Using english grammar tutorials to help 10 th graders develop their speaking skili at nong cong i high school

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study In recent time, English, as a language of international communication and lingua franca, has been widely used and spoken worldwide for education, business, communication, and others purposes Admittedly, English has become a means of international communication and one of the most popular languages in the world It is used for almost all aspects of human life, such as mass media, business, sports, science and technology, education culture and so on Therefore, the knowledge and skills of English are highly valued As a result, some educational institutions in Vietnam have introduced English since the preelementary level Moreover, in high schools, it is one of three core subjects tested in the National Examination Regard to the importance of English as Foreign language (EFL), the teaching of EFL speaking has emphasized as an important skill in the Vietnamese context In general, Richards and Renandya [2002: p.201] point out that a large number of language learners study English in order to develop proficiency in speaking In other word, speaking is usually considered as the core skill in foreign language learning Because of the worldwide demand for good communication in English language has increased, the responsibility of the English language teacher has been recently stressed on In the context of teaching English speaking skill in Vietnam, with the application of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), both English teachers and students still have been encountering tremendous problems Based on some researches, there have been at least four main issues that some researchers and teachers often investigate Widiati and Cahyono [2006; p.277] report that the teaching of EFL speaking for secondary- level students deal with teaching problems, classroom activities, teaching materials, and assessment These things are related to the improvement of the teaching quality of English speaking that would point out obvious picture of the teachers’ position and what they are necessary to As a teacher of English with more than 18 years of experience at Nong Cong high school, I noticed that my students are not motivated and qualified enough to speak English confidently, naturally compared with students of other regions nationwide One reason for this is that they were not exposed to natural speaking environment at their lower secondary school as well as other practical setting to speak English More importantly, the inability to utilize their grammar knowledge to speak out is another serious problem Most of them did grammar exercise in written form instead of spoken one during their English lessons Therefore, despite their considerable knowledge of grammar, the students fail to use the language they have learnt to communicate in real-life situations This results in the lack of confidence, demotivation to communicate in spoken form All the aforementioned reasons urged me to carry out the study entitled “Using English grammar tutorials to help 10th graders develop their speaking skill at Nong Cong high school” Hopefully, the results will serve as a useful source of reference for those who are concerned teaching and learning speaking 1.2 Purpose of the study This study aimed at gaining an insightful look into the use of grammar tutorials to help 10th grade students develop their speaking skill The aims are specified in the research question: (1) To what extent does grammar tutorials improve student’s speaking skill? 1.3 Scope of the study This study limited itself to focus on improving the 10 th graders speaking performance at class 10B5 of Nong Cong high school Forty students involved participation 1.4 Method of the study This study using qualitative and quantitative research method aimed to determine whether grammar tutorials can enhance students’ speaking skills o r have a positive affect on the ability of students to utilize grammar and structure they have learned to enhance their speaking I myself used data collection instrument to gather information about the students involved, monitor the progress of the students when they were tutored to use common grammar and structure throughout the study, and determine the effectiveness of the grammar tutoring based on the students’ pre-test, post-test result The pre-tests were necessary to assess the reading comprehension level and skill the students possessed before the intervention of the strategy and used as a baseline score The post-tests were used to determine the effectiveness of the strategy used by the students during the experiment process by comparing the pre-test scores to the posttest scores taken at the end of the study to conclude the hypothesis PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 2.1 Literature Review 2.1.1 The speaking skill Speaking skills is the ability to communicate in a new language based on its grammatical, contextual, social, and cultural rules There are many factors affecting the students’ learning speaking We can name some of major factors: voice, accent, intonation, stress, pronunciation, speed, etc There are many definitions of speaking that have been proposed by some experts in language learning Speaking is one of the four language skills taught in the teaching of English People speak in order to express their idea, their feeling or respond to the other’s talk When the others can understand what has been talked, it means that the speaker gets the meaning across Thornbury [8; p.20] mentions that speaking is an interactive real time activity to express meaning to interact with others that unplanned and just continues based on situations However, the teacher must notice that in EFL context the students seldom try to produce their foreign language because they aware about the gaps in their knowledge A speaker requires attention to precise details of the language She/he needs to find the most appropriate words and the correct grammar to convey meaning accurately and precisely and also need to organize the discourse, so that a listener will understand According to him, speaking is an interactive skill that requires the ability to have cooperation with the other aspects of language Speaking skill needs to be developed and practiced independently from the other aspects of language, such as grammar and listening In