Teaching speaking skill at viet anh college problems and solutions

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI XUAN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILL AT VIETANH COLLEGE: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION Nghe An, 2014 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI XUAN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILL AT VIETANH COLLEGE: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other language (TESOL) Code: 6014111 MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr Ngo Dinh Phuong Nghe An, 2014 i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that the minor thesis entitled “Teaching speaking skill at Viet Anh College – Problems and solutions ” is the result of my own work, and that the minor thesis or any part of the same has not been submitted to any university or institution. Vinh, September 2014 Author’s signature Nguyễn Thị Xuân ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge with all my greatest attitude the support, guidance and invaluable critical feedback given by the supervisor - Assoc. Prof. Dr Ngo Dinh Phuong. My sincere thanks are due to the teachers and students at Viet Anh college where I have been teaching in and doing the research. I am also indebt of my lectures, my friends, my classmates, as well as my colleagues for their invaluable comments, criticism and encouragement. Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my beloved people, my family for their love and encouragement. iii ABSTRACT Oral skill is one of four required skills making a live language. It has been taught for the freshmen at the colleges as the compulsory subject. However, the various situations of teaching and learning this skill cause obstacles that to achieve. In order to improve the quality of speaking classes, the study limits itself to the study on the elementary level with the popular problems and suggested solutions. The study has been conducted for the purpose of testing the effectiveness of using language games to motivate students at Viet Anh college in speaking classes. Thus, three sets of survey questionnaire including pre-task survey questionnaire and post-task survey questionnaire are used to investigate students’ attitudes, perspectives towards speaking skill and language games adapted during speaking lessons, to find out the students’ preferences for employing this technique in mastering speaking skill. According to the display of theoretical background, the textbook and data collection on teachers and students, the author had a view on analysis and came to some suggestions to improve the speaking skill. iv TABLE OF CONTENT ABSTRACT iii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Rationale 1 1.2 aims of the study 2 1.3 Scope of the study 2 1.4 Research questions: 2 1.5. Design of the study: 2 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 4 2.1 The history of communicative language teaching in Asia and Vietnam 4 2.2 The typical of characteristics and principles of CLT 5 2.3 The concept of speaking. 5 2.4 The speaking process. 6 2.5 Speaking competence 6 2.6 A successful speaking lesson: 7 2.7 Problems with speaking lessons: 8 2.7.1 Problems faced to teachers: 8 2.7.2 Problems caused by students: 9 2.7.3 Factors affect on oral performance: 10 2.7.3.1 Clustering 10 2.7.3.2. Redundancy 10 2.7.3.3. Reduced forms 10 2.7.3.4. Performance variables 10 2.7.3.5. Colloquial language 10 2.7.3.6. Rate of delivery 10 2.7.3.7. Stress, rhythm, and intonation 10 v 2.7.3.8. Interaction 11 2.8 Solutions to speaking problems: 11 2.8.1. Discussion 12 2.8.2. Role plays 13 2.8.3. Simulation 13 2.8.4. Information gap activities 13 2.8.5. Brainstorming 14 2.8.6. Storytelling 14 2.8.7. Interviews 14 2.8.8. Story Completion 15 2.8.9. Reporting 15 2.8.11. Picture Narrating 16 2.8.12. Picture Describing 16 2.8.13. Find the Difference 16 2.9. The text book New Headway elementary 2 nd edition: 17 2.9.1. The overall design of the text book New Headway elementary 2 nd edition 17 2.9.2. The general features of The text book New Headway elementary 2 nd edition: 18 2.9.3. Description of the speaking section 18 CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 22 3.1 The setting of the study: 22 3.1.1 The facts of CLT and teaching speaking in Vietnam: 22 3.1.2 An overview of teaching speaking at Viet Anh college: 22 3.2 Participants: 23 3.3 Data collection instruments: 24 CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 26 vi 4.1. Findings 26 4.1.1. Teachers’ background and experience: 26 4.1.2. Teachers’ opinions about speaking skill 26 4.1.3. Teachers’ opinions about students’ attitudes toward speaking lessons 28 4.1.4. Teachers’ difficulties in teaching speaking skill for the freshmen 29 4.1.5. Teachers’ solutions to improve the speaking lessons 30 4.1.6. Students’ background and their experience of learning and speaking English 32 4.1.7. Students’ opinions towards speaking skill and the speaking lessons in New Headway elementary 2 nd edition book: 34 4.1.8. Students’ difficulties when learning English speaking skill 38 4.1.9. Students’ solutions to improve speaking skill themselves 40 4.1.10. Students’ suggested solutions to improve speaking skill themselves . 