A STUDY ON HOW TO TEACH SPEAKING COMMUNICATIVELY TO GRADE 10 STUDENTS AT TRAN PHU HIGH SCHOOL

thạc sỹ, luận văn, ngoại ngữ, tiếng anh, khóa luận, chuyên đề

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Foreign language teaching (FLT) at the secondary school level in Vietnam hasbeen granted increasing supports from educational authorities, regarding the demand ofVietnamese young population for better means of communication with the world Themost important issue in this field, which has presented various complicated problems forgenerations of foreign language teachers in Vietnam as well as anywhere in the world, isthe adoption of an appropriate language teaching method

Having been aware of this necessity, TP high school as well as others in Ha Noi haspaid considerable attention to update teaching methodologies, which can be seen from theyear 2003 to date TP high school has been chosen to teach a pilot set of text-books then Inaccordance with the new materials, teaching methods should also be changed The mosteffective approaches which have been applied at high schools are learner-centred instruction,tasked-based language teaching and communicative language teaching Of which, the lastapproach is the main topic we would like to spend time researching on in this field, with itsapplication to teaching and studying speaking skill

There are sound reasons for me to take the application of CLT to speaking teaching intoconsideration, rather than others First of all, for some time, English teaching in Vietnamhas been strongly influenced by the traditional methods Emphasis has been placed onthe mastery of language structures rather than on how language is used Teachers aswell as students are used to concentrating on grammatical items Students are asked totranslate or analyze the text grammatically Teachers usually spend most of the time inclass explaining the form of the language to students who were passive listeners Theresult of this kind of teaching and learning, of course, has been far from satisfactory.That means that students might be structurally competent but communicativelyincompetent They have encountered a lot of problems when dealing with English in reallife For example, they find it difficult to understand and use English intonation toexpress surprise, admiration, or doubt They are also not sure how to address peopleproperly in different situations Second, recent political and economic developments inVietnam have stimulated the learners’ interest in learning English for communication

So the need for communication in English has changed from an emphasis on teachinggrammar to an emphasis on teaching communication Speaking skill nowadays plays amuch more important role in modem English than ever before Last but not least, the

new Tiếng Anh 10 textbook has just been applied widely It has 16 units with interesting

topics Every unit consists of 5 lessons: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing, and a Language Focus one This book was designed with various learning tasks, the purpose of

which is to set up communicative situations for students to practise English language.Furthermore, the book focuses on learners’ communicative competence without ignoringlearners’ linguistic competence It is also accompanied with a great number of team work andgroup work activities to develop students’ communicative competence And students havechances to listen to both native and non-native English speakers from the tapes/ CDsaccompanied with the books

For all the above mentioned reasons, I would like to devote my time and effort toinvestigating the current speaking teaching and learning situation at TP high schoolincluding teaching methods, difficulties faced by the teachers and students, facility… thenfinding out how CLT is applied to teaching speaking there Especially, the study willrecommend suitable and specific communication activities for grade 10 students’ at TPhigh school – Hanoi to improve their speaking skill

2 The Scope, Objectives, Significance, Methods and Design of the Study

2.1 The Scope of the Study

The study focuses on how to teach speaking communicatively to grade 10 students at TranPhu High school

2.2 Objectives of the Study

The objectives of the study are as follows:

 To investigate the difficulties of teaching and learning speaking faced by the teachersand students; the teachers’ solutions to these difficulties; and the students’ expectations

 To investigate how CLT is applied to teach speaking to grade 10 students at TP highschool in order to improve their speaking skill

 To suggest some realistic and appropriate class teaching techniques and communicativeactivities with a view to help teachers enhance their learners in speaking skill

2.3 Significance of the Study

This study plays a crucial role for enhancing teaching method of speaking to grade 10students at TP high school Its implemented recommendations will make the application ofCLT at my school successful and effective

2.4 Methods of the Study

The researcher collects information from all the teachers of English who teach at TP high

school First, questionnaires are delivered to the teachers to investigate difficulties inspeaking that they face and solutions that should be implemented Questionnaires arealso delivered to the students to find out the students’ attitudes to speaking learning,difficulties confronted and solutions suggested by them Then interviews are carried out toimplemented to increase the reliability of the obtained information and provide moreinformation relating to the teachers’ method of teaching speaking The combination ofinformation from interviews for teachers and questionnaires for both teachers and studentscan help to draw a general picture about the application of CLT in teachingspeaking to non- grade 10 students at TP High school.

