Industrial University = Những nhân tố làm sinh viên giảm hứng thú tham gia

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG FACTORS DEMOTIVATING STUDENTS TO PARTICIPATE IN

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG

FACTORS DEMOTIVATING STUDENTS TO

PARTICIPATE IN ENGLISH SPEAKING LESSONS AT VIET-HUNG INDUSTRIAL

UNIVERSITY

(Những nhân tố làm sinh viên giảm hứng thú tham gia vào các giờ học nói Tiếng Anh tại Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Việt – Hung)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field of study: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Hanoi – 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG

FACTORS DEMOTIVATING STUDENTS TO

PARTICIPATE IN ENGLISH SPEAKING LESSONS AT VIET-HUNG INDUSTRIAL

UNIVERSITY

(Những nhân tố làm sinh viên giảm hứng thú tham gia vào các giờ học nói Tiếng Anh tại Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Việt – Hung)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field of study: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Phùng Thị Kim Dung, M.A

Hanoi – 2013

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES iv

LIST OF CHARTS v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

PART ONE – INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationales 1

2 Objectives of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Methods 3

5 Design of the study 3

PART TWO – DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Theoretical background of speaking skill 5

1.1.1 Characteristics of speaking skill 5

1.1.2 The roles of speaking in ELT 7

1.2 Theoretical background of demotivation 7

1.2.1 Conception of demotivation 7

1.2.2 The concept of demotivation as identified in previous studies 8

1.2.2.1 Demotivating factors identified by Dörnyei 8

1.2.2.2 Demotivating factors identified by Oxford 11

CHAPTER 2 – METHODOLOGY 13

2.1 Research questions 13

2.2 Data collection and analysis 13

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2.2.1 Data collection 13

2.2.2 Data analysis 13

2.3 Subjects 13

2.4 Instruments 14

2.5 The research context 15

CHAPTER 3 – DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 18

3.1 Data analysis of students’ response 18

3.2 Data analysis of teachers’ responses 27

3.3 Findings and recommendations 36

3.3.1 Summary of the findings 36

3.3.2 Recommendations 38

PART THREE – CONCLUSION 41

1 Summary of the study 41

2 Limitations of the study 41

3 Suggestions for further studies 42

REFERENCES 43 APPENDICES I

Appendix 1 I Appendix 2 VI Appendix 3 XII Appendix 4 XVII

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PART ONE - INTRODUCTION

This chapter works as the guideline for readers to understand what will be discussed in the whole research It means that this part will give the rationales, the significance and purposes, the scope, the method and the design of the rest of the study

1 Rationales

It cannot be denied that English has become more and more important in every part of the world As a result, the need of having good ability of English also increases People want to communicate in English fluently, so they spend money and time attempting to learn it In Vietnam, English language’s role has gotten bigger and become a compulsory subject at every level of education (school, college and university)

Realizing the necessity of English in the development of the society in general and of each individual in particular, every learner wants to be competent in English and uses it to communicate with foreigners That’s why most schools now focus on developing students’ ability of speaking English Indeed, different skills (Speaking, Listening, Reading, and Writing) have certain roles in English language learning, but the final aim of learners is to use spoken language to communicate with other people Communication is a basic and necessary demand for everyone and people have to learn how to speak Moreover, speaking is considered having more important place than other skills Mastering speaking skill can reinforce learners to gain better achievement in other skills such as Listening, Reading, and Writing

Because of vital position of speaking, learners of English should have motivation and positive attitude to learning English speaking But contrary to popular belief, in the process of teaching and learning to speak English, students have to deal with a number of difficulties including the factors demotivating students to speak

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In Viet-Hung University, speaking skill is also a focus However, a lot of them confide that they are not willing to take part in speaking lessons Obviously, there may exist certain factors that deter students from participating in speaking classes

In an attempt to find out the causes of the situation, the author had decided to attend some English speaking sessions She discovered that the students, most of the time, just like to listen and kept silent when being required to say something Even when the teachers tried to organize activities to stir up the atmosphere, no big changes ever happened Thus, it is a real challenge for them to get students to be involved teaching The idea of working out the factors that demotivate students to learn speaking skills has urged the author to embark on the study entitled

