Towards adapting speaking activities in Tiếng anh 10 to increase students participation in english speaking classes + Nghiên cứu thiết chỉnh một số hoạt động nói trong sách Tiếng anh 10 nhằm tăng cường sự thạm gia của học sinh trong giờ học tiếng anh

Table of contents Contents Page SUB COVER PAGE I STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS III ASTRACT IV TABLE OF CONTENTS LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS LISTS OF TABLES AND FIGURES PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale Previous Studies Related to the Toppic Aims of the Study 11 Research Questions 12 Scope of the Study 12 Significance of the Study 12 Organization of the Study 12 PART B: DEVELOPMENT …………………………………………… 14 Chapter 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ……………… 14 1.1 What is “Students’ Participation”?…………………… 14 1.2 Factors affecting Students’ Participation …………… 15 1.3 Background of Speaking ……………………………… 19 1.3.1 The Nature of Language Skills ……………………… 19 1.3.2 The Importance of Teaching English Speaking ……… 21 1.3.3 Teaching Speaking …………………………………… 21 1.3.4 Speaking Activities …………………………….……… 23 1.3.5 Problems 24 1.3.6 Activities ……………………………………………… Ways of Organizing Speaking Activities …………… 26 1.4 Material Adaptation …………………………………… 28 1.4.1 Definition ……………………………………………… 28 with English -1- Speaking and Speaking 1.4.2 The Purpose of Adaptation …………………………… 28 1.4.3 Techniques of Adaptation …………………………… 29 Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY ………………………………… 34 2.1 Research setting ……………………………………… 34 2.1.1 Brief Introduction of Tĩnh Gia High School ………… 34 2.1.2 Students and their English Background Knowledge…… 35 2.1.3 General Description of the Curriculum of Textbook 35 2.2 ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ ………………………………………… Research Method ……………………………………… 38 2.3 The Participants ……………………………………… 39 2.4 Data Collection Instruments …………………….….… 40 2.4.1 Classroom Observations ……………………………… 40 2.4.2 The Teacher Interview ………………………………… 41 2.4.3 Student Questionnaire ………………………………… 41 2.4.4 Follow-up Students’ Interviews 42 2.4.5 Textbook Analysis 42 2.5 Data Collection Procedures …………………………… 43 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION …………………… 45 3.1 Results 3.2 Experimental- Observation Results from Students’ Questionnaire ………………… 3.2.1 Students’ Self Evaluation of their Participation in 3.2.2 Speaking Lessons…… ………………………………… Students’ Motivation in Learning Speaking English … 49 50 3.2.3 Students’ Learning Styles ……………………………… 51 3.2.4 Factors Prevent Students from Participating in Speaking 52 3.2.5 in the English Class …………………………………… Students’ Attitude toward Speaking Skill, Speaking Topics and Activities in ‘Tiếng Anh 10''……………… Students’ Opinion about the Way their Teachers Teach 53 3.2.6 Speaking ………………….……………………….…… 60 of Students’ -2- Participation from Pre45 49 3.2.7 Students’ Evaluation on their Teacher’s Adaptation … 60 3.2.8 Students' Evaluation towards their Current Speaking 3.3 Lessons ……………………………………………… Results from Teachers Interview …………………… 3.3.1 Teachers’ Evaluation on Speaking Activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” ……………………………………………… Teachers’ Satisfaction with Students’ Participation in 63 3.3.2 67 3.3.3 Speaking Class ………………………………………… Teachers’ Perception on the Factors Affecting Students’ 67 3.3.4 Participation in Speaking Lessons …………………… Teachers' Perception on Which Parts of Speaking 61 62 Activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” Need Adapting to Increase 68 3.3.5 Students’ Participation in Speaking Lessons ………… Teachers’ Reasons for Adapting Speaking Tasks of “Tiếng Anh 10” ……………………………………… Teachers’ Frequency of Adapting the Speaking 70 3.3.6 71 3.3.7 Activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” ………………………… Teachers’ Opinions of Speaking Activities Should be 3.4 Adapted to Apply in “Tiếng Anh 10” … ……………… Results from the End of Experiment Observations … 73 74 3.4.1 Observations in Control Group ……………………… 74 3.4.2 Observations in Experimental Group ………………… 75 3.5 Students’ Participation in Experimental and Control 87 3.6 Group in Three Lessons at the End of the Intervention Comparison of Students’ Participation before and at the 3.7 End of the Experiment ………………………………… Follow-up Student Interviews ………………………… 88 89 3.8 Results of Document Analysis ………………………… 90 PART C: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION …………… 96 Implications …………………………………………… 96 Conclusion …………………………………………… 99 Limitations of The Study ……………………………… 100 Suggested Further Study ……………………………… 100 -3- REFERENCES …………………………………………………………… APPENDICES LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT: Communicative Language Teaching EFL: English as a Foreign Language e.g: Exempli gratia (for example) etc: et cetera MOET: Ministry of Education and Training STT: Student Talking Time TTT: Teacher Talking Time TG3HS: Tĩnh Gia high school -4- 102 LISTS OF TABLES AND FIGURES Page Chart 3.1: Students’ self - evaluation of their participation in speaking Chart 3.2: lesson …………………………………………………………… Factors prevent students from participating in speaking in the 49 English class …………………………………………………… Chart 3.3: Evaluation of speaking skill …………………………………… Chart 3.4: The importance of speaking skill …………………………… 52 54 Chart 3.5: Students’ interests in speaking lessons …………………… … Chart 3.6: Reasons for students’ low interests …………………………… 56 Chart 3.7: Students’ assessment on speaking topics in “Tiếng Anh 10” Chart 3.8: Level of difficult