2.5 Design of the Study

The thesis consists of three parts

Part A is the introduction, which presents the rationales, the scope, the objectives,

the method, significance and the design of the study

Part B consists of three chapters:

Chapter I deals with a historical overview of the literature It starts with the methods and

approaches used in teaching foreign languages including the grammar-translation, theaudio-lingual and the CLT The next is about using CLT in teaching speaking is dealtwith, including many issues such as problems with speaking and speaking activities,principles for speaking techniques, speaking and communication activities, stages of a CLTspeaking lesson The final is the review of some previous studies related to applyingCLT

Chapter II presents the methodology performed in the study It provides information

about the participants, the instrumentation and data analysis

Chapter III discusses the data of the study and proposes some recommendations for applying

CLT in teaching speaking to grade 10 students at TP high school

Part C is about the conclusion and suggestions for a further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW I 1 Approaches of language teaching

I 1 1 The Grammar-Translation Method

The grammar- translation method is rooted in the formal teaching of Latin and Greek Itwas the dominant method until the end of the 19th century and has continued to be used in oneform or another until the present day But it has long been “out of fashion” According toRichards and Rodgers (1986:3), the principle characteristics of this method are as follows:Grammar-Translation is a way of studying through detailed analysis of its grammar rulesand translations of sentences and texts into or out of the target language; reading andwriting are the major focus; little or no systematic attention is paid to listening, andspeaking; vocabulary is taught through bilingual word lists, dictionary study, andmemorization; the sentence is the basic unit of teaching and practicing the language;accuracy is emphasized; grammar is taught deductively; the students' mother tongue is themedium of instruction

The Grammar-Translation method requires few resources and so it is easy to apply andcheap to administer And the method is still used in many classroom situations where theclass is large, and where there are a lack of teaching and learning facilities and equipment,and where teachers can use Vietnamese to give instructions

The Grammar-Translation method concerns itself primarily with the written language

of classical literature and ignores authentic spoken communication and the social variation oflanguage River (1981: 31) comments this method as follows: "There is much stress onknowing rules and exceptions" and "little stress is laid on accurate pronunciation andinformation; communication is neglected" That is to say, over-emphasis on rules and neglect

of communicative skills are seen as the main defects of the method Consequently, studentslearn rules of grammar and vocabulary without much feeling of progress in the mastery of thetarget language, which cannot motivate them to learn of the target language because they havelittle opportunity to express themselves through it They just learn what they have to learnwithout any creativeness The method creates frustration for students, for whom foreignlanguage learning is a tedious experience of memorization of new words and grammaticalrules, while it makes few demands on teachers (Richards and Rodgers, 1986:4)

I.1.2 The Audio-lingual method

The Audio-lingual Method emanated in America during World War II where therewas a need for people to learn foreign languages quickly for military purposes Rivers

(1964: 19) summarizes the principles of this method as follows: Foreign languagelearning is a process of mechanical habit formation Good habits are formed by givingcorrect responses rather than making mistakes; language skills are learned moreeffectively if the spoken form is learned before the written form; analogy provides abetter foundation for language teaming than analysis Drills can enable learners to formcorrect analogies.

The first and the most successful point of this method is to develop students'listening comprehension and fluency in speaking in the target language Students areencouraged by the sense of being able to use what they have learned very early

The success or failure of this method depends largely on the qualities of the teachersand the availability of resources The teacher must be a fluent speaker as most of his/herwork is done orally in the target language Furthermore, (s)he must be very resourcefulwhen presenting the lesson, that is to say, (s)he must vary his/her techniques to makelearning more interesting and meaningful, otherwise, students might be bored withmechanical repetition or be "well-trained parrots" as commented on by Rivers (1981: 47)and "the objective is generally the mastery of sentence patterns rather than creative orcommunicative use of language" (Brumfit, 1983:8) In addition, native-speaker-likepronunciation is sought and the use of the students’ native language is forbidden,which seems to be impossible to most Vietnamese students especially to secondaryschool ones

I.1.3 Communicative Language Teaching method

In CLT, meaning is paramount Wilkins (1972) classifies meaning into notional andfunctional categories and views learning an SL as acquiring the linguistic means toperform different kinds of functions According to Larsen-Freeman(1986:132), themost obvious characteristic of CLT is that " Almost everything that is done is done withcommunicative intent" Students use the language through communicative activities (e.g.games, role-plays and problem-solving tasks)

According to Morrow (in Johnson and Morrow, 1981), activities that are trulycommunicative have three features: information gap, choice, and feedback An informationgap occurs when one person exchanges the information he has with the one who does not Another characteristic of CLT is the introduction of authentic material In CLT, it isconsidered desirable to give learners the opportunity to genuine communicative needs inrealistic L2 situations so that they develop strategies for understanding language asactually used by native speakers (Canale & Swain, 1980)