“Factors demotivating students to participate in English speaking lessons at Viet – Hung Industrial University” This study is valuable not only for teachers of

English but also for the learners who learn English Being aware of the factors that make learners less interested in speaking English, teachers can work out the way to encourage learners to enjoy learning The author hopes that with the results of this study, Viet-Hung University students will find English speaking lessons exciting and are willing to take part in

2 Objectives of the study

The study is conducted to achieve three main objectives:

+ to investigate Viet-Hung University students’ attitudes to learning English speaking skills

+ to explore the factors that demotivate students of Viet-Hung University to get involved in the English speaking lessons

+ to recommend some solutions to remove these demotivating factors from English speaking sessions

3 Scope of the study

Speaking skill is a large topic that consists of many aspects However, in this study, the author only focuses on the factors that make students of Viet-Hung

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University uninterested in participating in English speaking lessons In addition, Viet-Hung Industrial University is a big university, so this minor thesis cannot get all students involved Instead, the author decides to randomly choose the second-year students of Banking and Financing Faculty as participants In addition, the University offers both English for General Purposes (EGP) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses, but the characteristics of English in two courses are different and the demotivating factors may not be similar As a result, this research only focuses on the factors appearing in EGP She hopes that other aspects of speaking would be conducted on other groups of students by other researchers

4 Methods

To reach the aims of the study, quantitative and qualitative methods have been used Firstly, quantitative approach is used to classify features, count them, and construct statistical models In this research, the quantitative data are gained form the two sets of questionnaires, one for teachers and the other for students of Viet-Hung Industrial University The second method of analyzing the data is qualitative method According to Miles and Huberman (1994), qualitative approach

is the one in which the researcher study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or to interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them Data for qualitative analysis is in the form of words, pictures or objects and instruments are often participant observation and in-depth interviews In this research, in order to obtain qualitative information conducts some short interviews with six teachers of English of the University for further information to support the thesis

5 Design of the study

This minor thesis consists of three parts:

 The first part presents the factors such as the rationale, objectives, scope, methods and design of the study

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 The second part is the body of the study, in which a theoretical background, research methodology and results and discussions were presented

 The final part gives the summary of the study, the limitations of the study and some suggestions for further research related to English

speaking skill and demotivation

1.1 Theoretical background of speaking skill

In language teaching and learning, we often talk about the four language skills (Listening, Writing, Reading, and Speaking) in terms of their direction and modality Speaking is regarded as the way of measuring the language competence

of a language user Thus, the ability of speaking fluently is more important than being good at reading, or writing As a result, the main aim of every system of education is to develop speaking skill among learners In this part, the author will present what speaking skill is, the nature of language skills, characteristics of speaking skill, and some theoretical information about speaking lessons

1.1.1 Characteristics of speaking skill

Speaking has the characteristics which are as follows:

To begin with, its form and meaning depend on the context in which it occurs The context consists of the participants and their experiences, the physical environment, and the purposes for speaking In other words, spoken language is context bound The interlocutors share the immediate within which the dialogue takes place; hence much information is implicit and assumed (McCathy, 1998)

The second characteristic is that speaking relies on the speakers’ understanding of common conventional expressions for communicating specific meanings, particularly on the language environment apart from such aspects as grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary

That speech has its own skills, structures, and conventions is the third characteristic It means that skills, structures and conventions of speech are different from the written language In his book, Bygate (1987) said that “The

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words are being spoken as they are being decided and as they are being understood.” The fact that the words are spoken and decided at the same time has big effect on the speaker’s ability to plan and organize the message and to control the language being used Indeed, the length and complexity of spoken sentences cannot be the same as the ones in written ones because the speakers do not have as much time to plan and prepare as the writers Moreover, speakers often make more mistakes in their utterances than the writers in terms of both the message and the words We may forget what we intend to say and repeat what we have already mentioned The words are also being spoken as they are being understood When the sentences are uttered, they go immediately They cannot be reread like in writing, which can lead to misunderstanding when the listeners miss some part of what the speakers have said because of the noise, or a moment’s distraction

