Solutions for improving speaking skills in grade 10

Obviously, this low level of English may result in some teachers being unable to effectively implement speaking activities in the classroom.. The aims of this research are to investigate

THE TABLE OF CONTENT

1 INTRODUCTION……… 1

1.1 Rationale for the study……… 1

1.2 Research aims and subjects……… 3

1.3 Methodology………

… 3 2 PROCEDURE……… 5

2.1 Literature review……… 5

2.2 Components of speaking……… 6

2.3 Factors affecting Second Language Learners’ skills………… 7

2.4 Reality of learning speaking skills………

2.5 Solutions to improve speaking lessons ………

9 11 2.6 Educational effects of the study……… 14

3 CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS……… 16

3.1 Conclusions ………

1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study

Within Asia there is growing recognition of the importance of learning English because, for many, it is viewed as a prerequisite for accessing quality education and job opportunities (Nguyen & Hudson, 2010) In Vietnam, as in many Asian countries, English is now taught as a compulsory school subject from an early age (it is taught from grade 3 onwards) (Misnistry of Eduaction and Training (MOET), 2008), and many changes have been initiated in the teaching of the subject in the last few year

In the early 1990’s Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) was first introduced and replaced the old methods of mainly grammar translation and a focus

on the formal aspects of language There are a number of CLT’s definitions, for example, according to Nunan, CLT can be characterized by a series of features, and the most important of which is “an emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language” (1991: 279) In CLT speaking is regarded as central to the learning process due to its role in interaction, whether in terms of the interaction hypothesis (Long, 1996), or in terms of socio-cultural theory (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006) Therefore, the teaching and learning of speaking is of vital importance for the success or lack of success in teaching English using CLT in Vietnam

The CLT approach to teaching and learning English has continued to be encouraged in Vietnam This can be seen by the continued government support in policy implementation and the Vietnamese teachers’ favorable view of this approach (Le, 1999) In 2006, a new national curriculum was introduced, it specifically stated that communicative skills should be main goal of teaching English in secondary schools, and that the teaching of formal knowledge of the language should support the teaching of these skills, rather than be goals themselves (MOET, 2006) However, these changes have not necessarily resulted in more effective education for Vietnamese student learning English After studying the subject for a number of years, many learners still cannot use the language effectively Indeed, it is estimated that less than twenty percent of university students who have majored in English have the necessary language skills to gain employment as interpreters, translators, tour guides or teachers of English (Pham, 2004)

It is agreed that the following reasons have resulted in the lack of success in implementing CLT in Vietnam Firstly, despite changes made to the curriculum and demand for a more communicative approach to teaching, the national examination system remains largely unchanged Examinations usually test linguistic rather than communicative competence, and frequently lack a listening or speaking component Obviously, there is a negative effect on classes from the exams because teachers may not pay their attention to the teaching of listening and speaking in their classes, and focus instead on the aspects which are present in the exams (Ellis, 1996) Also, many students use strategies that are just enough to pass the exams, that is, they put in a minimum effort to learn the English language (Trang & Baldauf, 2007) Another constraint on the implementation of CLT in Vietnam is the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, where English is not widely spoken and learners have little immediate need to use English and a few opportunities to practice the language outside the classroom This lack of exposure to English can lead to the learner’s lack

of motivation to learn (Le, 1999), and what motivation they do have is generally dependent on teachers’ initiative and learners’ will to succeed in learning language (Ellis, 1996) In addition, large class sizes can create difficulties for the implementation of communicative activities In Vietnam secondary schools the average class size between 42 and 52 students (Le, 1999), this student number contributes to the difficulties in creating an ideal class atmosphere This is a big challenge for teachers to carry out many supplementary speaking activities with such

a large class, especially when they are also required to cover all the items on the curriculum in limited time Moreover, the language level of many Vietnamese secondary school English teachers is quite low, as a recent test administered by the Mininstry of Education and Training shows When tested to see if they reached the required B2 level of English, only about twenty percent of the teachers who volunteered for the test passed the exam (Park, 2011) Obviously, this low level of English may result in some teachers being unable to effectively implement speaking activities in the classroom Finally, at an individual level, teachers in Vietnam have had varying degrees of success in implementing CLT into their classrooms (Lewis & McCook, 2002) While many teachers are enthusiastic about its use, others are

doubtful about how it can be realized in practice in their context, and in fact there were only surface changes seen in their previous practices (Pham, 2007)