Also, "activities in the Communicative Approach are often carried out by students

in small group" (Larsen-Freeman, 1986; 132) Students are expected to interact withone another, either through pair and group work or in their writings (Finocchiaro &Brumfit, 1983) CLT favors interaction among small numbers of students in order tomaximize the time each student has to learn to negotiate meaning Teachers thereforeselect learning activities according to how well they engage the students in meaningfuland authentic language use rather than in the merely mechanical practice of languagepatterns

Another dimension of CLT is "its learner-centered and experience-based view of'second language teaching" (Richards &Rodgers, 1986; 69) According to CLTtheory, individual learners possess unique interests styles, needs, and goals that -should

be reflected in the design of instructional methods (Savignon, 1983) Teachers are todevelop materials based on the demonstrated needs of a particular class Students must bemade to feel secure, unthreatened, and non-defensive in a CLT classroom, so teachersusing CLT should avoid adopting a teacher-centred, authoritarian posture (Taylor, 1983) Thus, Li (1989: 967) summaries the characteristics of CLT in 6 categories asfollows:

1 a focus on communicative functions

2 a focus on meaningful tasks rather than on language form

3 efforts to make tasks and language relevant to a target group of learners through ananalysis of genuine, realistic situations

4 the use of authentic, from life materials

5 the use of group activities

6 the attempt to create a secure, non-threatening atmosphere

CLT focuses on meaningful tasks rather than on language form, which helps heightenlearners’ motivation in learning a language because they do not often concentrate theirmind on the sterile forms or grammatical items of the target language One more fact isthat in CLT, the use of a variety of different kinds of tasks is said to make teaching andlearning more communicative since it provides a purpose for its own sake

Efforts to make tasks and language relevant to a target group of learners through ananalysis of genuine, realistic situations are another advantage of CLT because learnerscan find the tasks and language relevant to them, appropriate to their needs

Apart from an analysis of genuine, realistic situations, tasks and language can bemade relevant to learners through the use of authentic, from-life materials, Authentic

materials help create opportunities for learners to be exposed to "real" language, thelanguage that is natural and popularly used by the society The degree of learners'exposure to real language can be said to positively influence their understanding of thelanguage being communicated in real life, thus enhance their acquisition and appropriateproduction of the language

CLT favors interaction among small numbers of learners with a purpose tomaximize the time each learner learns and uses language, shares information andnegotiate meaning Through interaction learners' learning experience can be modified,many kinds of learning strategies made aware and applied, and especially classroomsmove away from teacher-centredness to learner-centredness, which is an essentialelement to raise learners’ motivation in language learning Group work, either in itssimplest form (pair work) or in group of three or more, can promote learners'responsibility and self-governing One more important advantage of group work has therelationship with learners psychological factors: group work lessens learners' anxiety.The last but not least strong point of CLT is that teachers are often aware of attempting

to create a secure, non-threatening atmosphere Many researchers and pedagogist considerthis attempt to be the first and most important work for teachers to do in CLT classes.Traditional learning styles of listening and writing down as well as unfamiliarity withcommunicative activities can make learners anxious or even ashamed of speaking with otherclassmates Learners may also be afraid that "other classmates will think or comment abouttheir ability" (Bock, 2000:25)

Beside the good points of CLT, it can cause some difficulties to teachers According

to Bock’s study (2000, page 24-30) provides 3 groups of difficulties: difficulties fromstudents, difficulties from educational system and difficulties from teachers

Concerning difficulties from students, Bock states 4 specific problems:

+ Students lack motivation for communicative competence because they seem to beover-concerned with passing exams which rarely test for communicative competence.+ Students show resistance to class participation and the reasons may come fromtheir anxiety, laziness and unfamiliarity with communicative lessons

+ Students use Vietnamese during group work and the sources of the difficulty arealso anxiety and unfamiliarity with CLT

+ Students are of low English proficiency

With regard to difficulties from educational system, Bock cites 3 specific factors:

+ Conducive facilities are inadequate (desks, chalkboards, missing lightbulbs…)

+ Class sizes are large ( more than 40 students).

+ Classes are of multi-levels

As to the difficulties from teachers, Bock mentions 2 main problems:

+ Teachers feel inadequate because they lack training in CLT and experience inimplementing CLT

+ Teachers find it unable to assess communicative competence because they arenot given methods to assess communicative competence

My minor thesis is about how to teach speaking communicatively In terms ofspeaking skill, CLT is the most suitable method which should be applied because of itscharacteristics Moreover, CLT is considered the current dominant methodology andone of the most effective approaches to teach learners to speak in second language.All the mentioned reasons explain why I have decided to choose CLT not any othermethod to teach speaking

I.2 Using CLT and teaching speaking.

