An investigation into assessing speaking of students learning new english textbook in a high school in vietnam

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN THỊ HIỀN AN INVESTIGATION INTO ASSESSING SPEAKING OF STUDENTS LEARNING NEW ENGLISH TEXTBOOK IN A HIGH SCHOOL IN VIETNAM (Nghiên cứu việc đánh giá kỹ nói học sinh học chương trình sách giáo khoa mới, trường THPT Việt Nam) Major : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 HANOI – 2019 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN THỊ HIỀN AN INVESTIGATION INTO ASSESSING SPEAKING OF STUDENTS LEARNING NEW ENGLISH TEXTBOOK IN A HIGH SCHOOL IN VIETNAM (Nghiên cứu việc đánh giá kỹ nói học sinh học chương trình sách giáo khoa mới, trường THPT Việt Nam) Major: : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 Supervisor : Dr Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Quỳnh Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Quỳnh HANOI – 2019 DECLARATION The thesis entitled “An investigation into assessing speaking of students learning new English textbook in a high school in Vietnam” has been submitted for the Master of English teaching methodology I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis I have fully acknowledged and referenced the ideas and work of others, whether published or unpublished, in my thesis My thesis does not contain work extracted from a thesis, dissertation or research paper previously presented for another degree or diploma at this or any other universities Signed Date / / i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply indebted to the individuals that provided support for the completion of this study Dr Nguyen Thi Ngoc Quynh supervised the entire study and, most importantly, read and discussed every aspect and section of this dissertation with assiduity Her recommendations also helped to shape the form and contents of the final version I am equally indebted for the exceptional friendliness, kindness, and patience that she demonstrated during my study at ULIS-VNU and my research My sincere thanks also go to the Dean - Dr Huỳnh Anh Tuấn as well as the staff members at the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), Vietnam National University (VNU), who are always so kind and supportive during my study time In addition, I would like to express my thankfulness to all the participating students and teachers at the high school who helped me in my research, especially the teachers who accompanied me during a long time of my data collection time The results I have achieved today partially belong to them Last but not least, I would like to thank my family for their motivation for me to overcome all the difficulties and to become a better me now Thanking you all ii ABSTRACT Language assessment in general and oracy assessment in particular has posed language teachers high schools in Vietnam many troubles One of the outstanding issues relate to the design of speaking activities that saw poorly, boring tasks that not motivate learners while learning the skill The other issue refers to the assessing criteria that are not familiarized by language teachers at schools This research aims at finding popular task types that teachers used when assessing speaking Also, the study provides a framework for speaking assessment criteria that can be applicable for teachers as well as problems encountered by teachers when doing speaking assessment The study was carried out with teachers of English at a school in Hai Duong The results reveal a fact that most teachers are not familiar with task types neither assessment criteria Last but not least, the researcher would like to suggest some changes in teaching English at schools so that students can balance among language skills and aspects iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS PART I INTRODUCTION PART II – DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW The nature of speaking The nature of speaking assessments 2.1 Assessment, testing and evaluation 2.2 Principles of language assessment 2.3 Speaking assessment 2.4 A taxonomy of oral proficiency 2.5 Designing speaking task type assessment 2.6 Speaking scales 2.7 Criteria for speaking assessment 2.8 Types of speaking assessment 2.9 Validity and reliability Studies in the field of speaking assessment 3.1 Speaking assessment in the world 3.2 Speaking assessment practice in Vietnam 3.3 Speaking in the new textbooks in Vietnam CHAPTER II METHODOLOGY The research design Participants Data collection instruments iv Procedures 39 4.1 Conducting the interviews 40 CHAPTER III RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 42 Results from interviews 42 PART III CONCLUSION 46 Summary of the findings 46 Limitations of the study 47 Suggestions for further research 48 Recommendation 48 REFERENCES 49 APPENDICES I APPENDIX A: Questionnaires for teachers of English I v ABBREVIATIONS ACTFL: The American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages CEFR: The Common European Framework of Reference EFL: English as a foreign language SLA: Second Language Acquisition VSTEP: Vietnamese Standardized Testing English Proficiency vi 4.1 Conducting the interviews The interviews were carried out with English teachers teaching English at a school to explore the insight of speaking assessment practice as well as identify some difficulties when they the speaking assessment at their schools According to Nunan (1989: 60), interview is defined as “a directed conversation between an investigator and an individuals or groups of individuals in order to gather information” In addition, Punch (2005: 168) also affirms “it is a very good way of accessing people‟s perceptions, meaning, definitions of situations, and constructions of reality It is also one of the most powerful ways we have of understanding others” However, the limitation of the interview is that students may forget some of the details of their thought processes or may describe what they perceive as the “right” answer Nunan (1992) states that interview can be placed on a continuum ranging from unstructured interviews through semi-structured interview to structured interview Of the three types of interviews, semi-structured seems to be broadly used among the researchers because of its flexibility “The semi-structured interview has found favour with many researchers, particularly those working within an interpretative research tradition” (Nunan, 1992: 149) Semi-structured interviews are types of interviews that are conducted using an open framework Therefore, the openness in the framework allows for conversational, focused two-way communication The main use of semi-structured interviews is to help in giving and receiving information They are not formulated like the questionnaire framework In a questionnaire, detailed questions are formulated beforehand In a semi-structured interview, interviewing starts off with the most general questions or topics, before narrowing down to the more specific detailed information The relevance of topics is identified and is followed by accompanying issues such as the effectiveness, availability and expense, as specific issues that not require prior preparation and planning However, not all questions are prepared and synthesized before time In an effort to allow the interviewer and 40 interviewee the flexibility to probe for details and discuss issues arising from the interview, the majority of the questions are created during the interview The guide for semi-structured interviews is prepared beforehand and acts as the propelling framework for the interview Semi-structured interviews serve as a highly valuable tool for the collection of qualitative data in the research process According to Schensul & LeCompte (1999), the benefit of this data collection tool is that semi-structured interviews “combine the flexibility of the unstructured, open-ended interview with the directionality and agenda of the survey instrument to produce focused, qualitative, textual data at the factor level” (p 149) This type of interview consists of a set of predetermined questions, closely related to the field of researcher‟s interest, which are commonly used to determine factors, variables, items and attributes of the variables under analysis (Schensel et al., 1999) The advantage of semi-structured interviews is in their ability to clarify the central domains and factors of the study, to operationalize the factors studied into variables, to develop preliminary hypotheses, and to create a qualitative base for the construction of an ethnographic survey (Schensel et al., 1999) Nevertheless, alongside the advantages of semi-structured interviews as a data collection method, they also contain certain limitations, including the threat to the data validity and reliability, difficult y in recording information, excess of information usually provided during such interviews, and the long time required for their completion (Walsh & Wigens, 2003) For the purposes of the present study, the interview consisted of three main questions (1) What task types you use when assessing speaking skill of your students? (2) What criteria you use when assessing speaking performance? (3) What problems you encounter when assessing speaking performance? 41 CHAPTER III RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS The research conducted in a high school denotes some gaps in the teaching and assessment of the speaking skill Those gaps are linked to the lack of relevance between examination and the implementation of oral tasks and the development of the speaking skill in the learners Consequently, the assessment of the oral production is affected by the lack of speaking practice in activities and tasks Problems as the overuse of L1 instead of English and the focus on grammar are aspects that are affecting the teaching and students‟ development of English and take off opportunities for speaking Results from interviews Five teachers of English at the school are selected for the semi-structured interview They are selected because they have just passed the C1 level exam and they seemed to have better understanding of speaking and assessing speaking criteria Some of them has been trained in several training programs of The Department of Education and Training The researcher asked the first teacher some questions about problems she encountered when conducting speaking assessment She confessed that she does not many speaking activities as well as speaking test while teaching The reason for that is that the students are not interested in speaking They just want to the written test to strengthen grammar and reading ability The other reason is that the large class size prevents her from doing speaking activities She wants to teach a smaller class so that she can help students develop oral skills She mainly tests students‟ speaking skills by asking students to present their opinion about issues in or minutes and assessed based on pronunciation, word ranges and intonation Topics that she chooses are limited in the textbook Most of her students prepared and practiced some related topics, so when being assessed, students tend to present what they have prepared or event leant by heart The second teacher said that he ignores most of the speaking activities in class because he did not have enough time to the task Besides, he has limited 42 understanding about language assessment He would like to attend a course specified on language testing and assessment He also tests students‟ speaking skills by asking students to present their opinion about issues in or minutes and assessed based on pronunciation, grammar, word ranges and intonation Topics that she chooses are limited in the textbook The other three teachers said that sometimes they ask students to present their opinion about issues in or minutes and assessed mainly based on grammar and word ranges Topics that she chooses are limited in the textbook They are aware of the importance of speaking skills