This study into the teaching and learning of speaking skills has been proposed for a number of reasons As a high school English teacher in Vietnam, I am aware of the problems in the teaching of English speaking skills in the classroom described above and would like to investigate more how speaking skills are currently being taught and consider how any problems can be overcome It is hoped that by studying what is happening in the classroom, the researcher can get insight into any constraints

on the teaching of speaking skills and solutions can be suggested for these challenges In other words, it is believed that the study will be useful for the English teachers working at the school in question, and also may prove to be of use for other teachers working in high schools in the province

1.2 Research Aims and Subjects

The research has been carrried out in 2 classes of grade 10: 10A and 10K at Ha Trung High School

The aims of this research are to investigate how English speaking skills are taught in here and the difficulties the students face during their speaking tasks After performing some observations and experiments, it is hoped that some new ideas will

be suggested and put to use Therefore, its final purpose is to provide local teachers with some recommendations helping them tackle the challenges on the teaching speaking skills more effectively

1.3 Methodology

This research will take the form of a case study This method is using when the study focuses on a single unit, or a bounded system, where there are clear, finite limits to the phenomenon (Merriam, 1998) In this case, the bounded system is made

up of the two English classes, 10A and 10K, at Ha Trung High School iigh Thanh Hoa province, and how speaking skills are taught and learnt in this context

According to Stake (2005), case studies can be classified as being intrinsic (seeking understanding of a specific case which is important in its own right), instrumental (examining a specific case to gain insight into a wider issue) or collective (where multiple cases are studied in order to provide insight into an issue) This case is an example of an intrinsic case study as the goal is to study this

particular context in-depth and focus on its particular characteristics in order to suggest improvements for the same context

One of the drawbacks of case studies is that they have limited generalizability

as the results obtained from one source are not necessarily statistically generalizable

to the whole population of learners of which the case is a member (Dörnyei, 2007) However, the aim of this research is to gain insight into the specific case, not to make broad generalizations Therefore, a case study is appropriate in these circumstances

In case studies, many researchers typically use qualitative data collection techniques (Lodico et al., 2010), but as using a case study approach is essentially a description of what is to be studied, rather than a methodological choice (Stake, 2005), any suitable data collection methods can be used In this case, both qualitative and quantitative data will be collected, using a questionnaire, interviews and classroom observation Besides, classroom observations were used in order to gather data to help the researcher get to know how students are learning speaking skills at the current context and what difficulties students have regarding their speaking skills Thanks to this way, the researcher has a chance to watch events as they occur Observations, therefore, can be considered the best data collection technique in searching for information about how speaking skills are actually taught at the school

To gain the best insight into the way that students in this context are learning the speaking skills, a questionnaire was also used, that is, the difficulties the students

at the school experience in the learning of speaking skills This data, reflecting the students’ perceptions of the challenges they face, was used along with the data collected from observations of actual events in order to identify the main difficulties the students have in improving their speaking skills

A questionnaire was chosen as a method of data collection, as this data collection tool can reach a large number of respondents without suffering influence from researcher’s presence

The aim of the questionnaire is to discover the students’ perceptions of the speaking activities they perform in class and also any difficulties they encounter while speaking (see appendix )

It is noted that the questionnaire has several limitations For instance, it limits the choice of respondents, preventing them from providing their own ideas (Bryman,

2008; Denscombe, 2010) Additionally, no prompting or additional questions can be performed to gather further data (Bryman, 2008) A final limitation is the matter of low response rates and missing data (Bryman, 2008)

2 PROCEDURE

2.1 Literature review

This research project involves the teaching and learning of speaking skills, and before beginning the research, a review of the literature regarding this topic will be carried out in this part In order to do this, firstly, the theoretical basis for teaching speaking skills will be explored, followed by an analysis of what it means to be an effective speaker in the second language learning In the following section, some factors which influence how successful a learner is at learning speaking skills will be examined