that case, the teaching and learning process will be as interesting as possible to be conducted in each classroom in order to make the students become more interested in learning the other aspects of language Thornburry [8; p.40] proposes the terms of the basic knowledge that enable speech in a second language, as follows: - A core grammar - A core vocabulary of at least 1000 high-frequency items - Some common discourse markers - A core -phrase book of multi-word units (chunks) - Formulaic ways of performing common speech acts, such as requesting or inviting - Mastery of those features of pronunciation that inhibit intelligibility 2.1.2 Fluency and accuracy Many researchers and language practitioners believe that the constructs of second language performance and second language proficiency are multicomponential in nature and that their principle dimensions can be adequately, comprehensively and captured by the notions of complexity, accuracy and fluency Shehan [7; p.80] In term of Accuracy (or correctness), Wolfe-Quintero et al [10; p.105] shared their view that it is probably the oldest, most transparent and most consistent construct of the triad, referring to the degree of deviancy from a particular norm Deviations from the norm are usually characterized as errors Straightforward though this characterization may seem, it raises the thorny issue of criteria for evaluating accuracy and identifying errors, including whether these criteria should be tuned to prescriptive standard norms (as embodied by an ideal native speaker of the target language) or to non-standard and even nonnative usages acceptable in some social contexts or in some communities There is not the same amount of (relative) denotative congruence in the applied linguistics community with regard to fluency and complexity as there is with regard to accuracy In short, accuracy refers to how correct learners' use of the language system is, including their use of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary Accuracy is often compared to fluency when we talk about a learner's level of speaking or writing [12] 2.1.3 Assessing speaking ability According to O’Malley [5; p.265], assessment of oral language should focus on a student’s ability to interpret and convey meaning for authentic purposes in interactive contexts It should include both fluency and accuracy Cooperative learning activities that present students with opportunities to use oral language to interact with others whether for social or academic purposes are optimal for assessing oral language Brown and Yule [1; p.120] state that the oral component of English language assessment may be based on a very general impression of how well students speak This normally takes the form of an oral interview in which the examiner asks students questions, or prompts students to talk on certain, sometimes pre-arranged topics Sharing these ideas, Thornbury [8; p.147] states that there are two ways to assess students’ speaking ability The first is known as a holistic scoring In the holistic scoring, the teacher only gives a single score on the basis on an overall impression This holistic way has advantages of being quick and is perhaps suitable for informal testing of progress Then, the second way is through an analytic scoring which gives separate scores for different aspects of the task This scoring takes longer, but requires the teacher to take the variety of factors into account and it is probably fairer and more reliable However, one disadvantage is that the score may be distracted by all categories and lose sight of the overall situation performed by the students Therefore, four or five categories are probably to be the maximum criteria 2.1.4 Methods to assess speaking ability Regarding to assessing speaking ability, the teachers should give out objective grades in speaking class, and they can use the following criteria for evaluating students’ speaking abilities The first criterion is to create a rubric Most teachers will be familiar with the concept of grading with a rubric, a table with different criteria and a grading scale The second criterion is based on pronunciation Pronunciation is a basis quality of language learning Though most second language learners will never have the pronunciation of a native speaker, poor pronunciation can obscure communication and prevent an ESL student from making his meaning known When evaluating the pronunciation of our students, listen for clearly articulated words, appropriate pronunciations of unusual spellings, and assimilation and contractions in suitable places Also, listen for intonation Listen for these pronunciation skills and determine into which level the students fall Vocabulary should also be taken into consideration Vocabulary comprehension and vocabulary production are always two separate banks of words in the mind of a speaker, native as well as second language We should encourage students to have a large production vocabulary and a larger recognition vocabulary The next criterion relates to accuracy Grammar has always been and forever will be an important issue in foreign language study Writing sentences correctly on a test, though, is not the same as accurate spoken grammar As students speak, listen for the grammatical structures and tools we have taught them Are they able to use multiple tenses? Do they have agreement? Is word order correct in the sentence? All these and more are important grammatical issues, and an effective speaker will successfully include them in his or her language Fluency may be the easiest quality to judge in our students’ speaking How comfortable are they when they speak? How easily the words come out? Are there great pauses and gaps in the student’s speaking? If there are then your student is struggling with fluency Fluency is a judgment of this ease of communication and is an important criterion when evaluating speaking 2.1.5 Principles for teaching EFL speaking In the research of speaking skill, Chaney [2; p.13] defines speaking as "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and nonverbal symbols, in a variety of contexts” Despite its importance, for many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues However, today's world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students' communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in each communicative circumstance Sharing the same ideas, Nunan [4; p.54] states some of