of speaking tasks in “Tiếng Anh 10” ………… 58 Chart 3.9: Students’ evaluation on their teacher’s adaptation …………… 60 -5- 55 57 59 Chart 3.10: Students' evaluation towards their current speaking lessons …… Chart 3.11: Teachers' perception on which parts of speaking activities in 61 “Tiếng Anh 10” need adapting to increase students’ participation Table 3.1: Table 3.6: in speaking lessons …………………………… Chart 3.12: TTT and STT of experimental group in adaptation ………… Table 1: The four –macro skills ………………………………………… 69 82 Table 2: Students' background information……………………………… STT and TTT in control and experimental group before the 38 experiment ……………………………………………………… Table 3.2: Students’ reasons for learning English ………………………… Table 3.3: Students’ learning styles in both groups ……………………… 48 50 Table 3.4: Students’ opinion about the way their teachers teach speaking … Table 3.5: TTT and STT of control group at the end of experiment ……… 60 20 51 75 Students’ participation in experimental and control group in three lessons at the end of the intervention .…………………… Table 3.7: TTT and STT in the two classes before and at the end of experiment Table 3.8: Speaking activity analysis in “Tiếng Anh 10” Figure 1: Framework for adaptation ……………………………………… -6- 87 89 93 33 PART A: INTRODUCTION RATIONALE English is seen as a means of access to scientific and technological development and as the language for international communication For young people, English is an effective tool for further study as well as better job opportunities English has therefore, been most widely taught not only at all universities and colleges, but also at almost every senior high school and it is considered as a compulsory subject at secondary school However, teaching speaking skills to students in Vietnamese classrooms is still a matter of much concern by language teachers due to current teaching materials, characteristics of learners as well as teachers’ proficiency and classroom methodology At Tĩnh Gia high school, the 10th graders have three periods of English every week with “Tiếng Anh 10”, which consists of sixteen units combining fours skills with grammatical structures and language funtions introduced in meaningful -7- contexts All of the units are designed to aim at encouraging students to learn not only grammar structures but also all the four- language skills: reading, speaking, listening, and writing The English textbooks for general education in which the exercises are primarily task-based Although the new text books have shown a great deal of improvement as compared with the old series of grammarbased, it seems that not all activities or tasks in the books, especially in speaking part are suitable to the different teaching and learning contexts of different localities within Vietnam Beside communicative tasks, some tasks are not very communicative Others are very difficult for students to interact or participate well during their learning After years teaching “Tiếng Anh 10” text book at Tĩnh Gia high school, I find out that speaking is considered the most challenging to teach and still remains neglected due to students’ low level proficiency, time constraints and low motivation Therefore, it is difficult to teach speaking successfully because of the class size, the students’ language level, and additionally, students are not acquainted with CLT Moreover, a majority of the teachers were trained under the strong influence of the Grammar-Translation method which impedes them from teaching speaking successfully even the textbook follows the communicative approach With year – experience in teaching English at high school, the author realizes that the English lessons with speaking activities adapted or designed by teachers always motivate students and get them involved in speaking effectively Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to adapt some speaking activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” to increase students’ participation As Cunningsworth [11] said, even the "best" course book requires adaptation From the reasons above, the study “Towards adapting speaking activities in ‘TIẾNG ANH 10’ to increase students’ participation in English class” is carried out with the hope to increase students’ involvement in learning speaking PREVIOUS STUDIES RELATED TO THE TOPIC -8- Because of being a very important skill to master a foreign language, speaking has received a lot of attention from a number of experienced experts as well as methodologists in the world and in Vietnam particular These research works also outline some activities to increase learners’ participation in speaking lessons that help the author a lot to this research Christine Kuramoto’s [23] action research was about improving Motivation in Oral Communication Classroom in three third-year high-school classes in Japan Because of three practical reasons: a large number of students, one researcher and limited time, the method chosen for data collected consisted self-report questionnaires for students at the beginning and at the end of the term and immediate feedback after each new activity The result showed that the students’ motivation did increase in her classroom although it was different from class to class and student to student The improvement was in attitudes, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation She suggested that Gardner’s [16] attitude/motivation test battery questionnaire was recommended as a practical and enlightening tool to measure students’ motivation Another research