Historically speaking, within language teaching methodologies the teaching of speaking skills has often been relegated to a minor skill (Nation, 2011) In the grammar-translation approach, speaking was not given any attention to at all, and later approaches, for example, the ‘comprehension approach’ delayed the teaching of speaking until learners had already built up substantial knowledge of the language system through listening input (Winitz, 1981) While speaking was highlighted in the audio-lingual approach and through Communicative Language Teaching, oral interaction has been dominant, many contemporary language exams and courses around the world continue to teach and assess language through the medium of written skills (Bygate, 2009) In addition, despite communicative advances in language teaching, speaking is often viewed as a skill that can show evidence of what has been learnt, rather than as a mechanism for learning to take place (Kumaravadivelu, 2006) However, in recent years research has indicated that language learning can take place through production of speech, and this can aid other aspects of language learning, rather than solely benefit the acquisition of oral interaction skills

The interaction approach states that language learning takes place through exposure to language (input), production of language (output) and the feedback that occurs as a result of interaction (Gass & Selinker, 2008) Therefore, interaction is said to connect “input, internal learner capacities, particularly selective attention, and

output in productive ways” (Long, 1996: 452), and its importance “is not simply that

it creates learning opportunities, it is that it constitutes learning itself” (Allwright, 1984: 9)

As can be seen, the interaction approach and hypothesis regard interaction and speaking with others as a key aspect of second language acquisition and an important component of language courses

In terms of the output hypothesis, Kumaravadivelu (2006) indicated that output refers to the utterances which learners produce orally or in the written form, and is therefore an important part of any discussion of teaching speaking As mentioned above, output was for many years considered a way of showing what learning has taken place rather than a mechanism for creating knowledge Indeed, according to Krashen (1982) speaking is a result of acquisition rather than its cause Recent research evidence, however, has shown that output and the production of speech have a larger role in language acquisition, and input alone is not enough to account for acquisition Swain (1985) introduced the concept of comprehensible output, that is, the delivery of a message which is “not only conveyed, but that is conveyed precisely, coherently, and appropriately” (1985: 248-9) By this concept, she meant that learners should be pushed or stretched in their production as a necessary part of making themselves understood She asserted that language production moves learners from processing language at the level of word meaning which can often be done through guesswork or focusing on key words, to the processing of language at the level of grammatical structures which requires a higher level of cognitive activity

In short, output in the form of production of speech in English language classes can help the learners develop not only their speaking skills, but also their grammatical and syntactic knowledge of the language

2.2 The Components of Speaking

According to Hedge (2000), in order to help students develop their ability to speak English, we firstly need a descriptive framework for looking at spoken discourse to categorise the demands that different situations make of the participants

In other words, we need to know what is involved in speaking We can describe a person’s command of a language in terms of ‘communicative competence’, that is,

“that aspect of our competence that enables us to convey and interpret messages and

to negotiate meanings interpersonally within specific contexts” (Brown, 1994: 227) Canale and Swain (1980) developed an orientational framework for defining communicative competence which consists of four elements: grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence This framework has been developed and expanded by various other researchers For example, according to Littlewood (2011), there should be five dimensions to communicative competence as sociocultural competence should be added Meanwhile, Thornbury (2005) adds genre knowledge, and separates the linguistic competence component further into competence in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation

2.3 Factors Affecting Second Language Learners’ Speaking

A number of factors can affect how successful a learner is at acquiring oral communicative competence in a second language, for example age, aptitude and motivation In this study, however, the most pertinent factors that may affect how well the learners acquire speaking skills are cultural and affective factors and classroom practices