the following teaching speaking principles which should be mastered by the teacher of language: Firstly, be aware of the differences between second language and foreign language learning contexts, learning speaking skills in the foreign language context is very challenging because the students only have little opportunities to practice in their environment Secondly, give students practice with both fluency and accuracy Fluency and accuracy are important in speaking skills Thirdly, provide opportunities for students to talk by using group work or pair work, and limiting teacher talk Next, plan speaking tasks that involve the negotiation for meaning Speaking tasks mean activities to communicating appropriately and acceptably with others in the target language The negotiation for meaning happens when other students try to understand what their friend said by asking clarification, confirmation, or explanation Finally, design classroom activities that involve guidance and practice in both transactional and interactional speaking There are two purposes in speaking They are transactional and interactional purposes Transactional purposes mean communicating to get something done such as expression of asking for information, asking for complains, responding for complains and etc 2.2 Grammar in speaking 2.2.1 The importance of grammar in speaking Grammar is the sound, structure, and meaning system of language All languages have grammar, and each language has its own grammar People who speak the same language are able to communicate because they intuitively know the grammar system of that language - that is the rules of making meaning Students who are native speakers of English already know English grammar They recognize the sounds of English words, the meanings of those words, and the different ways of putting words together to make meaningful sentences However, while students may be effective speakers of English, they need guidance to become effective writers They need to learn how to transfer their knowledge of grammatical concepts from oral language to spoken language Effective grammar instruction begins with what students already know about grammar, and it helps them use this knowledge as they speak By connecting their knowledge to oral language, teachers can demystify abstract grammatical terminology so that students can speak or listen with greater competence and confidence 2.2.2 Teaching grammar for speaking Hillocks and Smith [3; p.25] show that systematic practice in sentence combining can increase students' knowledge of syntactic structures as well as improve the quality of their sentences, particularly when stylistic effects are discussed as well Sentence-combining exercises can be either written or oral, structured or unstructured Structured sentence-combining exercises give students more guidance in ways to create the new sentences; unstructured sentence-combining exercises allow for more variation, but they still require students to create logical, meaningful sentences To help students revise boring, monotonous sentences, teachers might ask students to read their sentence aloud to partners This strategy helps both the partner and the speaker to recognize when, for example, too many sentences begin with "It is" or "There are." Both the partner and the speaker can discuss ways to vary the sentence beginnings After the speaker revises the sentences, the partner can read the sentences aloud Then both can discuss the effectiveness of the revision 2.3 Tutorials Student tutorials are generally more academically challenging and rigorous than standard lecture and test format courses, because during each session students are expected to orally communicate, defend, analyze, and critique the ideas of others as well as their own in conversations with the tutor and fellow-students As a pedagogic model, the tutorial system has great value because it creates learning and assessment opportunities which are highly authentic and difficult to fake Good tutorial teaching is inspiring, exacting, challenging and fulfilling for tutors and students alike In this study, I look briefly at the genesis of tutorials in order to show the relationship between tutorial teaching and collegiate organization, and in order to reveal some of the concealed assumptions that underlie modern-day tutoring I then present a model for conceptualizing the dynamic relationships between the worlds of the student, the tutor, and disciplinary knowledge 2.3.1 Definition of tutorials At its simplest, the Oxford tutorial is an approach to university tuition in which students are tutored in the subject they are studying, for about an hour a week, on their own or with one or two partners, and by a scholar in their discipline Writing in 1969, W.G Moore [9; p.12] described the typical arts tutorial as: The tutorial is a weekly meeting of the student with the teacher to whom he is specially committed…[It requires] the preparation of a weekly essay, which is presented orally, listened to by the tutor and discussed immediately…A usual feature of the method is its informality It all happens…in the tutor’s…college set of rooms…with easy chairs set near the fire… Although some tutors still require the oral presentation of an essay, there is now very considerable variation in how tutors approach structuring the tutorial hour Oxford tutors are an extremely inventive group, and according to the demands of their discipline have over the years formulated a range of different ways of working with their students In those disciplines in which an Oxford education does still mean learning to think by writing, a significant proportion of tutors require the weekly essay to be handed in before or after the tutorial Some tutors mark and return work to the student with a grade attached Others regard a mark as redundant, and choose only to comment upon the paper, either in writing or orally In the sciences and mathematics the tutorial hour will be focused not upon an essay but upon structured problem solving of one sort or another Some science tutors may no longer take their students through an entire course of tutorials, teaching instead only those topics in which they specialize Tutorials are generally intended to: - Help students to gain a deep understanding of the subject matter in their discipline - discussion in tutorials helps students to see the significance and implications of their knowledge so they can apply what