The last characteristic is that speaking is considered an undervalued skill in many ways (Bygate 1987) The reason is that almost all people can speak and try

to speak He also states that speaking should get as much attention as literacy skills Learners often need to be able to speak with confidence in order to carry out the basic transactions Moreover, in most speaking, the person to whom we are speaking is in front of us and be able to put us right if we make mistakes He is the speaker’s listener who generally shows agreement and understanding, or incomprehension Thus, speakers need to have patience and imagination, too He has to take notice of the way the listeners feel and behave by giving them chance

to speak At the same time they can play the role of the listeners and the speaker

By this way a listener can help the speaker be more improved and competent because a listener can give learners models to utilize when acting a speaker In addition, being a hearer first helps the learner appreciate the difficulties inherent

in the task It is clear that giving a speaker experience in a hearer’s role is more helpful than simple practice in tasks in which a speaker is having real difficulties

in appreciating what a particular task requires

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In short, speaking is the key to communication In order to help the learners

to be competent in speaking skills, teachers should be good at how to conduct the speaking activities, what task to use in the class

1.1.2 The roles of speaking in ELT

Speaking is a productive skill which is more complicated than it seems at first and involves more than just pronouncing words In fact, the ability to operate in

a second language can be measured by the ability to speak that language Thus, as mentioned before, of our skills, speaking is considered the most important for the following reasons:

Firstly, the final aim of learning a language is to use it to communicate with the others Communication is regarded as the basic demand of human Thus, to talk with other people, we should learn how to speak Learners need this skill to be competent so that they can establish and maintain relationship, negotiate and influence other people as well

Another reason is that, on the one hand, in order for every language learner

to speak a foreign language, it’s necessary for them to know certain amount of grammar and vocabulary which help build the form of the ideas In fact, on the other hand, a lot of language learners are quite competent in grammar and have good knowledge of vocabulary, but they do not know how to produce good utterances or speech In this case, speaking skill plays its role

In short, to master English speaking skill successfully needs the attempts of both teacher and student themselves While it is considered to be the final aim of English teaching and learning process, it should be put among three other skills and the aspects of language (grammar and vocabulary)

1.2 Theoretical background of demotivation

1.2.1 Conception of demotivation

In foreign language learning, motivation has been considered an intricate construct which encourages learners to act to achieve one or some certain goals Although the competence in using L2 is the final target of the learning process, the

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nature of motivation is not simple at all The terms motivation is quite familiar and has been studied by many researchers When discussing about motivation, people often think of the term “demotivation” to which not much attention has been paid

up to now There are, however, researchers who are interested in the term Dörnyei (2001:143) defined demotivation as “concerns specific external forces that reduce

or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or an ongoing action”

So to him demotivation could be understood as the negative counterpart of motivation Deci and Ryan (1985) use a similar term “amotivation”, which means

“the relative absence of motivation that is not caused by a lack of initial interest but rather by the individual’s experiencing feelings of incompetence and helplessness when faced with the activity.” Both of these terms means lack of motivation, but a-motivation is related to general outcomes expectations which, to some extent, are unrealistic for some reason whereas de-motivation concerns specific external causes

Dörnyei points out that de-motivation does not mean that all the positive influences that originally made up the motivational basis of a behavior have been got rid of It only means that a strong negative factor restrains the present motivation with some other positive motives still remain ready to be activated

1.2.2 The concept of demotivation as identified in previous studies

Up to now, there have been studies of linguists about demotivating factors to students’ learning English In this study, however, the author just introduces two of them, by Dörnyei and Oxford

1.2.2.1 Demotivating factors identified by Dörnyei

Unlike other studies about demotivation, Dörnyei’s focused on learners who had been identified as being particularly demotivated by their teachers and friends