by Trịnh Thị Ánh Hằng [42] investigating the effects of pair work and group work activities to increase motivation for non- English major second year students was conducted at Hanoi University of Technology The problem found out was that group activities could not motivate students unless they were introduced and monitored by the teacher, then an action plan was implemented And with the new plan, the researcher could totally enhance the motivation among her learners The research conducted by Nguyễn Thị Thu Linh [30] was about some techniques to increase students’ participation in classroom activities and oral activities in particular of second-year students at Thai Nguyen University of technology She mentioned some factors effecting the students’ low participation coming from students themselves, teachers and classroom Then, she recommended one effective technique- group work and showed some ways to get students into -9- working in group to increase their involvement as well as participation in speaking lessons Nguyễn Thị Tuyết Mai [31] carried out a research on implementing taskedbased teaching to increase motivation for grade 10 students at Ngo Quyen upper secondary school An action research was planned and implemented with such data collection instruments as classroom observation, questionnaire and document analysis The results showed that in order to make the speaking lessons more motivating to students, the teacher should prepare the tasks carefully detecting vocabulary and phrases, allocating time, considering skills and techniques to be employed The research conducted by Đoàn Thị Lê Nhung [12] was about using differentiated instructions to increase learners’ participation in multi- level classes at Phuong Dong University In this thesis, she mentioned three major factors of learners’ low participation They are the activities themselves uninteresting and unsuitable instruction for speaking activities She applied differentiated instructions strategies in the action plan suggested by Tomlinson [40] which were aimed at modifying the content, process and products and learning environment on the basic of learners’ readiness, interests, etc to improve their participation The evaluation showed that the action plan was successful when applying differentiated instructions to increase students’ participation in speaking classes In summary, it can be seen from the above review that researchers focused on modifying speaking activities to increase students’ participation and motivation in speaking class Furthermore, their research subjects were mainly students at the tertiary level, not high school students However, there are not many researchers have conducted research on adaptation of "Tiếng Anh 10" yet Therefore, the author has decided to conduct the research with the aim of adapting some difficult speaking activities in “Tiếng Anh 10” to increase students’ participation in speaking lessons and help improve teaching and learning English at Tĩnh Gia high school -10- Activity Discussion B B A B A Information gap Discussion Discussion B B B B B B C B B A B B B A A Activity Problem solving B B B B B Activity Reaching a consensus Discussion Discussion B B B B B B B B B A B B B A B Information gap Discussion Talking about yourself B B A B A C A C B A B B B A A Reaching a consensus Information gap Talking about yourself A A B B B B C C B A A B A A A Information gap A Stimulation and role B A A B B A B A B play Discussion A B B A Activity Lesson 9: Activity Activity Activity Lesson10: Activity Activity Lesson 11: Activity Activity Activity Lesson 12: Activity Activity Activity Lesson 14: Activity Activity Activity A Table 3.8: Speaking activity analysis in “Tiếng Anh 10” The legend: Level of language (Vocabulary, Pronunciation & Structure) A appropriate for students’ level B difficult for students’ level easy for students’ level Practical to daily life A practical B not very practical -89- C impractical C Students’ ability to work in groups A great B small C no B too long C short Length A appropriate Instruction A clear B not very clear C unclear As can be seen from the table 3.8 the results show that most of the original activities in the analyzed lessons did not meet all the five features of good activities suggested by Nunan (1998) Firstly, in regards to the level of language, most activities (15/20 analyzed activities) are difficult for the students competence In fact, in lesson 9, it seems difficult for the students to guess the meaning of some vocabulary For example, the word ‘sparingly’ is an adverb that is rarely used and difficult to remember; or ‘herbicides’, ‘pesticides’ are pronounced similarly, so students could mistake their meaning Also in this lesson, some words (biodiversity, mysterious, etc.) are not easy for the students to pronounce In addition, the models of structure in some activities seem to be difficult and unfamiliar to students Activity 2, lesson (A: Beaches are filled with plastic bags, pieces of glass and cigarettes butts This makes the sea polluted and endangered sea plants and animals B: We should clean beaches and tell other people not to litter them) could be an illustration Meanwhile only 5/20 activities in six analyzed lessons are appropriate for students’ competence For example, activity lesson 12, with the topic of music, students are requested to ask their partners using suggested questions in task 1, which are easy for them to carry out (A: What kind of music you like? B: I like classical music A: Why you like it? B: Because