41 4.2. Discussion 43 4.3. Solutions to improving freshmen’s speaking skill 49 4.4. Summary 54 CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION 55 5.1. Conclusion 55 5.1.1 Problems 55 5.1.2 Solutions: 55 5.2. Limitation of the study 56 5.3. Suggested further research 57 REFERENCES 58 PHẦN CÂU HỎI DÀNH CHO HỌC SINH SINH VIÊN 59 vii TABLES AND CHART LIST: Table 3.1 Description of speaking section in New Headway elementary book 21 Table 4.1: Teachers’ qualifications and their experience 26 Table 4.2: Teachers’ assessment and attitudes towards speaking skill 27 Table 4.3: Teachers’ assessment of speaking topics and activities in the textbook 28 Table 4.4: Teachers’ opinions of students’ attitudes towards speaking lessons 28 Table 4.5: Teachers’ difficulties in teaching speaking skill 29 Chart 4.6 Analysis of difficult factors in teaching speaking 30 Table 4.7: Teachers’ solutions to improve the speaking lessons 31 Table 4.8: Teachers’ suggested solutions to improve the speaking lesson 32 Table 4.9: Students’ experience of studying and speaking English 33 Table 4.10: Students’ background of leaning and speaking English 34 Table 4.11: Students’ chance to speak English outside classroom 34 Table 4.12: Student’s opinions towards speaking 35 Table 4.12: Student’s opinions towards speaking lessons in New Headway book 36 Table 4.13: Students’ opinions towards the speaking tasks of the textbook 36 Chart 4.14: Problems to students in speaking lesson 39 Table 4.15: Students’ difficulties when learning speaking skill 40 Table 4.16: Students’ solutions to improve speaking skill themselves 41 Table 4.17: Students’ suggested solutions to improve their speaking skill 42 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT: Communicative language teaching ESL: English as second language TOEFL: Test Of English as a Foreign Language IELTS: Test Of English as a Foreign Language FCE: First Certificate in English [...]... effectiveness of learning speaking at 1 our school We can make it clearer on the topic Teaching speaking skill at vietanh college: problems and solutions 1.2 Aims of the study The aims of the study is to investigate the speaking problems of the freshmen at Vietanh college Therefore, the specific purposes are : - To find out kinds of speaking problems encountered by the freshmen at Viet Anh College - To find... for materials with their low incoming In conclusion, it is a big question how to apply CLT effectively at schools and colleges in Vietnam nowadays 3.1.2 An overview of teaching speaking at Viet Anh college: Viet Anh college is a job training college At first, it worked as a technical eonomics college Up to now, there have been a lot of changes in teaching and training The college works on chemical and. .. applied at different colleges in different areas on the more types of speaking activites The paper fails to cover all situations of CLT on teaching speaking in all colleges in the area and generalize the fact This is conducted with the experience and knowledge of the author with the aim to clarify what has been happening in English teaching at Viet Anh college and evaluate the applications on a specific skill. .. data collection and data analysis methods of the research - Present data analysis and results - Present action of the findings drawn out from the analysis of data and discussion Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions - Present some suggested activities for motivating students in speaking lessons - Present some recommendations to improve the problems of teaching and learning English speaking skills at Viet. .. have in teaching and learning speaking skill as well as the difficulties they faced The fact of teaching speaking for the freshmen at Viet Anh college is discussed and the author comes to a conclusion of suggested implicature and solutions 4.1 Findings 4.1.1 Teachers’ background and experience: Teacher Rural 2nd T Time of teaching 5 years college 8years 1st T Hometown Places of work high school, college. .. presenting at the scope of the study, we work on four teachers at Viet- Anh College and four groups of one hundred students The teachers are at similar levels but with various methods in teaching speaking skill The students are at the elementary level The attitude to English speaking and different language knowledge make speaking classes challenged 23 A better study would examine a large, randomly selected... management of intersaction; - Skills in negotiating meaning; - Conversational listening skills (successful conversations require good listeners as well as good speakers) - Skills in knowing about and negotiating purposes for conversations; - Using appropriate conversational formulae and fillers Whereas, Brown and Yule suggest that most language teaching is concerned with developing skills in short, intersactional... receptive skill but also aims to the development of language proficiency As designed in the course at many colleges and universities in Vietnam, English has played a very important subject As more detailed, speaking skill is recognized as the principal part of language courses At Viet - Anh College, speaking is treated equally as other skills in terms of time allocation In fact, it has not drawn much attention... Listening you live? and (Mini dialogue) speaking 6 Speaking - A questionaire – What can you do? 19 Can you speak Reading - Super kids English? and + speaking + Discussion exchanging informations + Role play Speaking Then 7 and - What did you do at the end of 20th century? - now When did it happened? – Question and Reading answer and - Two famous firsts – Discussion speaking How long Speaking ago? 8 -... of speaking Speaking skill is one of four important skills of language It has been studied in by many authors, especially the webs teaching English Most of them often find speaking skill interactive and communicative As written by Burns, A & Joyce, H (1997): Speaking is described as an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information Speaking . MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI XUAN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILL AT VIETANH COLLEGE: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION . An, 2014 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI XUAN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILL AT VIETANH COLLEGE: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS Major: Teaching English to Speakers. investigate the speaking problems of the freshmen at Vietanh college. Therefore, the specific purposes are : - To find out kinds of speaking problems encountered by the freshmen at Viet Anh College.