INVESTIGATION INTO THE INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP SPEAKING SKILLS FOR THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS AT VINH PHUC TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGE

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES **************** ĐỖ THỊ CẨM VÂN AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP SPEAKING SKILLS FOR THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS AT VINH PHUC TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGE (Nghiên cứu những chiến lược giảng dạy nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên năm thứ hai Trường Cao đẳng Sư phạm Vĩnh Phúc) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.01.11 Hanoi – 2014 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES **************** ĐỖ THỊ CẨM VÂN AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP SPEAKING SKILLS FOR THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS AT VINH PHUC TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGE (Nghiên cứu những chiến lược giảng dạy nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên năm thứ hai Trường Cao đẳng Sư phạm Vĩnh Phúc) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.01.11 Supervisor: Dr. Tô Thị Thu Hương Hanoi - 2014 i DECLARATION I, Do Thi Cam Van, hereby declare that the work in this thesis is the result of my own research. It is recognized that should this declaration be found to be false, disciplinary actions could be taken and penalties could be imposed in accordance with university policies and rules. Hanoi, 2014 Đ Th Cm Vân ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would love to express my sincere thanks to a number of people whose invaluable support and encouragement were of great help in completing of this study. First of all, I would like to advance my special gratitude to Dr. To Thi Thu Huong - my supervisor for her guidance, invaluable advice as well as critical comments during the research process. Without her tireless help, this study could not have been finished. Secondly, my thanks go to Dr. Le Van Canh for his contributions through giving me helpful advice when I started the study. I am thankful to all the staff of the Post- Graduate Department of University of Language International Studies, VNU for giving me assistance and encouraging me to complete the thesis A further acknowledgement goes to my dear friends from the Master's Course. I would also like to acknowledge the 15 English teachers and 60 second -year students from K17, English Department, Vinh Phuc Teacher Training College for their participation and cooperation during the data collection process. Finally, special words of thanks are sent to my beloved family for their encouragement even in the hardest time when I was confused and exhausted. iii ABSTRACT The study is entitled “An investigation into the instructional strategies to develop speaking skills for the second year students at Vinh Phuc Teacher Training College”. It was conducted to examine the second year students’ difficulties in their English speaking skills, find out the instructional strategies applied by English language teachers in speaking classes, and show how role- play practice affecting students’ performance in speaking skills. The study was carried out on sixty second- year students and fifteen English teachers at Vinh Phuc Teacher Training College during 8 weeks by questionnaires, semi- structured interviews, test, and personal observations. The findings indicated students’ good awareness and varied attitudes towards the problems they have to face, and the difficulties they had in the learning process. In addition, the study showed a range of the instructional strategies the teachers applied to motivate their students’ participation in speaking lessons. And role- playing was the most popularly used at Vinh Phuc Teacher Training College. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration ……………………………………………………………… i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv List of appendices vi List of abbreviations vii List of figures vii List of tables viii INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale 1 2. Scope of the study 2 3. Aims of the study 2 4. Significance of the study 3 5. Methods of the study 3 6. Design of the study 4 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Overview of speaking skills 5 1.1 Definition of speaking and teaching speaking skills 5 1.2 Principles for teaching speaking skills 5 2. Communicative Language Teaching Today 7 2.1 Definition of communicative language teaching 7 2.2 Current trends in communicative language teaching 8 2.3 Classroom activities in communicative language teaching 9 3. Instructional strategies 10 3.1 Definition 10 3.2 Instructional strategies model 11 4. Role- play 13 v CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 1. The context 15 1.1 Description of the English speaking classe and its objectives at Vinh Phuc Teacher Training College 15 1.2 Description of the students 17 1.3 Description of the teachers 17 2. Method and procedure 18 2.1 Selection of participants 18 2.2 Data collection methods 18 2.2.1 Questionnaires 19 2.2.2 Semi-structured interviews 19 2.2.3 Observations 20 2.3 Data collection procedures 20 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 1. Teachers’ instructional strategies in English speaking classes 22 1.1 Instructional strategies used by teachers in speaking lessons 22 1.2 Which instructional strategies help the students to overcome their difficulties in speaking lessons? 29 1.2.1 Students’ difficulties in the speaking classes 30 1.2.2 Which instructional strategies help the students to overcome their difficulties in speaking lessons? 