Regarding to cultural factors, it is clear that Asian students in general and Vietnamese students in particular are accustomed to being passive and non-verbal learners due to the fact that they come from the countries where ‘harmony and conformity are strongly stressed’ (Stapleton, 2001: 509), reticence and humility are highly valued in these cultures (Park, 2000) while argumentation, persuasion are devalued (Brenner & Parks, 2001) This can bring out difficulties in implementing speaking activities such as pair and group work as many learners may be afraid of losing face in front of their classmates and therefore are not confident in participating

in groups Moreover, Vietnamese learners have lower interest in pursuing complexity, dislike ambiguity and uncertainty (Rao, 2001; D’Andrade , 2008) Many of the speaking activities used in CLT are of an unstructured nature where there is no one right or wrong answer, as their aim is to assist students to practise speaking This ambiguity and flexibility of tasks may not be suitable for these learners, as they may not have the strategies and skills to deal with them effectively

Another cultural factor which can affect the acquisition of speaking skills is the teacher – student relationship Confucian influences lead Vietnamese students to see their teachers are superiors whose job is to impart their knowledge and for the learners to passively receive it (Tuong, 2002; Accacia, 1993) As a result, learners hardly ever express their own opinions in the classroom and are not confident in communicating or interacting with teachers, leading to difficulties in practising the oral skill (Littlewood & Liu, 1997)

In terms of affective factors, anxiety is considered as the core problem to Vietnamese learners Students always face with the fear of making mistakes, being laughed at and the feeling of failing the class ( Deweale, 2012) Thus, a crucial factor

in reducing language anxiety in the EFL classroom is the teacher, who is often the only source of contact that the learners have when studying a foreign language If the teacher is able to show the learners that they are in a safe learning environment where they need not fear speaking up, the learners are thought to be less likely to show anxiety in speaking (Arnold & Foncesca, 2007)

Another significant factor that influences the success of learners acquiring speaking skills is the way in which they are practised in the classroom According to Harmer (2007), teachers can do many tasks in order to make learners more confident

in speaking, for example, giving clear instructions, allowing sufficient preparation time, repeating the tasks, and providing thoughtful feedback

It can be seen so far from the interaction and output hypotheses that speaking can be used both as a means to practise what has been learnt and as a mechanism through which language can be acquired However, speaking is a complicated construct, which requires a number of different types of knowledge and each of these needs to be thoroughly addressed in the classroom In addition, learners can face a number of obstacles to improving their speaking skills, from cultural issues such as a fear of losing face, to affective factors such as language anxiety It has been seen that obstructions to learning can also emerge from the teacher’s side, either through poor classroom practices or through lack of knowledge of how to teach and practise speaking skills using a CLT approach However, as the literature review demonstrates, there is a lack of empirical studies examining how speaking skill is currently taught in the context This gap motivated the author to conduct this research

2.4 Reality of learning speaking skills

In this section, the findings from the class room observations and the questionnaires will be presented This is the very current situation of learning and teaching English speaking skills at Ha trung High School, the studied context

2.4.1 Classroom observation findings

Totally, 4 classes were observed with 5 speaking activities including

Question/answer, role play, dialogue, discusion, presentation In most activities, the

teacher gave instructions about the task for all the activities, helpful phrases or difficult and new words were written on the board The teacher monitored the activities, and feedback was always given to the students

A number of problems were noted during the activities including using the first language, a lack of students’ motivation and the fact that the activities were either not demanding enough for the students as in the case of practicing dialogue or seemed above their levels of expertise as in the discussion and the presentation classes

2.4.2 Questionnaire Findings

From the two classes 10A and 10K with the total student number of the 2 serveyed classes is 84, 46 female students and 38 male students

In this part, activities are listed and respondents are asked to choose answers based

on the Likert scale, where 1 is very easy, 2 is easy, 3 is neither easy nor difficult (neutral), 4 is difficult, and 5 is very difficult

Graph 1: Students’ difficulty of speaking activities

The graph1 demonstrates how much difficulty the surveyed students have to confront with when they experience learning speaking skills

As can be seen from the graph, short question/answer and role play are the two easiest speaking activities for the learners 45% of the students (37) stated that they have no difficulty performing the short question/answer task, and 38 students rated role play to be 1 or 2 on the difficulty scale While, 19% of the total students (16) judged these learning activities to be 3 (neutral level) 34% and and 37% of the surveyed answered that they couldn’t do these activities, respectively