they have learned in new contexts; students should also develop a healthy skepticism about the literature - Enable students to learn how to think, for instance to synthesize disparate sources, to formulate a thesis and justify it, to anticipate criticisms of their arguments, and to respond to questions and challenges – thinking 'on one’s feet' – in the tutorial setting - Develop students’ basic academic skills (e.g identification and evaluation of relevant resources, effective communication both orally and in writing, effective time-management, critical self-assessment) - Enable students to pursue their individual academic interests within the context of their subject - Develop students’ ability to think and act like a professional in their discipline, like a classicist, mathematician, historian, scientist, or social scientist, rather than like a student 'covering' a syllabus in classics, math, history or a science - Foster a close relationship between student and tutor over the course of the academic degree, thereby personalizing students’ university experience and supporting students’ overall personal development throughout their student career To achieve this purpose, tutorials are organized differently across the university, depending on discipline, the stage of the student’s course and tutors’ own styles 2.3.2 Principles of tutorials Tutorials take a variety of forms Occasionally students are taught in singletons; pairs are much more common, and threesomes and foursomes are also found There is no simple advice about the 'best number' of students to teach at a time An important consideration is that the larger the group, the less possible it is to provide individual attention or to be flexible and match content to the particular level or interests of individual students Groups of two or three are probably the most effective, offering the advantage of supporting discussion and argument between students: as well as being productive in itself, this can serve to lift students' confidence in expressing their ideas Singleton teaching can be extremely successful and especially enjoyable, but, as a very personal approach to teaching, it is unavoidably influenced by the degree of compatibility between student and tutor; in particular, it is essential there be a good level of understanding and trust – singleton tutorials can be disastrous if a student finds them intimidating 2.3.4 Benefits of tutorials in teaching Learning is not only about memorizing, practicing, and examinations It is also about the ability to reason, debate, and think independently – all attributes that need to be developed for future success at university and in the workplace Development of this ability requires a student to be challenged through discussion, debate and direct contact with a tutor In today’s world, information is more freely available and accessible than ever before and we believe that this method, which focuses on the processing of concepts, ideas and knowledge through discussion, is more relevant than ever before The tutorial method is the most useful when both students and tutors meet a number of conditions The first of which is that the students will the required work prior to the tutorial The students should aim to come to each tutorial having already absorbed the information and knowledge that the tutor will flesh out through discussion The second is that the tutors should provide regular feedback, both during and after each tutorial The tutor should direct the thinking and discussion during the tutorial toward topics and concepts that the students are having difficulty with or may not have considered Feedback during the tutorial will help the students challenge their thinking and knowledge; whilst feedback after the tutorial, in the form of comments and grades in reports, helps the students and the tutor to measure the students’ progress; yet there have been no concrete benefits of grammar tutorials in improving writing skill for EFL high school students all over the world up to now 2.4 Research context 2.4.1 Setting and participants This study was conducted in 16 weeks from October 2019 to January 2020 in class 10B5 at Nong Cong high school in rural area of Thanh Hoa province Thirty 10th graders involved in the study They mainly came from the countryside In general, they had learnt English for over years However, their proficiency is not satisfactory enough, and their learning style is quite passive In addition, they hardly acquired any effective skills in speaking, especially in real context as a presenter In their opinion, learning English means getting grammar and structures with common lexical resources As a result, they were almost beginners in speaking as a high school student After one month studying at my school, their language skills regarding reading, writing had improved a little bit In term of speaking skills, the students had been accustomed to basic reading aloud a short sentence with some small pronunciation mistakes Speaking long sentence fluently, accurately or presenting is almost impossible to them 2.4.2 The textbook The reading materials used in the study consisted of selected texts from new English Textbook 10 (learner-centered and communicative approach with theme-based teaching) published by Education Publishing House and Pearson In the textbook, there are 10 units with diverse topics related to themes: Our lives, Our society, Our environment, Our future sections were included in one unit namely: Getting started, Language, Skills, Communication and Culture, Looking back and Project in which there are some Looking back and Project lessons are not simple enough that did not require a lot tutoring from the teacher However, some of the Project required a lot of attention and time to be fulfilled It is hoped that English teachers will have a better insight look in tutoring students to integrate their knowledge into conducting the Project requirements The study was conducted when the participants were in the first semester when they already had had knowledge about basic structures as well as vocabulary in textbook in lower secondary level Therefore, the author found that it matched with the objectives of the learning program and students’ levels of competence In the narrow scope of this study, I only focused on using grammar tutorials to improve the students’ speaking skill in two Project parts of Looking back and Project lessons namely Unit 3: Music - Period 25 – Looking back and Project and Unit 7: Cultural Diversity- Period 70- Looking back and Project 2.4.3 The reality of teaching and learning speaking skill at Nong Cong high school As mentioned above, speaking skill (presenting skill) in Project lesson in new Tieng Anh 10 is the last part if the eighth lesson that make up of one unit in the textbook In order to fulfill their project required in the Textbook, the teacher is obliged to provide students with guidance how to do, what to with their Project in which targeted Grammar and structure of overall lesson is indispensible The students in our school, however, have been facing numerous challenges in speaking lesson because of their poor source of vocabulary, structures They are unaware of utilizing what they have learnt in the lesson effectively to produce the lesson outcomes Some get tired of speaking in front of other people In addition, most of them have difficulty using the obtained structure and background knowledge to produce their utterances Moreover, Project- based learning is unfamiliar to students from lower secondary schools They are not experienced enough to work in group and make their lesson outcome confidently Of all speaking skills targeted in new English 10, only presenting skill in some Project lessons are mentioned in this study 10 2.5 Stages of the study 2.5.1 Pre-test and post-test The pre-test and post-test were designed to assess the students’ ability (see appendix and appendix 2) They were consisted of topics which the students were required to speak about to minutes The topics relate to some kinds of music they have listened and the main features of Vietnamese cultures they have been exposed to A marking scheme was designed to evaluate the participants’ speaking in terms of fluency and accuracy The speaking products of each student were recorded and marked independently by two teachers to ensure inter-rater reliability To measure students' fluency, researchers have developed a simple and very brief procedure that uses recorded tapes to determine the number of words that students can speak in one minute To measure students’ speaking accuracy, I subtracted the total number of errors from the total of one hundred spoken words An error includes any word that is omitted, mispronounced, or misused Each time a word is spoken incorrectly, it is counted as an error Words delivered correctly that are repeated more than once, errors self-corrected by the student, and words mispronounced due to dialect or speech impairments are not counted as errors 2.5.2 Conducting project parts in a language classroom Step 1: Initial question At this phase, the teacher starts the teaching and learning process by giving students essential questions The questions need to be the ones which engage the students and relevant to the goals that the students must achieve during the project development The questions must be in relation to the knowledge that the students must construct and the topic must fit to their proficiency level It ought to be related with students’ daily life Step 2: Design a plan for the project The design of a plan for the project involves not only the teacher but also the students In designing the plan for the project, the teacher gives students chance to participate by sharing their ideas on the projects which they are about to work on in order to make the project meet with the students’ interest, capability, and expectation The design of plan for the project includes the explanation about the rules of the project development, the selection of the materials, the activities leading to the project accomplishment, and the tools needed for the project Step 3: Tutor students with Grammar and structure Draw students’ attention to the project objectives as well as how to realize this objective Equip them with grammar focus in the lesson, that is, infinitives, compound sentences, passive voice to research on Vietnamese celebrations Step 4: Create a schedule At this stage, the teacher and students discuss about the time allocation of working on the project The teacher and students make an agreement about 11 the deadline of the project development in which the students must submit their end product Step Monitor the students and the progress of the project Monitoring students’ progress on the project is the most crucial stage of project development It is very prominent since the success of project accomplishment is determined by how good the students their project Moreover, it is at this stage in which the teacher is required to play the role as a monitor The teacher is responsible to facilitate the learning process, to guide the students during the project development, to help students when they find difficulties, and to ensure that the student is involved in the project Step Assess the outcome After the students turn in their end product, the teacher conducts assessment to measure the students’ achievement It can be product- oriented or process-oriented The teacher also provides students with feedback at this phase Assessing the outcome helps teacher in designing instruction to teach more effectively Step Evaluate the experience This is the last stage of project development where the teacher and students reflect on the project they have done At this stage, the teacher needs to make sure that the students are able to find answers of essential question The teacher and students share their experience of conducting the project and discuss about the projects, what needs change and improvement for the following 12 project, as well as share ideas on the new projects PART 3: CONCLUSION 3.1 Discussion of the main findings The study was carried out with a view to explore the effectiveness of using grammar tutorial to improve the students’ speaking ability The result was collected from the student’s reflection and the differences of pretest and posttest results 3.1.1 Pre-test results In this section, the scores from the pre-tests of each group are calculated to find the mean, standard deviation, range and score frequency These values of both groups are then compared with each other to reveal any difference in the students’ accuracy and fluency in speaking skill in Table Table 1: The experimental and control group’s score in the pretest Student Experimental group Student Control group E1 C1 Table 2: The E2 C2 experimental E3 C3 group’s score E4 C4 percentage in E5 C5 the pretest E6 C6 Group 5-