33 2. Effect of role- play practice to students’ performance in English speaking classes 33 CONCLUSION 1. Summary of the study 39 2. Limitations of the study 39 4. Suggestions for further studies 40 REFERENCES 41 APPENDICES I vi LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix 1: Transcripts of student interviews (schedule 1) Appendix 2: Transcripts of student interviews (schedule 2) Appendix 3: Transcripts of teacher interviews (schedule 1) Appendix 4: Transcripts of teacher interviews (schedule 2) Appendix 5: Teacher interview schedules Appendix 6: Student interview schedules Appendix 7: Mid- term test Appendix 8: Mid- term test: K 17 English A Appendix 9: Mid- term test: K 17 English C Appendix 10: Students’ questionnaire Appendix 11: Teachers’ questionnaire Appendix 12: Findings from observation vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ED: English Department EFL: English as a Foreign Language CLT: Communicative Language Teaching MA: Master of Arts PhD: Doctor of Philosophy Q: Question S: Student T: Teacher VTTC: Vinh Phuc Teacher Training College LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Importance of the teachers’ instructional strategies from the teachers’ points of view Figure 2: Instructional strategies the teachers applied in English speaking lessons Figure 3: The instructional strategy motivated the students the most in English speaking lessons Figure 4: Importance of the teachers’ instructional strategies from the students’ points of view Figure 5: Instructional strategies the teachers used from the students’ points of view Figure 6: Instructional strategy motivated the students the most from the students Figure 7: Students’ difficulties in English speaking lessons Figure 8: Students’ difficulties from the teachers’ points of view Figure 9: Students’ result from the mid- term test viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Speaking activities and topics designed for the second year English majored students Table 2: Importance of the teachers’ instructional strategies from the teachers’ points of view Table 3: The instructional strategies the teachers applied and which instructional strategy motivated the students the most in English speaking lessons Table 4: Importance of the teachers’ instructional strategies from the students’ points of view Table 5: The instructional strategies the teachers applied and which instructional strategy motivated the students the most in English speaking lessons from the students’ points of view Table 6: Students’ difficulties in English speaking lessons Table 7: Students’ difficulties in English speaking lessons from the teachers’ points of view Table 8: Students’ perceptions towards role- play Table 9: Students’ result from the mid- term test [...]... majored students to overcome their difficulties in learning speaking skills, and help the English teachers to have some useful instructional strategies in teaching are the inspiration of conducting the study entitled “An investigation into the instructional strategies to develop speaking skills for the second year students at Vinh Phuc Teacher Training College 2 Scope of the study As this thesis is... concerned with the difficulties the students had in the speaking class, the suitable instructional strategies that teachers at VTTC choose for the second year English majored students in their speaking lessons as well as to help the students learn English speaking skills better 3 Aims of the study The study is carried out to help the English teachers at VTTC find out which instructional strategies are... some more useful strategies used in speaking lessons The last part, Conclusion, presents the summary of the study, limitations and suggestions for further studies 4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW In the investigation into the instructional strategies to develop students speaking abilities, the study needs to present the previous and current literature on the speaking skills Besides,... instruction: to use the instructional strategies to produce the instruction - Design and conduct formative evaluation: to collect data that are used to identify how to improve the instruction - Revise instruction: to use the data from the formative evaluation to examine the validity of the instructional analysis, learner and context analysis, performance objectives, assessment instruments, instructional strategies, ... details 1 TEACHERS’ INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES IN THE ENGLISH SPEAKING CLASSES The first research question: “What are the instructional strategies applied by English language teachers in speaking classes at VTTC?” divided into two subquestions: What instructional strategies are commonly used by English teachers in their speaking lessons? Which instructional strategies help the students to overcome their... 73,3 % of the teachers gave the answers that they applied this instructional strategies in their 25 speaking classrooms The majority of them stated that they often asked their students to take part in Task- completion activity (66,7%) Some of them indicated that their instructional strategy in the English speaking class was Information- gap activity (53,3%) Other activties were not chosen to applied... instructional strategies are those tactics used by the instructors to promote learning Dick and Carey (1996) showed the definition of the instructional strategies: Instructional strategies determine the approach a teacher may take to achieve learning objectives Instructional strategies are used by the teachers to create learning environment and to specify the nature of the activity in which the teacher and... 2002) Added to this, the researcher spent 2 weeks to observe the colleagues’ procedure and instructional strategies to find out which strategies were appropriate, which strategies were not in the actual context of VTTC In the study, observations were appropriate to examine students participation in speaking activities and teachers’ instructional strategies to boost their participation 2.3 Data collection... all the above information, all the readers could see that there were many useful activities (the instructional strategies) the language teachers can apply in their English speaking classes to stimulate their students in the learning process The linguists mentioned the instructional strategies much in their studies such as groupwork, information gap activities, jigsaw activities, role- play In the. .. to occur in the classroom is the students go beyond practice of language forms for their own sake and use their linguistic and communicative resources to obtain information - Jigsaw activities: The class is divided into groups and each group has part of information needed to complete an activity The class must fit the pieces together to complete the whole They have to use their language abilities to . PHUC TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGE (Nghiên cứu những chiến lược giảng dạy nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên năm thứ hai Trường Cao đẳng Sư phạm Vĩnh Phúc) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS. PHUC TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGE (Nghiên cứu những chiến lược giảng dạy nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên năm thứ hai Trường Cao đẳng Sư phạm Vĩnh Phúc) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS. therefore, that English is now the dominant language, especially in language teaching programs in many schools. In the era of communicative language teaching, teaching and learning the four language