The effects of using games on efl students speaking performances in the classroom (tt)

ABSTRACT This research is conducted to investigate the effects of using games on EFL students‟ speaking performances and attitudes towards using games on the speaking classes This study investigated the effects of using games on EFL students‟ speaking performances The participants were 74 non-English major students at Tra Vinh University The data were analyzed using basic and inferential statistical methods including mean scores, standard deviations, paired sample t-test and t- sample test The data of this study were qualitative and quantitative The qualitative data were obtained by interviewing the students and field notes after the intervention by using games The quantitative data were in the form of questionnaire Meanwhile, the quantitative data were collected by assessing the students‟ speaking performances through the pre-test and post-test Therefore, the quantitative data were in the form of students‟ speaking scores in the pre-test and post-test The findings revealed that students had significantly improved in speaking skills Moreover, they tended to have more positive attitudes towards learning English through games Regarding the results, it can be recommended that using games in teaching English is beneficial to EFL students‟ and engage students in learning English iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWELEDGEMENT ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURE vii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE OF THE STUDY 1.2 RESEARCH PROBLEMS 1.3 RESEARCH AIMS 1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.6 THE STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 THEORETICAL REVIEW 2.1.1 Speaking 2.1.1.1 Definition of Speaking 2.1.1.2 Teaching Speaking 2.1.1.3 Speaking Teaching Techniques 2.1.1.4 Speaking Accuracy and Speaking Fluency 2.1.1.5 Types of Classroom Speaking Performance 2.1.2 Application of games in the EFL classroom 2.1.2.1 Definition of Games 2.1.2.2 Type of Games 10 2.1.2.3 The Advantages of Games 11 2.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 12 2.3 REVIEW OF RELATED STUDIES 13 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 17 3.1 RESEARCH CONTEXT 17 3.1.1 Research context 17 3.1.2 Participants 17 3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN 18 3.3 PROCEDURE OF THE STUDY 20 iv 3.3.1 Pre- training phase 20 3.3.2 While- training phase 23 3.3.3 Post- training phase 23 3.4 RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS 24 3.4.1 Interview 24 3.4.3 Test (pre-test and post- test) 25 3.4.4 Field notes 26 3.5 DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS 26 3.5.1 Procedures of collecting data from the semi- structured interview 26 3.5.2 Procedures of collecting data from the questionnaire 27 3.5.3 Pre- and Post- test data collection 27 3.5.4 Field notes 28 3.6 VALIDITY 28 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSISIONS 29 4.1 RESULTS FROM PRE AND POST- TEST 29 4.1.1 Students‟ proficiency level 29 4.1.2 Pre- and post- test of Control group 30 4.1.3 Pre- and post- test of Experimental group 31 4.2 RESULTS FROM QUESTIONNAIRE 35 4.3 RESULTS FROM INTERVIEW 39 4.4 RESULTS FROM FIELD NOTES 43 4.5 DISCUSSION 44 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATION 46 5.1 CONCLUSIONS 46 5.2 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY 47 5.3 RECOMMENDATION FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 47 REFERENCES 49 APPENCIES APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE APPENDIX LESSON PLANS APPENDIX INTERVIEW QUESTIONS v LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 The three stages of presentation, practice, and production of Control group and Experimental group 23 Table 3.2 Criteria of assessment of speaking test 24 Table 3.3 The Preliminary English Speaking test examination of speaking 24 Table 3.4 Research instrument 25 Table 4.1 Summary of pre- test results of the Experimental (EG) and the Control groups (CG) 30 Table 4.2 Indepentdent samples t-test of the Experimental and the Control group in the speaking performance test prior to experimentation………………… ………31 Table 4.3 Summary of pre- and post- test results of Control group 32 Table 4.4 Paired samples t-test of Control groups in the speaking performance test .32 Table 4.5 Summary of pre- and post test results of Experimental group……… ……32 Table 4.6 Paired samples t-test of Experimental group in the speaking performance test .33 Table 4.7 Summary of post- test results 33 Table 4.8 Independent t- test of Control and Experimental group in the speaking performance test 34 Table 4.9 Effects of using games on students‟ speaking performances toward lesson plan content .36 Table 4.10 Students‟ attitudes towards task design 37 Table 4.11 Students‟ attitudes towards effects of instruction .38 Table 4.12 Summary of situation before and after intervention 45 vi LIST OF FIGURE Figure 2.1 Conceptual Framework of using games in the classroom 14 vii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION This chapter provides an overview of the current study with rationale and research questions Significance and the structure of the study are mentioned in this section as well 1.1 RATIONALE OF THE STUDY Teaching and learning English has been becoming extremely popular in Vietnam today Particularly, it is included in the curriculum of almost every school and university Unfortunately, the interest of students who are not majored in this subject is not the same as how well they understand it‟s vital Students seem reluctant to learn English as a compulsory discipline in their colleges Students just want to pass the final examination with high score, without considering the speaking ability There still exist many difficulties in learning English in general and at Tra Vinh University in particular These are some problems in teaching and learning speaking in classes However, learning how to improve speaking performance of EFL students is a problem for many learners of English, especially for non- English majors at Tra Vinh University Tuan and Mai (2015) conducted a study dealing with factors affecting students speaking performance at Le Thanh Hien High School in Vietnam Their results revealed that the students speak very little They cannot think of anything to say and they use mother tongue instead of English when they discuss in groups or pairs: low