I.2.1 Problems with speaking and speaking activities

I.2.1.1 Problems with speaking.

Brown (1994:256) points out the characteristics of spoken language that can makeoral performance difficult as follows:

• Clusterings: In order to speak fluently, speakers have to select from their store oflanguage clusterings, that is groups of words, not word by word

• Reduced forms: Contractions, elisions, reduced vowels, etc create difficulties inteaching and learning spoken English If learners do not learn colloquial contractions,

they can develop the kind of speaking that is stilted, bookish.

• Colloquial language: Colloquialism appears both in monologues and dialogues Iflearners are only exposed to standard English and/or "textbook" language, they sometimesfind it difficult to understand and produce words, idioms and phrases of colloquiallanguage

 Stress, rhythm and intonation: Learners of English often find it difficult to pronounceEnglish words, to stress the right syllables, to follow the stress-timed rhythm andintonation patterns of spoken English

 Affective factors: Learners learning to speak often encounter the risk of saying outthings that may be wrong, stupid and incomprehensible At those times, they tend to

be anxious because they do not want to be judged by other learners

 Interaction The greatest difficulty that learners face in learning to speak originatesfrom the interactive nature of most communication Engaged in process of negotiation

of meaning with many discourse constraints, learners have to do the complex task ofchoosing what to say, how to say, when to speak, etc

I.2.1.2 Problems with speaking activities.

Classroom activities that develop learners' ability to express themselves through speech

is an important component of a language course where CLT is applied However, it ismore difficult to design and administer such activities than to do so for listening, reading

or writing Teachers often come across the problems that Ur (1996:121) lists out:

• Uneven or low participation:

Only one participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be heard In a large group,this means that each one has only very little time for talking This problem iscompounded by the tendency of some learners to dominate the group, while others speakvery little or not at all

• Mother-tongue use:

When all, or a number of the learners share the same mother tongue, they may tend touse it This happens because it is easier, because it feels unnatural to speak to oneanother in a foreign language and because learners feel less "exposed" if they arespeaking their mother tongue If they are talking in a small group, it can be quitedifficult to get some classes, particularly the less disciplined or motivated ones, to keep

to the target language

Overcoming the above-mentioned problems to create a successful speaking activitywhere learners talk a lot, participation is even, motivation is high certainly requires a lot

of teachers' efforts in designing and carrying out speaking activities

I.2.1.3 Principles for speaking techniques.

Speaking techniques, if designed appropriately, give more opportunities forlearners to speak accurately and fluently However, designing an effective speakingtechnique requires experience and laborious work Brown (1994) suggests principles fordesigning speaking techniques that teachers can base themselves on to have a thoroughand profound understanding of teaching speaking His principles are as follows:

+ Techniques should cover learners' needs, from focus on accuracy to focus oninteraction, meaning and fluency:

In teachers' effort to teach communicatively, they sometimes stress content-basedinteractive activities and ignore grammatical pointers or pronunciation Teachers should makesure that classroom tasks include techniques to help learners to perceive and use the buildingblocks of language However, teachers should make drillings as meaningful as possibleand avoid boring learners with lifeless, repetitious drillings

+Techniques should be intrinsically motivating:

Teachers should try to appeal to learners' ultimate goals and interests, to theirneed for knowledge , for status Teachers should also help learners see how activitiesbenefit them by telling them why teachers organize those activities

+Techniques should encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts:

As mentioned in CLT characteristics of meaningful tasks and authentic materials,the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts can help learners acquire languagenecessary for future use and also help motivate learners

+Provide appropriate feedback and correction:

In most EFL situations, learners are totally dependent on teachers for usefullinguistic feedback It is important that teachers take advantage of their knowledge of

English to produce the kinds of corrective feedback that are appropriate at the moment.+Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and listening:

Teachers should integrate these two skills because many interactive techniques thatinvolve speaking also include listening and these two skills can reinforce each other.Skills in producing language is often initiated through comprehension

+ Give learners opportunities to initiate oral communication:

Teachers should allow learners to initiate language because parts of oralcommunication competence is the ability to initiate conversation, to nominate topics ,

to ask questions, to control conversations and to change the subject

+ Encourage the development of speaking strategies:

Teachers should make the classroom the place for learners to be aware of andhave a chance to practise their personal strategies for accomplishing oralcommunicative purposes

as information sharing, negotiation of meaning, and interaction

I 2.1.4.1 Controlled communication activities for meaning and fluency.