To collect the data, Dörnyei (1998b, as cited in Dörnyei, 2001) conducted structured long interviews (10-13 minutes) with 50 pupils of various secondary schools who study either German or English as foreign language These were one-to-one interviews and the interviewers were to ask at any time during the interviews and

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the interviewees could use as much free speech as possible The data collected from the recorded interviews were analyzed, following a theme-based processing procedure Based on this procedure, nine demotivating factors were identified as follows:

1 The teacher (personality, commitment, competence, teaching method);

2 Inadequate school facilities (group is too big or not the right level, frequent change of teachers);

3 Reduced self-confidence (experience of failure or lack of success);

4 Negative attitude towards the L2;

5 Compulsory nature of L2 study;

6 Interference of another foreign language being studied;

7 Negative attitude towards L2 community;

8 Attitudes of group members;

9 Course-book

Among the nine categories of demotivation, teacher was the most frequent source which included teacher’s personality, commitment to teaching, his or her competence in language and teaching methods In the study, it is reported that the teacher shouted in every lesson In addition, the teacher was not enthusiastic enough because he or she didn’t go to class when it rained More importantly, the teacher built up in learners the negative attitude to learning which was that learning

in just one or two lessons a week was not enough and that they did not need to try hard Moreover, the teacher paid more attention on the students he or she liked The second source was the inadequate school facilities which indicated that

in that the class was too big and the students were not of the same level Some were the beginners; the others knew some German already In addition, learners were demotivated by the changing of teachers frequently and each of them tried out new methods, which made them tired

Reduced self-confidence was the third source of demotivation Learners were confident at the beginning, but this reduced because they were not satisfied with the

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grades they got One learner reported that he/she frequently received marks C or D, and just some As Moreover, his/her self-confidence was reduced due to the teacher’s behaviour as he/she was often “picked on” by the teacher

The fourth source of demotivation was that learners did not have positive attitude towards the L2, which was illustrated by the extract of one learner “At the beginning I studied quite hard but I realized that I did not like the whole structure of the German language, the grammar…” He/She felt that this language was incomprehensive because of its sound and structure

Compulsory nature of L2 study was at the fifth place It means that learners had to choose a language to study even when they preferred the others In the extract, one learner confided that he/she was asked to learn German because it was popular and used by many people

The sixth source was the interference of another foreign language being learned This caused demotivation in two ways Firstly, English and German are similar and there were mixing up between two languages The evident was that “I keep saying German words instead of English” Secondly, German was not as popular as English and it was learned when students could speak English already Thus, learners felt like using English to communicate more than the other

The negative attitude towards L2 community came seventh This source was illustrated by the fact that American culture with some of its symbols like McDonalds and films seemed unattractive to the learners

Attitudes of group members was the eighth source of demotivation It was demonstrated by one learner that he/she felt embarrassed when speaking English and that he/she felt like being laughed by other group members Students often had the feeling of embarrassing in English classes as their English level of competence was low

The last source of demotivation was the bad coursebook The book used was thought to be the worse one in comparison with some materials the students knew

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Among nine categories of source of demotivation, teacher was the most frequent one (accounting for 40%) Specially, 15% of the corresponding

occurrences were the learner’s reduced self-confidence which was considered

related to teacher’s control in class Other two categories, inadequate school facilities and negative attitude towards the L2, were also significant (with the proportion of more than 10%)

1.2.2.2 Demotivating factors identified by Oxford

Rebecca Oxford (1998, as cited in Dörnyei, 2001) carried out a study on the essays of approximately 250 American students, both in secondary and universities The participants were asked to write about their experiences in learning over a period of five years During the time of the investigation, some prompts were given

in order to ease the task such as “Describe a situation in which you experienced conflict with a teacher” and “Talk about a classroom in which you felt uncomfortable” After the data were analyzed, four themes were presented

The first one was the teacher’s personal relationship with the students This theme showed that teachers lacked of caring and general belligerence Moreover, they are also hypercritic, patronizing and favoring students

The teacher’s attitude towards the course or the material was the second theme, in which the teachers were criticized for not giving enough enthusiasm, sloppy management and close-mindedness