and they really want to help students to talk in the class but the constrains of the curriculum and the attitude of students towards speaking skill prevent them from doing time-consuming speaking activities They said that they expected some changes in the way of graduation exam so that the focus of teaching will be on oral skills Based on this interview, teachers mostly focus on vocabulary, pronunciation, conversational skills and content Grammar divided the group, and fluency was the aspect that was least focused on by teachers These results would be consistent with the fact that in classroom situations students speak relatively short periods of time Therefore, it seems natural that fluency is left with less attention, whereas vocabulary, pronunciation and content, all easy to assess even from a relatively short utterance, gain more focus from the teachers These answers are also consistent with the lack of time teachers mentioned: in a classroom situation, where there are a number of things to focus on, teachers only have time to focus on easily assessable parts of the oral skills, since there is no time for long discussions This, however, does not give the student an extensive view of his/her oral skills, students only learn short units of language, such as the pronunciation of one word Moreover, it is easier for students to pronounce a word perfectly when repeated right after a teacher, but when students use that same word again on their own they might pronounce it wrong So, they not learn the rules of the language, they only learn to listen and repeat It was no surprise that the most common negative factors participants mentioned were the lack of time and number of students per classroom However, 43 even with many students, most teachers mentioned how it is possible to exercise speaking skills and that only the assessment is difficult This is consistent with what Mäkelä (2005) found in his study, that there are a lot of exercises rehearsing oral skills in language text books However, I see both positive and negative sides to rehearsing without assessment If we are only exercising oral skills, students will probably gain more confidence in using the language, which is positive, but then again if the skills are not assessed, they could be at a very poor level This can create problems later on, when students assume they can speak English well, and then receive negative feedback on it at some point in their lives This can cause bitterness towards the school system and also towards speaking English It is vital that students are aware of how much their oral skills are evaluated and how much oral skills influence their grade However, half of the participants mentioned that their students not know the assessment criteria for oral skills that well Also, few participants mentioned that oral skills are not at all important or that they not affect the grade student gets It was interesting to see that one situation where teachers felt it was easy to assess speaking skills, was when a student is reading a text out loud or answering a question This was similar to the answers received from the questions on what teachers focus on while assessing speaking skills However, as I already mentioned before, this mainly shows pronunciation skills of the student It was interesting to see that in the answers none of the teachers mentioned that they would like to have more possibilities to assess oral skills Some teachers did mention the fear of more work that could come from the increased emphasis of oral skills To me this seems like a situation where people are overworked and as a result find no interest in doing something they not have clear instructions for The reason for this traditional testing tendency can be found in relation to the issue of test reliability and the high stakes test situation of high schools Namely, classroom speaking assessment is assigned to support learning, but at the same time it should be a reliable and objective measurement tool For this, there is some 44 evidence from the teacher interviews The majority of teachers indicated that their main concern with regard to classroom speaking assessment was improvement of assessment reliability and objectivity The most challenging factor was an oversized class problem Teachers argued that more than 40 students were too large a number to complete assessment within a class period of 45 minutes Overall, the study of the current status of speaking assessment in a high school pointed to both the the qualities of traditional formal examinations for testing and measuring students‟ achievements On the other hand, the strong tendency of the testing administration towards preferring traditional formal tests was the main reason for teachers‟ pessimistic perceptions of its positive effects on teaching and learning 45 PART III CONCLUSION This part presents a summary of all the findings in this research as well as the limitations and suggestions for further study Based on what was found in the study of the assessment of the speaking skill in a high school, and whose principal purpose is to describe how the speaking skill is assessed, the questions that were established in the research project were: what task types teacher use when assessing speaking skill of students? What criteria teachers use when assessing speaking performance? and what problems teachers encounter when assessing students‟ speaking performance? Based on these questions, findings related to the matter of the research were found from the study Summary of the findings The research aims at investigating the current situation of assessing speaking skill of students learning new English textbook in a high school By conducting a research to investigate speaking practice at a high school with teachers of English, some findings can be listed out Firstly, it could be confirmed that teachers are aware of the necessary of assessing speaking skill; they not spend much time and energy on the speaking skill In