it makes me feel at easy) Secondly, as for their practicality to the daily life, 12/ 50 activities are not practical to the students at Tĩnh Gia high school This makes it difficult and uninterested for students to practice in speaking activities For example, in activity 3, lesson 11, students are requested to tell about their class’ excursion to Huong -90- Pagoda, but most of the students have never been to the picnic Therefore, it is difficult for them to complete the task Thirdly, for the criteria, the students’ ability to work in pairs and groups, most of the activities from lesson to lesson 14 not create many chances for pairs and groups work Fourteen of the analyzed activities give students few opportunities and even four activities not give students any chance to work in pairs and in groups They really lack communicate purpose and resemble reading activities rather than speaking ones Those activities only concentrate on structure, extensive use of drills and controlled practice For instance, activity 3, lesson is only an exercise when each student ranks the given information in order of importance and gives reason(s) without any interaction with others Contrary to this, only two of the analyzed activities create great opportunity for students to work in pairs and groups and are really communicative activities As in activity 2, lesson 12, students are requested to work in groups and ask their partner questions to get information to complete the table, with an example: kind of music A: What kind of music you like? – B: I like classical music – A: Why you like it? – B: Because it is relaxing Fourthly, in term of the length of the activities, the results show that of 20 activities can possibly be covered in the time allocated to activities and lessons 12 of the analyzed activities, however, are rather long to complete within the time allowed Moreover, in a speaking lesson with difficult topic such as lesson 10, four activities are too many for students to complete in a period of 45 minutes Lastly, concerning the instructions of the activities in six analyzed lessons, more than a half of the instructions of the activities (13) from lesson to lesson 14 are clear and not difficult for students to understand This is clearly shown in activities 1, 2, in lesson 5, activities 2, in lesson etc However, the instructions of the other activities are not very clear, which makes it difficult for students to understand what they will have to in these activities For example, in activity 1, lesson 11, the instruction is long and quite obscure (Last week Nga’s class went on an excursion to Huong Pagoda Unfortunately, the excursion turned out to be a -91- disaster Most of the things they did went wrong Combine the things in column A with the corresponding consequences in column B and read out the sentences) In addition, it is not difficult to recognize that the speaking activities in English are mainly classified into some types: reaching a consensus, discussion, information gap, talking about yourself, stimulation and role- play The repetition of these types makes students bored in speaking class and of course, their participation in speaking lessons is low Shortly, despite some good points, most of the activities in the analyzed lessons not really meet criteria of a good activity/ task suggested by Nunan (1998) The language used in most of the analyzed activities is beyond students’ competence because they not provide the students with enough necessary vocabulary, ideas, structures to practice speaking Some activities not create many good chances for students to work in pairs and groups Some activities are still too long to complete The instructions in some other activities are unclear Therefore, the unsuitability of the original activities might affect the students’ motivation and cause the obstacles for the teachers to engage students in speaking activities as well as to motivate them in speaking lessons, especially for inexperienced teachers PART C: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION This chapter briefly presents the summary of the study as well as pedagogical implications for teachers and policy authority The author also presents some limitations during her implementation of the research and recommendations for further study Implications 1.1 For Teachers Firstly, teachers should have small seminars or group reunions to co-operate with their colleagues on finding out the difficult or unsuitable speaking activities that need adapting Teachers should exchange knowledge and methodology on how -92- to adapt the speaking activities with other members in the group By doing so, teachers will decrease difficulties in teaching as well as develop their profession Secondly, EFL teachers necessarily have to save time studying and updating the methodology knowledge by reading methodology books as well as magazines and journals from the Internet, participating in workshops and so on Third, although the time is limited, teachers need to manage time properly to try to adapt speaking tasks more frequently By doing so, teachers can help students feel easier or motivated in taking part in speaking lessons On the other hand, teachers will become more creative in teaching process Fourth, it is essential that teachers know students' learning preferences, language competence and needs to adapt the tasks so that they are appropriate with their students' interests and abilities Moreover, teachers should utilize or exploit various communicative activities such as