Style conflicts between teachers and students were the third theme which includes multiple style conflicts, conflicts about the amount of structure or detail and conflicts about the degree of closure or seriousness of the class

Another theme was the nature of the classroom activities In this theme, the classroom activities were said to be irrelevant, overloaded and repetitive

Although the study consisted of a large number of participants, which helped her have reliable data, the scope was narrow because it only discusses one demotivating factor that is the teacher Thus, based on the results of this study, teacher is the main source of students’ demotivation Nevertheless, this study offers

12 the later researchers chance to conduct further investigation on this topic to discover other factors leading to demotivation among learners

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CHAPTER 2 - METHODOLOGY 2.1 Research questions

The minor thesis aims at answering the following questions:

1 What is students’ attitude toward learning to speak English in class?

2 What factors demotivate students at Viet-Hung Industrial University to participate in English speaking lessons?

3 What should be done to help the students overcome these problems and desire to

be parts of the English speaking lessons?

3.2 Data collection and analysis

3.2.1 Data collection

In order to obtain the data, the author carried out two sets of questionnaires, one for 14 teachers and the other for 150 students To get additional information and illustrations she invited 6 out of 14 teachers to attend semi-structured interviews

To begin with, the author translated the students’ questionnaires into Vietnamese to assure that every question was fully understood and answered Then with the teachers’ permission, the questionnaires for both students and teachers were delivered For the interviews, the author had to make appointments with the six randomly chosen teachers according to their schedules During the interviews, their responses were written down

2.2.2 Data analysis

The information collected from the three sources was first read carefully and then analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively The data from the questionnaires were displayed in the tables and charts and the information from the interviews and class attending was presented in notes and quotations

2.3 Subjects

In order to get the reliable data, the author decides to choose the probability method of sampling It means that all the participants, both teachers and students are randomly selected In random sampling, each member of the population under study has an equal chance of being taken into research and the probability of a member of

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the population being selected has no affection on the selection of other members of population (Cohen, 2007) The number of participants of the study consists of 150 students of Banking and Financing who are at the second year (K35) and 14 full-time teachers who teach English at Viet-Hung University The author randomly selects the second-year students of the Faculty of Banking and Financing from a list

of 8 faculties because English is said to be paid lots of attention in this faculty Moreover, they are on the way with the second term of English All the 150 students

of K35 are chosen to participate in the study, 132 of whom are female and only 18 students are male They are from different areas throughout Vietnam, but most of them are at the age of 19 or 20, so they belong to the same psychological age group They like speaking English, but this desire has been lost gradually

The second group of participants consists of 14 full-time Vietnamese teachers of English at Viet-Hung Industrial University Among these 14 teachers, 12

of them are female and the other 2 are males Only one of them is over 40 and the other 13 teachers are at the age of ranging from 30 to 40 12 of these teachers are

from the North of Vietnam and two from a central province Although most of the

chosen teachers are all quite young, 1 of them has Doctor Degree, 8 have MA Degree of English and the other 5 have got University Bachelor’s of English Only

4 of them have been teaching English for more than 15 years, 3 of them from 10 to

14 years, and 7 of them from 5 to 10 years Although some of these teachers do not have a long time of teaching, all of them are believed to have new method of

teaching English effectively, especially speaking skill

2.4 Instruments

The data in the research are obtained from two questionnaires, one for students and the other is for teachers, the interviews for teachers

To begin with, both questionnaires have eight questions

The questionnaire for students is in Vietnamese so that all respondents can understand and give reliable responses It consists of the following main points:

- Students’ opinions to learning to speak English

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- Students’ reasons for learning to speak English

- Whether students are motivated or demotivated to speak English in class

- Factors that discourage students to participate in English speaking lessons

- To what extend do these factors affect students to participate into English speaking lessons

- What should be done to reduce demotivation

Another questionnaire is designed to get the information from teachers of English of the university It is in English, but the information is quite similar to the one in the student’s because the author would like to have the responses from two groups of subjects to the same problems The questionnaire covers the aspects as follows:

- Teachers’ opinion on the role of speaking skill in English language learning

- Factors that discourage their students to participate in their English speaking lessons

- What solutions they recommend to help reduce these factors

Second, the researcher decides to interview some teachers of English of the University to get more necessary information as well as reinforce the data obtained from the questionnaires The interviews cover the following points:

- Students’ attitude to English speaking

- Factors that discourage their students to participate into their English speaking lessons

- What solutions they recommend to help reduce these factors

2.5 The research context

In this part of the study the author would like to introduce some prominent information about English courses at Viet-Hung Industrial University, its students and teachers

To begin with, Viet-Hung is a big university which consists of various levels

of training and majors It was founded in 1977 as a Vocational High School Then

in 2005 it was upgraded to Viet-Hung college of Industry, and became Viet-Hung

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Industrial University in 2010 Although the University offers credit-based training courses, students do not register for subject they would like to learn Instead, they follow the arrangement given by the University Students at Faculty of Banking and Financing learn English for the first two years and, like students of other faculties, the number of credit they have to attend is 10, 7 of which are for English for General Purposes (EGP) and the other 3 for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Each week they have two lessons of English, each of which lasts for 3 periods Speaking accounts for 2 out of 6 periods in total In these lessons, the focus skill is speaking Students are taught both speaking contents from the core book and supplementary Like many other universities, Viet-Hung Industrial University is orientating at developing English communicating skills among students Then after four semesters, students are expected to be capable of communicating naturally with other people in English With this amount of time, however, being fluent in speaking English seems so difficult for students and this is also a challenging task for teachers of English of the University

In terms of the course-book, as mentioned before, like many other

universities in Vietnam, Viet-Hung Industrial University offers both EGP and ESP courses The textbook for EGP course is New English File (Pre-Intermediate), in

which speaking is distributed in every section of each unit Besides, an additional

book, Let’s Talk 2 is also used to develop students’ speaking skill Although this is not the main course book, oral tasks which are relevant to the topics in the book New English File are introduced to students for further discussions The number of the periods for the topics in this book is not fixed Instead, teacher decides when and how long they use the book, depending on the topics they have

Since English in Vietnam is a foreign language learned mainly in classrooms, the role of a teacher becomes highly significant as the main source and facilitator of knowledge and skills In Viet-Hung Industrial University there are 14 full-time teachers of English and 4 teachers who work part-time In this research,

at primary and secondary levels, books are designed to cover all aspects of language and skills, but teachers tend to put more emphasis on grammar and vocabulary than communication Consequently, after graduating from schools, most of them did not feel confident in communicating with others Teachers of English at the University may suffer in the way that whenever they ask students to speak in class, their students just kept silent, or even worse they felt frightened to speak out their thoughts and ideas

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CHAPTER 3 – DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

In this part of the thesis, the author deals with the analysis of the data

collected in order to find out the factors that discourage students to participate in the English speaking lessons

3.1 Data analysis of students’ response

Students’ attitude to the importance of learning to speak English:

71.3%

28.7%

Yes No

Chart 1: Students‟ attitude to the importance of learning to speak English

As can be seen from the chart, most students think that learning to speak English is important, accounting for 71.3%, while 28.7% of the students do not regard speaking an important part in their process of learning English It is evident that the majority of students is aware of the importance of speaking skill and would like to be good at it However, they have different reasons for learning to speak English

 Students’ reasons for learning to speak English:

Why is this skill important to you?

A To get good grades

B To communicate with foreigners

C To fulfill the requirements of the University

D To get good job in the future

E To be admired and respected by friends and teachers

Chart 2: Students‟ reasons for learning to speak English

Some students can have more than one reason of learning to speak English,

so in this question the responders can choose more than one option As being shown

in the chart, students’ learning to speak English to get good marks and to meet the requirements of the University are the most important reasons, making up 65.3% and 53%, respectively 46% students think that they should learn to speak English

so as to have a satisfactory career in the future, and only 5% of them decide to learn

to speak the language to get admiration and respect from friends and teachers It is clear that there is some extrinsic motivation among these students