Klippel (1984), Doff (1988) and Harmer (1998) plan out a lot of communicativeactivities and games which can help learners achieve some degree of communicativeefficiency competence

Most popular controlled communicative ones are :

+ guessing games

+ describing and drawing games,

+ discussion games with materials, pieces or slips of paper with providedinformation, stories, advertisements, and so on

+ ranking Exercises

+ Story telling (Give students a cartoon or set of pictures which shows a story

or sequence of events Have the student tell the story.)

+ information Gaps

+ Picture Description (Provide an interesting picture for the class or each group

of students and ask them questions about it.)

+ Chain recording (Begin a story and ask the students, one at a time, to addcreatively to it Record what each says on cassette tape.)

It cannot be denied that role-play is useful for enhancing learners' speaking skills.The question is how to manage this valuable activity appropriately and successfully

+ Discussion activities

Discussion activities help learners practise what they have learnt, find ways toachieve objectives such as solving a problem, ranking objects, procedures, and so on.Through discussion, learners can also develop conversational skills such as how to taketurns, to change the topic of conversion, to interrupt someone politely and so on.Discussion in small groups also have some of the advantages as it does in role-playactivities such as putting shy learners to ease to feel like speaking , giving moreopportunities for learners to speak, making learners more aware of their responsibility tothe group success

In general, teachers should emphasize the importance of organizing activities.Factors such as learners' interest, maturity and experience of learning and life should bepaid enough attention to

In summary, the activities presented in this section do not cover all the activities thatteachers apply in the classroom However, communicative games, role-plays and discussionscan be exploited to cover other speaking activities such as interviewing, talking aboutyourself, problem-solving tasks so on

I.3 Stages of a CLT speaking lesson

According to Methodology course 1- Teaching The Skills (Hanoi 2002) Page 42-43, a

CLT speaking lesson should have three stages: pre, while and post

The Pre-speaking stage

This stage prepares students by getting them to think about the topic or situation beforethey speak about it Pre-speaking tasks can be brainstorming or discussion tasks, where studentscollect all their ideas on the topic; vocabulary preparation tasks, where the teacher pre-teacheskey vocabulary to help students express their ideas more easily or train students withpronunciation drill so that they can speak English in good stress and intonation and this willhelp them speak out their ideas in English easily and fluently In this stage, the teacher will have

to set up a pre task, organize pair/group work and give clear instructions about the task

The while-speaking stage

At this stage the teacher lets students work with each other without interfering withcorrecting any mistakes in order not to stop students from being influent She/ he just givesassistance when/if necessary At the while-speaking stage, the teacher doesn’t have to do a lot

of teaching – because his/her students will be working on the while-task by themselves,individually or in groups In stead, the teacher will have to do a lot of monitoring and assistingweaker students who are having difficulty completing the task

The post-speaking stage

The post-speaking stage is like the follow-up stage After students have practisedspeaking skill in the while-speaking stage, they do an extension speaking activity This helpsstudents take the information from other groups or whatever they have produced in the while-speaking stage, and do something meaningful with it At this stage, the teacher gets students

to report their work and let the whole class share what they have got from pair/group work.The teacher might give feed back, correct serious mistakes here and give students marks

I.4 Previous studies related to applying CLT

Many research works and studies on the application of CLT to teaching English

In Vietnam, many research works On CLT such as “Might CLT successfully applicable

in Vietnam, especially in the English department” carried out by To Thu Huong, HoangXuan Hoa and Tran Hien Lan (2005), “Dạy bốn kĩ năng theo đờng hớng giao tiếp”implemented by Tran Hien Lan or Bock’study (2000)

Basing on the previous research works, my research intends to investigate whatdifficulties the teachers and students at TP high school have in teaching speaking skill, howCLT is applied to teaching speaking, and then suggest possible speaking techniques andactivities to help students improve their speaking skill

CHAPTER II: THE STUDY

II.1 The English teaching and learning situations at TP high school

II.1.1 Description of the students at TP high school

The majority of high school students in Hanoi enjoy an education in which Englishhas been a compulsory subject since they were lower-secondary 1st grade This means by thetime they go to high school, they have at least 5 or more years of experience in English

The level of English for grade 10 students is targeted at pre-intermediate level though a

few actually reach the standard As their lower-secondary years were spent with the old textbooks and the grammar translation method, most students are, to some extent, good atgrammar, but bad at listening and speaking the target language They can do writtenexercises on English grammar accurately but they can hardly communicate in English.Using English to communicate is a big challenge for most of them who think thatlearning a foreign language means learning grammatical rules or a list of irregularverbs As a result, they either keep silence all the time or do not participate in thespeaking activities