participation, lack of motivation to express themselves and they translate Vietnamese before they speak The students‟ difficulties occur when they speak English because of their limitations in mastering the component of speaking They rarely practice speaking inside and outside the classroom The researcher has found similar case with Tuan and Mai‟s (2015) study; the researcher found that it was hard for the English teacher to make an active speaking class The students did not have courage to speak English in class for many reasons such as fear of mistakes, lack of vocabulary and confidence Meanwhile students of non- English majors make contribution to speaking learning problems One of the main problems is the students‟ lack of awareness in learning speaking They not realize the needs of English speaking in the real life They just learn English as their obligation since English becomes the final examination Some students understand English grammar very well, and even score high marks in examinations, but their communication skills are very poor and they are often too shy to even attempt to strike up a conversation English speaking ability is one of the most important skills to be developed and enhanced in language learners, particularly in an academic setting (Morozova, 2013) Considering the role of speaking as one of the English language skills that nonEnglish majors have to learn, the researcher believes that an effort should be done to help students improve speaking performance Using games is one of the ways to enhance student speaking performance Game can be a solution as game is used for giving intense and passionate involvement in communication to the students so that they can feel enjoyment and pleasure in learning (Mahmoud & Tanni, 2014) Game can be defined as an activity or a sport with rules in which people or teams compete again each other card game, board games, a game of skill, ball game, such as football tennis” (Hornby, 1995) For Uberman (1998), games can maintain students‟ motivation in vocabulary learning because they are funny and interesting According to Hadfield (2004), game is an activity with rules, a goal and an element of fun Based on the Hadfield‟s opinion, it can be concluded that games are instruments that really can help students improve their speaking abilities Games have some specialties Students can learn in a fun way by using games Teachers can use a wide variety of games Games will stimulate and motivate them to practice their English understanding through speaking From those reasons, it is clear that games can be used to improve the students‟ speaking performance Hopefully this study can help the teachers in teaching speaking to the students, especially those who are in class non- English majors Games could motivate the students to speak and make them more confident in their speaking performances This implies that the English teacher should use media especially games to help the students to perform their speaking performances 1.2 RESEARCH PROBLEMS Speaking skill is the most important skill among listening, reading and writing People have good speaking skills that help them to knowledge or people ability valuated through communication (Ur, 1996) Davies and Pearse (1998) stated that the major goal of all English language teaching should be to give learners the ability to use English effectively, accurately in communication However, some of language learners studying English for many years cannot communicate fluently and accurately because they lack necessary knowledge in general Among for language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), speaking is paid special attention However, the speaking lessons are usually not really successful as expected because students have a lot of difficulties in learning speaking skill Although students can the grammar exercises well, can master quite many new words and structures, they still can not apply them in learning speaking skill Therefore, for the reasons mentioned above, the researcher conducted a research on the effects of using games on students‟ speaking performances in the classroom to help students overcome problems in learning speaking 1.3 RESEARCH AIMS This research is carried out to find out non- English majors students‟ learning English speaking skill at Tra Vinh University from students and teachers‟s point of views Then, some solutions will be generated from the teachers to overcome the problems and provide some suggestions, implications for the improvement of speaking teaching by using games 1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS Are there any effects of using games on students‟ speaking performances? What are the students‟ attitudes towards using games in the speaking classes? 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY This study will be conducted for several expected outcomes For the theoretical, the study supplies the English language teachers with the understanding of speaking skill and games in terms of types, advantages when employing them In order to enhance students to speak in the classroom, teachers should choose an appropriate strategy in their teaching In this research, the importance of using games as a strategy in the classroom that helps students to overcome their difficulties in speaking English Particularly, for the practical significance, the research provides the language teachers and learners with a variety of games used in all stages in speaking classes based on Objectives PET book (Louise, Barbara & Thomas, 2010) 1.6 THE STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY This study consists of five chapters, in which chapter one presents the rationale, research questions and hypotheses It also comprises significance and the structure of the study Chapter two reviews are theoretical background necessary for conducting the research There are two parts in this chapter; the first part states the definition of terminologies used in the study and the second one present some conceptual framework of the study Chapter three presents the whole picture of research methodology The researcher explains the reason for choosing Classroom Action Research (Kemmis and Mc Taggart, 1988) as well as discusses the important stages to this study Chapter four indicates the findings and discussion and then chapter five presents the conclusion, implication of the study and suggestions for further study CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 THEORETICAL REVIEW This chapter presents the theoretical background of the current study, which comprises two main parts: the first part examines operational definitions of key terms used in the study and the second part provides the summaries of the studies which are relevant to the effects of using game on student‟s speaking performance 2.1.1 Speaking 2.1.1.1 Definition of Speaking Speaking is an essential tool for communicating, thinking and learning Through speaking, students learn concepts, develop vocabulary and perceive the structure of the English language which is the essential components of learning Additionally, speaking is a vehicle to link individuals to society When students talk about their ideas, they clarify their thinking They can figure out what they believe and where they stand on issues According to Maybin et al (1992) says that communication is an exchange between people, knowledge, information, ideas, options, feeling so there must be concept, ideas, in the fellow speaker of what they are going to say The speakers have a basic competence in communication their ideas In addition, according to Hybel (2001), speaking is any process in which people share information, ideas and feeling; it involves all of body language mannerism and style-anything that adds meaning to a massage From the definition above, speaking is a form to say or talk something with expressing on of ideas, opinions, views and description to others for getting response, or a way of conveying message in order to make understanding of wishes to others and to contribute to others To speaking activities, both the speaker and the listener or only speaker are involved 2.1.1.2 Teaching Speaking According to Harmer (2007), there are three main reasons for getting students to speak in the classroom Firstly, speaking activities provide rehearsal opportunities to practice real-life speaking in the safety of the classroom Secondly, speaking tasks in which students try to use any or of the language they know provide feedback for both teacher and students Everyone can see how well they are doing: both how successful they are and what language problems they are experiencing Finally, the more students have opportunities to use active the various elements of language they have stored in their brains, the more automatic their use of these elements become This means that they will be able to use words and phrases fluently without very much conscious thought According to Rivers (1981), teaching speaking needs two processes They are forging an instrument and giving the students practice in its use Further, he explains that in the first level of activity, the forging of the instrument, the aim of the teacher is to present students with a functioning language system which becomes more and more sophisticated in its operation, and to give students well-designed practice, so that when they wish to express something in the new language the can concentrate on what they want to say rather than on the details of how to say it acceptably At this level of activity, the students are required to much practice in the obligatory associations of the new language lexical item, morphological and syntactical patterns and sentence type While in the second level of the activity, such practice can be built into a competitive activity or a game and students will repeat the activity a number of times much more willingly 2.1.1.3 Speaking Teaching Techniques According to Harmer (2007) the aim of teaching speaking is to train students for communication To that, the teacher should be able to develop activities which promote students to use language in real communication Moreover, Wenxia (2008) says that the teacher should think, when teaching, not only about presenting language in a certain situation, but also as a communicative act There are some techniques to teach speaking according to Nunan (2003:271) Firstly, information gap task is a technique in language teaching where students have missing information necessary to complete a task or solve a problem and must communicate with their classmates to fill in the gaps It is often used in communicative language teaching and task-based language learning Information gap tasks are contrasted with opinion gap tasks, in which all information is shared at the start of the activity, and learners give their own opinions on the information given Secondly, Jigsaw activities are a specific type of information gap activity that is particularly good for learners if English as an additional language because they REFERENCES [1] Byrne, D (1995) Teaching Oral English Harlow: Longman Group UK [2] Brown, H D (1994) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy United States of America: Prentice-Hall, Inc, pp.254-275 [3] Brown, J D (2001) Using Survey in Language Program Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [4] Bogdan, R C and Biklen, S K (2007) Qualitative Research for Education: An Introduction to Theory and Methods (Fifth Edition) Boston, MA: Pearson Education/Allyn and Bacon [5] Buzanni, D (2008) The Use of Guessing Games in Improving Students’ Speaking Ability at the Second Year Students of MTS IkhtiyarulUmmahPamekasan Malang: Institute of Teacher Training and Education Budi Utom [6] Cameron, L (2001) Teaching languages to young learners Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [7] Coleman, M., & Briggs, R J (2002) Research Methods in Educational Leadership and Management London: Paul Chapman Publishing [8] Davies, P., & Pearse, E (2000) Success in English Teaching Oxford University Press [9] Deesri, A (2002) Games in the ESL and EFL Class The Internet TESL Journal, VIII, 1-5 [10] Gower, R., Phillips, D., Walters, S (1995) Teaching Practice Handbook Great Britain: The Bath Press, p.99 [11] Harmer, J (2007) The practice of English language teaching (3rd Ed.) 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What are the students attitudes towards using games in the speaking. .. apply them in learning speaking skill Therefore, for the reasons mentioned above, the researcher conducted a research on the effects of using games on students speaking performances in the classroom. .. summaries of the studies which are relevant to the effects of using game on student‟s speaking performance 2.1.1 Speaking 2.1.1.1 Definition of Speaking Speaking is an essential tool for communicating,