 Students’ attitude to the participation in English speaking lessons

18.7%

81.3%

YesNo

Chart 3: Students‟ attitude to the participation in English speaking lessons

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The above chart clearly indicates that the majority of investigated students are not interested participating in the English speaking lessons This number accounts for 81.3% Meanwhile, 18.7% of these students believe that they feel like working in the lessons There must be factors that demotivate them to work in class and they are all discussed in the next question

 Students’ opinions on factors demotivating them to participate in English speaking lessons

Once again, in this question participants can choose more than one answer, which means that their desire of participating into English speaking lessons may be affected by more than one factor The details are shown in the following table, which helps readers identify the demotivators and how much they affect students’ willingness to be parts of the speaking lessons

Factors

Results Degrees of affection

Total

1 Teacher

a We are often interrupted by the teacher when presenting

if we makes mistakes, even the minor ones

b Teacher does not allow students to ask questions after each presentation

c Teacher is usually at his/her seat, so it is not convenient for us to ask for help from him/her

f Teacher’s language competence is not good enough

g Teacher is so yielding that he or she can not maintain discipline in class

h Teacher is not friendly, so teacher and students’ relationship is not good

i Teacher does not care whether we work or not because he/she is often busy to do his/her own work

j Teacher often criticizes us when we say something wrong

projector

b The class is so large,

so teacher can not pay equal attention to all students

presentation, we don’t understand because our listening is not very good

b Our ability of speaking English is not good

b Most of the speaking topics are not of our interest

c The speaking tasks do not help us much for our future job

Table 1: Students‟ opinions on factors demotivating them to participate in

English speaking lessons

Unlike the previous studies about demotivators, in this research, not only teacher but the other factors also have great influence on students’ performance in English speaking lessons Firstly, teacher has considerable influence on students’ willingness in class In terms of teacher’s language competence, we can see that teachers’ fast speed of speaking dramatically demotivates students, accounting for 70.6% Especially, nearly half of them agree that they are affected much 26.7% think that this factor does not affect them much 10.7% and 3.3% respond that this factor has great and little influence on their desire of participating in class Although teacher’s voice is a big source of students’ demotivation to speak English, only 3%

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of the students think that his/her general language competence is not good enough

to help them with difficult grammatical items and vocabulary Regarding to the teacher’s method of teaching speaking, teacher’s unclear and inadequate explanation for the tasks and the inconvenience in asking for help from teacher should be taken into consideration They make up 66% and 65%, respectively But most of them are for the point of view that the two factors do not affect them much

In addition, the statistics reveal the demotivation originating from different aspects

of teacher’s personality, but not seriously

Secondly, discussing about classroom, there are two points that should be taken notice of They are classroom facilities and class size Nevertheless, they are not considered to be big sources The evidence is that only 30% of the students complain that the big class makes them reluctant and 26.6% are convinced that they are affected by the inadequate facilities in the classroom More interestingly, not many of them are seriously influenced

Students’ self-confidence is the third source of demotivation Students often have the feeling of embarrassing in English classes as their English level of competence was low 70.6% of the participants support this point of view, of which 41.3% are affected much The other percentages, 4.7%, 11.3% and 13.3%, are for the other three degrees, little, not much and very much, respectively Although students’ poor language competence is acknowledged as an important factor of demotivation, not many students are concerned about their unsatisfactory marks for speaking tests Only 16.6% think this factor makes them unwilling to take part in the lessons However, most of them believe they are affected much It is clear that their demotivation is closely related to their purposes of learning English speaking which is previously mentioned, meaning that they learn speaking mainly to get good mark and to fulfill the University’s requirements

Fourthly, as stated before, this research finds out that the thing that has the biggest influence on students’ demotivation is students’ language competence In details, the biggest factor is students’ poor ability of speaking, making up 71.3%

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They agree that they cannot express what they really want to say in English Besides, 68% of the participants respond that their difficulty in listening to the speakers discourages them to act in speaking class The noticeable point in this part

is that most of the students choosing these factors lead the belief that they influence them much Obviously, students’ background knowledge plays an important part in motivating students to speak English