However students at TP high school have a better learning ability than those frommany other schools, which is justified by passing the entrance test with the high marksrequired for admission of the school

II.1.2 Description of the teachers at TP high school

The teachers are the most important factors in the process of teaching and learning a targetlanguage To carry out this process properly, the teachers need to have good experience ofteaching and understanding of the syllabus At TP high school, there are 12 teachers ofEnglish but only one of them has ever been to an English speaking country Three of themhave been trained in the in-service training courses They used to be the teachers of Russian

so they have certain limitations in terms of communicative competence in the target language

Methodologically, the teachers at TP high school are familiar with traditional languageteaching However, most of them have a great desire to acquire knowledge of thecommunicative competence and claim to apply it to their teaching of English

II.1.3 Settings of the study

"Setting" refers to the classroom arrangements specified or implied in the task of thelesson, and it also requires consideration of whether the task is to be carried out wholly orpartly outside the classroom (see Dung, 1999) But at TP high school, instructions, learning

and teaching activities are mostly carried out in the classroom Most of the lessons are

developed in such a fixed condition that the teachers find it difficult to make a change in

applying new ideas to language teaching.

- The class size: There are 45 students in each class It is not easy to carry out acommunicative task in a mixed-ability and large class The focus on creating acommunicative environment also means that there is a lot of unavoidable noise in theclassroom Though this noise is claimed to be positive and necessary for a communicativeclassroom, it affects the learning of next-door classes

- The school has one language lab with one overhead projector, one LCD projector, onelap top , 40 computers, one television and one video and 6 cassette recorders for 12 teachers,but the teachers hardly use them as teaching aids except cassette recorders because of tworeasons: First, these teaching aids are not enough if many classes are in need Second, most ofthe teachers are not used to using and exploiting modern teaching visual aids such as LCDprojectors, lap top or computers …

- Materials: Materials for reference and self-study are not available There is a library atthe school but there are not many English books for reference Most of the books here are forstudents only English newspapers and magazines, which are good sources of current targetlanguage, are not available

- All of the classrooms are designed for lecture lessons It means that the seats arearranged orderly in front of the teacher in rows and a classroom equipment is just achalkboard and a cassette recorder

II.2 Research methodology

II.2.1 Subjects

Two questionnaires were designed for 12 teachers and 100 students of grade 10 from 5classes (10A2, 10A3, 10A4, 10 B2 and 10 B3) at TP high school to get information to fulfillthe aims of the study Of 12 teachers, 2 have a master degree, 7 graduated from College forteachers of foreign languages and the rest graduated from in-service courses They are agedfrom 33 to 52 Their experience of teaching English is from 8 years to 28 years Of 225 grade

10 students from 5 normal classes, 100 were randomly selected to answer the questionnaire.Apart from the two questionnaires, interviews for 6 teachers were also carried out

The questionnaire for 12 teachers aimed at collecting information about their age, theirexperience of teaching English, and their awareness of CLT Besides, the questionnaire is alsoaimed at investigating the teachers’ techniques of speaking, their difficulties in teachingEnglish communicatively, and their solutions to the difficulties

The questionnaire for 100 grade 10 students tends to survey on the students’ experience

of learning English before entering TP high school, their attitude to learning English in

general and speaking in particular, the students’ need for extra speaking activities in class andthe communicative activities they are often involved in More importantly, the questionnairewill discover the problems the students have coped with when they learn speaking skill andtheir own suggestions for better speaking learning and teaching.

Interviews for 4 teachers will be implemented to increase the reliability of the obtainedinformation and provide more information relating to the teachers’ method of teachingspeaking

II.2.2 Survey Instruments

II.2.2.1 Questionnaire for the students

The questionnaire for students includes 9 questions written in Vietnamese It took 2weeks to deliver and collect 100 copies of the questionnaire (see appendix A)

The questionnaire are about

- The students’ experience in learning English (Questions 1,2)

- The students’ attitude to learning speaking English (Questions 3, 4, 5)

- The students’ evaluation of an English speaking lesson (Questions 6)

- The students’ difficulties in learning speaking (Questions 7)

- The students’ need for extra speaking activities in class (Questions 8)

- Speaking activities done by the students in class (Questions 9)

- The students’ suggestions for better speaking teaching and learning (Questions 10)

II.2.2.2 Questionnaire for the teachers

The questionnaire for the teachers consists of 13 questions to collect information focusing

on the following categories: (see appendix B).