other words, the focus of teaching is not on oral communication just because of the exam-based curriculum Secondly, teachers not have sufficient understanding of speaking and assessment as well as speaking task types Despite being trained about assessment at university; teachers not remember much about it Thirdly, there should be changes in the way language is test in the final exam so that the focus of teaching shift from exam-based to competence based to develop full language ability Although oral interviews have been the preferred and most commonly used method of speaking assessment, there has been a growing trend toward the assessment of peer performance on interactional tasks This has been buttressed by findings from SLA research on the facilitative effects of peer interactions on L2 46 learning and on the value placed on pair and group work in the L2 classrooms which is generally regarded as good pedagogical practice in promoting positive washback In addition, peer interactions have the advantage of bypassing the power imbalance that is inherent in oral proficiency interviews The finding also shows that students not know anything about how they are assessed during the speaking test This can be seen as one of the drawback in terms of teaching Louma (2003) states that the test-takers should be well informed of the assessment criteria so that they can focus on those points to make their performance more effective This is partly because teachers are not sure about the marking criteria They mark the speaking performance by experience or subjective impression Last but not least, the influence of the exam-based curriculum has had bad washback on both teaching and learning of oral skills at upper-high schools This is the cause of unbalanced attention which has been paid to teaching and learning of speaking and listening In coming years, there should be alternative forms of assessment for those who expect to develop their oral skill One of the possible solutions is that we can have oral exams throughout the school year Those who gain good achievement in those exams will not be required to take the final exam for graduation, or they may still sit for the exam if they want some plus marks for the other subjects Limitations of the study To some extent, this study has provided an in-depth understanding of current situation about assessing speaking skill in a high school However, there are some limitations existing from this study Firstly, the study carried out at a high school in one province and with randomly selected students for questionnaire, not the gifted students so the results may not reflect other institutions with other students Secondly, the current study employ simple research design i.e questionnaires and interviews, the results therefore may not be completely valid and hard to be generable in other research settings 47 Suggestions for further research This paper leaves a lot of room for future research, more precise questions are needed, more participants would give a more reliable outcome and also students’ opinion was not asked in this study Furthermore, it would be interesting to study what kind of an effect the new optional oral task will have to the teaching and assessment of oral skills It would also be interesting to follow lessons, since I am sure that it would give a more overall view of the actual classroom situations Besides, the research found out that teacher should focus more on practical techniques and apply these techniques when they carry out speaking assessments at schools Further research may about the assessment techniques which could be applied to not make students feel stressful when being tested This paper leaves a lot of room for future research, more precise questions are needed, more participants would give a more reliable outcome and also students‟ opinion was not asked in this study Furthermore, it would be interesting to study what kind of an effect the new optional oral course will have to the teaching and assessment of oral skills in other courses It would also be interesting to follow lessons, since I am sure that it would give a more overall view of the actual classroom situations Recommendation The researcher recommend that teacher can be informed with the whole theory about assessment in order to undertake more complete and organized their work as English teachers and to improve the teaching and learning 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Language Learning Tasks Lancaster Practical Paper in English Language Education, (Vol 7) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall International, 47-68 52 APPENDICES Questionnaires for teachers of English Q1 Have you had any training about assessment? a Yes, I have b No, I have never c I have limited knowledge about assessment Q2 What are the types of task you use to assess speaking? a Word repetition task b Direct response task cRead aloud task d Picture cued task e Translation task f Questions and answers task g Paraphrasing task h Interviews task i Role play task j Discussions and conversation task Q3 What criteria you use to assess speaking ability? a Pronunciation b Vocabulary c Grammatical accuracy d Fluency e Turn-taking f Conversational skills g Sociolinguistic skills h Non- verbal skills i Content I Q4 Do you know about these types of speaking assessment? a Formative assessment b Summative assessment c Self-assessment d Criterion-reference assessment II ... and task-based approaches to language teaching has accentuated the incongruity of existing assessment measures Calls for matching language learning and evaluation have been repeatedly made since... assess the students? ?? manner of introducing a topic, manner of maintaining their arguments, manner of elaborating their arguments, manner of asking appropriate questions and manner of following up...HANOI – 2019 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN THỊ HIỀN AN INVESTIGATION INTO ASSESSING SPEAKING OF STUDENTS LEARNING