The next source of demotivation the author would like to analyze is students’ attitudes towards English This field does not need to take much discussion because all the respondents are aware of the necessary of good knowledge of English in their future career However, 17.3% acknowledge that they would like to learn other foreign languages rather than English and 13.3% of 150 students report to experience great effect of this factor

The last source of demotivation that emerges in the research is teaching and learning materials While only 10% find the oral tasks difficult for them, and 20% complain that the tasks are not helpful for their future job, 60% criticized the topics for not being of their interests Nevertheless, the majority of them admit that these demotivators do not affect them much

To sum up, students’ willingness of taking part in English speaking lessons is reported to be influenced by a variety of sources However, the recognized demotivating factors vary among different students and of various levels

In accordance with the demotivating factors, some probable solutions to them are suggested in the following table:

 Students’ recommendations on what teachers should do to encourage them to

participate in English speaking lessons

What do you expect your teacher to do to reduce your demotivation? Results

a Give clear explanation and instruction to the task 53.3%

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e Use modern technology such as computer, projector 20.7%

g Choose topics and tasks more relevant to student’s ability and of

i Organize games and activities to get students to learn speaking

j Encourage students to listen to English songs and watch films to get

k Ask students to read more to improve their background knowledge 54.6%

Table 2: Students‟ recommendations on what teachers should do to encourage them

to participate in English speaking lessons

The statistics show that a large number of students (76.6%) expect their teachers to give them opportunities to listen to music and watch films to develop their speaking and listening skills It’s clear that these activities can relax students and raise their awareness of the culture as well as how to communicate naturally in English 68% of them hope that their tasks are suitable with their level of proficiency and their interest 62% of 150 students think that teachers should slow down their speech

The next expectations that should be taken notice of are the integration of games into speaking activities, getting students to read more to have better background knowledge and teachers’ ways of explaining and instructing the tasks

To be more specific, 61.3% of the students would like to play games along with learning speaking; 54.6% of them suggest that they should be required to read more frequently to develop their knowledge of English to support speaking skill and 53.3% wish the tasks to be instructed more clearly Concerning students’ expectation towards teacher’s personality in class, 41.3% of the class would like to receive both nice comment and criticism from teachers on their presentation, which

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reveals that students do not want to be criticized whenever making mistakes More interestingly, only 6.7% express that teacher should be strict to them, which means they would like their teachers to be friendly to them, even with lazy students It can

be concluded that students expect their teachers to create a relaxing atmosphere for speaking class

3.2 Data analysis of teachers’ responses

 Teacher’s perception of the importance of learning to speak English to students:

Do you think English speaking is important to students? 100% 0%

Table 3: Teacher‟s perception of the importance of learning to speak English to

students

Looking at the table, we can see all 14 teachers think that learning to speak English is important for their students It is clear that teachers of the University are aware of the importance of English speaking skill to their students

 Teacher’s perception of students’ purposes of learning to speak English

2 Why is this skill important to your students?

A To get good grades

B To communicate with foreigners

C To fulfill the requirements of the University

D To get good job in the future

E To be admired and respected by friends and teachers

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EDCBA

Chart 4: Teacher‟s perception of students‟ purposes of learning to speak English

The chart illustrates teachers’ views about students’ reasons for learning to speak English In details, the minority of the teachers think that their students learn speaking to communicate with foreigners, to get admiration and respect from teachers and friends and meet the requirements of the University (accounting for 0.06%, 1.4% and 2.1%, respectively) However, 50% of them respond that students would like to be competent in English to apply for a good job when they graduate Specially, 9 out of 14 teachers (equivalent to 64.3%) are convinced that their students learn to speak in order to obtain good mark for speaking tests Once again,

to some extent, there are similarities in the responses from teachers and students, which means that the teachers find some extrinsic motivation among their students

 Teachers’ perception of students’ attitude to speaking English in class

30.0%

70.0%

Yes No

Chart 5: Teachers‟ perception of students‟ attitude to speaking English in class