- Their teaching experience (Questions 1, 2)

- Teachers’ opinions on CLT (Questions 3,4)

- Difficulties confronted by the teachers in their teaching of English at TP high school (Question 5)

- Current speaking techniques applied to teaching speaking skill (Question 6, 7,8,9, 10,11)

- Communicative activities applied by the teacher in a speaking lesson (Question 12)

- Their suggestions for better speaking teaching (Question 13)

The 12 copies of the questionnaire delivered to the teachers within 2 weeks have been allresponded

II.2.2.3 the interview

Along with the survey questionnaires, the interview is a supplementary instrument which

is used to increase the reliability of the obtained information and provide more information

relating to the teachers’ method of teaching speaking Of 12 teachers, 4 were selected: 2 are thebest teachers and the rest are the least able teachers The 2 best teachers and the 2 least ableones will be interviewed to find the gap of knowledge and ability between them and thenunderstand the real situation of teaching speaking skill at TP high school

II 3 Presentation of statistical results

II.3.1 Questionnaire

II.3.1 1 Questionnaire for the students

The 100 copies of the questionnaire delivered to the students have been responded Thedata are analyzed in this part of the study in the following tables which show sequences of theresponses for the questions available in the questionnaire

II.3.1 1.1 The students’ background of foreign languages before entering TP high school

Students have learned English for 7 years 85%

Students have learned English for 4 years 15%

Students have never spoken English to foreigners 73%

Students sometimes speak English to foreigners 22%

Students usually speak English to foreigners 8%

Table 1: Students’ background of foreign languages before entering TP high

school

Question 1 relates to the students’ background of English before their study at TP high

school The results are presented as follows:

As can be seen in the above table, most of the students had learned English before theyentered TP high school accounting for 92% while only 8% of the students had learned French.Normally, when students are in grade 10, they have already studied English for 7 years.Therefore 85% of the students have been learning English for 7 years, 15% for 4 years MostVietnamese students find it quite difficult to communicate with foreigners in English That isthe reason why 73% of the students have never spoken English to foreigners, 22% sometimesspeak English to foreigners and only 8% usually do

II.3.1.1.2 The students’ attitude to English learning and speaking skill

Questions 3, 4, 5 deal with the students’ attitude to learning English in general and

speaking skill in particular The following table shows the results

Students’ attitude to English learning and speaking skill %

Learning English does not benefit them, it is just a compulsory subject 21%

Learning English at least helps them to get good marks in the exams 60%

Learning English enables them to read books, newspapers… and listen to

music in English

53%

Learning English enables them to communicate with foreigners 34%

Learning English enables them to broaden their knowledge about the

Learning English creates opportunities to go abroad for study 45%

Of the 4 English skills, speaking is the most difficult 42%

Speaking skill is not important to them at all 15%

Table 2: Students’ attitude to learning English in general and speaking skill in particular

According to the statistics of table 2, 60% of the students asked learn English to get goodmarks in the exams 53% of the students learn English to listen to music About 32% of thestudents consider English as a means of communication with foreigners and nearly the samepercentage of the students (30%) want to broaden their knowledge of the world around throughEnglish 45% of the students are trying to learn English to have opportunities to go abroad forstudy 21% find English unprofitable and a compulsory subject at school only

Of 4 English skills, speaking is the most difficult for 42 % of the students 49 % think thatspeaking skill is quite difficult A few students find it easy to learn speaking skill; 6 % agreethat speaking skill is normal and only 3% believe that speaking skill is not difficult

Although speaking skill is quite difficult for these students, its importance is not taken intoconsideration When 64% of the students asked said that speaking skill was normal to themwhile only 8% found the importance of it and 13% thought that speaking skill was a bitimportant to them Of the 100 participants, 15 students don’t like speaking English so it is notimportant to them at all

II.3.1.1.3 The students’ evaluation of their English speaking lessons

Question 4 helps to find out the students’ evaluation of their English speaking lessons

57/100 students find that their English speaking lessons are normal (nothing special) Itmeans that their teachers have not prepared carefully enough or paid much attention to thespeaking lessons Even, 24% of the students are not interested in English speaking lessonsbecause they are boring and sleepy However, 19/100 students enjoy English speaking lessonsbecause they like all the speaking activities provided by their teachers More importantly, theycan follow and understand the speaking activities