role-play, pair work, group work and communication games in order to attract students' full interaction and enthusiastic participation as Lamie [24:4] said: “However good the textbook is, it will be never perfect for every teacher’s teaching situation In some respects, it will always need adapting, modifying or supplementing The only limit for this is the teacher’s time and imagination With a little of both most objectives can be fulfilled.” Fifth, teachers should regulate the teaching time properly Three speaking stages are all important However, pre-speaking stage is normally used for eliciting or leading in the lessons Therefore, teachers should not spend too much time on this stage With good time management, teachers can have enough time to spend for the other stages Hence, students have more chances to effectively perform at whilespeaking stage and develop productive skills at the post-speaking stage This can avoid leaving tasks at post-speaking stage for students to at home due to shortage of teaching time Sixth, in terms of the CLT, teacher's role should be various Teachers may serve as a facilitator, a manager/organizer, an advisor, a monitor, a cocommunicator, a counselor or a reliable informant and so on Therefore, teachers -93- can co-communicate with students and inform them of reliable information and facilitate their problems so as to help students feel easy and confident when taking part in speaking lessons Seventh, in the process of adapting, teachers should use a variety of teaching aids with full of attractions to appeal to students towards the lesson Lastly, teachers' adapted activities need clear instructions, simplicity, clear demonstration and integration of humorous or motivate content like games, songs, acting and so on Hence, teachers' in-class job will not be time-consuming but smooth and create more opportunities for students to interact 1.2 For Textbook Designers Speaking materials play an integral part in stimulating students’ participation and making the lessons more effective Therefore, it is very significant for the textbook designers to provide various speaking topics and task which are familiar with students’ daily life as well as suitable students’ level of proficiency 1.3 For Educational Administrators Foremost, it is necessary that educational authorities should collaborate with national or international institutes in holding workshops on teaching renewals and especially on adapting materials and syllabus to appeal to teachers' participation This is one of the most effective ways that teachers can approach methodologists or experts and scholars to renew their knowledge of methods On the other hand, teachers will have chances to share experiences with colleagues, learn from the others and take in adapting techniques practically The second recommendation is that local administrators from schools have to subscribe to magazines, materials and pictures weekly or monthly in order to support teachers with teaching materials This will overcome the lack of materials and teachers will be encouraged to adapt activities frequently The third important thing is that Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam need reduce teachers' teaching periods and encourage them to come and -94- read magazines, materials and references at school libraries If a teacher has time to prepare his or her lesson, the teaching will be highly effective The fourth suggestion is that school administrators have to support facilities and finance for teachers to adapt More precisely, administrators should allow teachers comfortably use photocopier, printer, materials and so on to encourage teachers' adapting in teaching process As to adapting for teaching festival, teachers need supporting finance so that teachers can reduce difficulties in the adapting process Furthermore, school administrators should invest more facilities to help teachers use frequently If facilities are limited, teachers will delay their adaptations and become uncreative teachers or deskills teachers The fifth proposal is "considering teachers' adapting activities as innovative teaching experiences" The policy makers should encourage teachers to adapt difficult or ineffective tasks in the textbooks to make teachers' teaching more effective and compatible with students' tastes Teachers' adaptation considered as innovative teaching experiences should be reported at the end of year reunions and published This, to some extent, will encourage teachers to improve their profession and learn from other colleagues to teach foreign language more effectively The final pedagogical implication is that Vietnamese MOET necessarily renew class model That is, each class should be reduced to 25 students instead of from 45 to 55 students at present Practically, classrooms in Vietnamese setting normally consist of a big amount of students with mixed-abilities Therefore, it is very difficult for teachers to control and teach foreign languages in the light of the CLT This will lead to bad quality in teaching and learning all subjects in general and foreign languages in particular With a large amount of students as mentioned above, one student of course cannot have one minute to speak English in a lesson of 45 minutes Conclusion To bring out the most effective outcomes for the teaching and learning process of speaking skill for grade 10 at Tĩnh Gia high school the study was carried out It -95- aimed at investigating the reasons why teachers at Tĩnh Gia high school should adapt speaking activities in the “Tiếng Anh 10” from both teachers and students viewpoints Then pointed out what speaking activities should be adapted to increase students’ involvement in speaking classes After that it found the answer to the question “Do the adapted activities in the textbook ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ increase students’ participation at Tĩnh Gia high school?” The study was carried out at two classes 10A1 and 10A2 at Tĩnh Gia high school The control group and the experimental group were chosen to carry out the research of adapting speaking activities in “Tiếng Anh 10’ to improve students’ participation in speaking class With the use of instruments such as: questionnaires, classroom observation sheets, interviews for both students and teachers at Tĩnh Gia high school and textbook analysis, the researcher has found out the answers to the three research questions For the first question “Why should teachers at Tĩnh Gia adapt speaking activities in ‘Tiếng Anh 10’?” the researcher find out three main reasons The first reason is the requirements of some textbook activities are too challenging compared to low proficiency levels of students at this rural school Second, some activities in the textbook lack of communicativeness and the language used in some model dialogues are not authentic The last cause is that activities in the book are not diversified enough These reasons above greatly lead to students’ low participation in speaking class This situation requires teachers at Tĩnh Gia high school to find out the solutions to improve it One of solutions is adapting inappropriate activities In the second question by pointing out exactly the activities need to be adapted through teachers’ interview and textbook analysis It can help the researcher found out suitable adaptation for each situation when apply in every class As for the last research question “To what extent the adapted activities increase students’ participation at Tĩnh Gia high school?” the results of the experiment obtained through observations and interviews with ten students after each trial lesson confirm the efficiency of the adapting technique in encouraging -96- more students to take part in class activities To be more concrete, by applying games, songs in various communicative speaking activities with proper procedures in the class with teachers’ friendliness and supportiveness, the teacher could activate the students in speaking class to interact more with other students and teacher The teacher talking time reduced and the students talking time increased Limitations of the study The study bears some limitations: First, the use of intact groups rather than randomly selected students makes it hard for the researcher to control the extraneous variable that may threaten the reliability and internal validity of the research The levels of students’ participation gained after the experiment may be partly affected by other factors like the atmosphere of the class, teachers’ attitude and teaching techniques, gender or ability and level of interest in learning English However, in school context the researcher cannot help employ intact groups Moreover, to some extent the intactness is of some benefit as it enables the researcher to conduct her experiment under the conditions which very similar to her teaching context Hence, the quasiexperimental design remains valid with the number of sample of 90 students Second, the research has not cover all forms of adaptation Modification, omission and reduction are some ones applied in this study Suggested further study With the mentioned limitations, further study may include the other forms of adaptation as adding, replacing or rewriting to vary the extra speaking activities And a similar experimental study might be conducted with bigger scope of subjects at other school to get a comprehensive evaluation of the current speaking activities in ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ and suggest various adaptations Another suggestion rises for adaptation of activities in other skills such as reading, writing especially in listening skill in ‘Tiếng Anh 10’ In sum, the present research has established the validity of the adaptation of speaking activities as an effective teaching technique to motivate the tenth-grade -97- students at Tĩnh Gia high school to participate in speaking activities in their English classes The results of the study suggest the necessity of evaluating and adapting speaking activities to make them more interesting and suitable to different students It also suggests the possibility that the adaptation of speaking activities may also yield success in motivating other grade levels of students in high school The researcher’s final observation is that the effectiveness of the application of adapted activities to improve students’ participation in English speaking class may only be achieved fully as the teachers brings to the class a 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To what extent the adapted speaking activities in ? ?Tiếng Anh 10? ?? increase students? ?? participation in speaking classes. .. of Speaking 61 62 Activities in ? ?Tiếng Anh 10? ?? Need Adapting to Increase 68 3.3.5 Students? ?? Participation in Speaking Lessons ………… Teachers’ Reasons for Adapting Speaking Tasks of ? ?Tiếng Anh 10? ??... adapting speaking activities in ‘TIẾNG ANH 10? ?? to increase students? ?? participation in English class” is carried out with the hope to increase students? ?? involvement in learning speaking PREVIOUS STUDIES