Question 6 is about the difficulties faced by the students in learning speaking

I get embarrassed if people laugh at me when I make mistakes in speaking 75%

I don’t have enough vocabulary, ideas, and knowledge relating to the

speaking topic

81%

I find it difficult to express my opinions in English 81%

My teacher’s instructions and explanation for speaking tasks are not clear

enough

57%

The class is noisy so I can’t hear everything clearly 23%

The teacher seldom uses visual teaching aids to teach speaking 76%

Other difficulties

Table 3: The students’ difficulties in learning speaking

The data in table 3 show that the most serious problem to the students is lack ofvocabulary, ideas, and knowledge relating to the speaking topic (81% of the students have thisproblem) 75% of the students asked said that they were afraid of making mistakes whenspeaking English 51% are not used to speaking in front of many people Speaking skill isquite difficult to most of the students but 75% do not have enough time to prepare for speakingactivities The noisy class causes difficulty to 23% of the students Sometimes the students’difficulties come from the teachers 76% said that their teachers seldom used teaching aids inteaching speaking Besides, 57% complained that the teachers’ instructions and explanation forspeaking tasks were not clear enough to them

II.3.1.1.5 The students’ need for extra speaking activities in class

When asked about the need for extra speaking activities in class, 68 % of the studentswant to take part in various speaking activities frequently to improve their speaking skill Theypoint out that apart from the tasks in the textbook, more other tasks should be designed forstudents to practise and to make speaking lessons more effective and interesting The teacherhas to help his/her students finish all the things required or things she/he found not suitable forthe students so 21% of the students believe that sometimes extra speaking activities areneeded Even 11% of the students think that tasks in the textbook are enough for them In theiropinion, these tasks are various and quite difficult so they do not have enough time to do othersupplementary ones

II.3.1.1.6 Speaking activities done by the students in class

Speaking activities done by the students in class %

Structure-based activities 100%

Other speaking activities

Table 4: Speaking activities done by the students in class

The data in table 4 show us some information about speaking activities and techniquesused at TP high school The speaking activities which are done by 100% of the students, arerepetition, structure-based activities, question-and answer exchanges 80% practise completingdialogues in speaking lessons These activities are easy for teachers to prepare and easyenough for students to do Discussing in pairs and groups are approved by 60%, problemsolving and role-play by 40% Some communicative speaking activities such as picturedescription, information gap, interview, topic-based discussion, strip stories, free talks andgames/ songs used by teachers made up 20% Mime stories and round-table discussion arenever used

II.3.1.1.7 The students’ suggestions for better speaking teaching and learning

Question 9 is to ask the students for their suggestions for better speaking teaching and

learning The results are presented as follows

The statistics point out that to improve and encourage the students to speak English, theteachers should provide them with more speaking opportunities in class and enough visual aidsfor speaking activities are necessary to make speaking lessons more interesting and effective(suggested by 90/100 informants) Taking part in communicative speaking activities regularlyand enthusiastically help them improve their speaking skill That is why 85% expect theirteachers to vary and provide them with suitable communicative speaking activities In addition

to suitable communicative speaking activities, teachers’ methods are very important 82% ofthe students want their teachers to apply suitable teaching methods to their language level.About the teaching methods, 60% said teaching materials should be suitable for their languagelevel and 62% believed that teaching syllabus should be reasonable Although the students

expect efforts from their teachers, they themselves realize that they have to try their best instudy 70% think that they should participate in communicative speaking activities in Englishwhenever they have chance

II.3.1.2 Questionnaire for the teachers

II.3.1.2.1 Their teaching experience

Question 1 focuses on the teachers’ ages Question 2 is about the teachers’ experience of

teaching English The results are shown in the following tables

According to the data collected in table 7, 50% have from 13- 19 years of teachingexperience (50%) 33% have experience of teaching from 8 to 12 years The rest have from 20

to 28 years It is concluded that the teaching staff are quite experienced in their profession

II.3.1.2.2 Teachers’ opinions on CLT

Question 4 discovers how the teachers are aware of the characteristics of CLT

CLT emphasizes language functions more than form 25%

CLT creates a lot of opportunities for students to communicate 100%

CLT always emphasizes on both fluency and accuracy 17%

CLT creates a secure, non-threatening atmosphere in the classroom 17%

In CLT, language items are necessarily contextualized 80%

Translation may be used where students need or benefit from it 90%

The final goal of CLT is students’ communicative competence 80%

Learners can work on four skills from the beginning 23%

Others:

Table 7: Teachers’ opinions on CLT

According to the data of table 8, most of the teachers’ knowledge of CLT is notsufficient because the percentage of correct answers about CLT is not high Only 2/12 teachersasked (17%) agree that CLT creates a secure, non-threatening atmosphere in the classroom,