Using group work activities to reduce students speaking anxiety an action research

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ĐINH THỊ THÚY USING GROUP WORK ACTIVITIES TO REDUCE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ANXIETY- AN ACTION RESEARCH Sử dụng hoạt động nhóm để làm giảm bớt lo lắng học sinh học nói M.A MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 HANOI - 2012 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ĐINH THỊ THÚY USING GROUP WORK ACTIVITIES TO REDUCE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ANXIETY- AN ACTION RESEARCH Sử dụng hoạt động nhóm để làm giảm bớt lo lắng học sinh học nói M.A MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 SUPERVISOR: PHẠM MINH HIỀN, M.A HANOI - 2012 TAB ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND TABLES TABLE OF CONTENTS PART A: INTRODUCTION I Rationale of the study II Aims of the study III Scope of the study IV Methods of the study V Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 1.2 1.3 Speaking skills and its related concepts 1.1.1 The 1.1.2 Elem Group work in a speaking lesson 1.2.1 Defi 1.2.2 Adv 1.2.3 Teac Definitions of anxiety in Speaking English in classroom (SEC) 1.3.1 Defi 1.3.2 Anx 1.4 Main factors causing students’ anxiety in SEC 1.5 Effects of anxiety on students of SEC 1.6 Teacher’s role to students’ anxiety in SEC 1.7 Teaching techniques to reduce students anxiety in SEC Practical grouping strategies 12 2.1 Group formation 12 2.1.1 Random grouping 12 2.1.2 Student- selected grouping 13 2.1.3 Teacher- formed grouping 13 2.2 Procedures of group work 14 2.3 Common oral activities for group work 15 2.3.1 Opening- circle discussion 15 2.3.2 Role play 2.3.3 Information Gap Activity (IGA) 2.3.4 Problem- solving 15 15 16 2.3.5 Other picture card activities 16 2.4 Problems and solutions in using class group work 17 Summary 19 Chapter 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 20 2.1 Research questions 20 2.2 Description of data collection instruments 20 2.2.1 The rationale for using questionnaire 20 2.2.2 Questionnaire 21 2.3 Participants 21 2.3.1 The students 21 2.3.2 The teacher 21 2.4 Research method 22 2.4.1 Overview of action research 22 2.4.2 Procedure of the action research 23 2.4.2.1 Initiation 23 2.4.2.2 Preliminary investigation 23 2.4.2.3 Hypothesis 23 2.4.2.4 Intervention 24 2.4.2.5 Evaluation 25 2.4.2.6 Dissemination 25 2.4.2.7 Follow up 25 2.5 Data collecting procedure 26 2.6 Data analysis 26 2.7 Summary 26 Chapter 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 27 3.1 The initial data 27 Results from questionnaire 27 3.2 The post data 32 Data collected from questionnaire 32 3.4 Discussion 34 3.5 Summary .36 PART C: CONCLUSION 38 Summary of main findings 38 Limitation and recommendation for further research 40 REFERENCES APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE APPENDIX 2: QUESTIONNAIRE Appendix 3: LESSON PLANS FOR SPEAKING GROUP-WORK ACTIVITIES OF THE STUDY Appendix 4: The description of the second lesson during the intervention: Task 2- Unit 13: FILMS AND CINEMA –(English 10), page 134 LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Table 2.2 Procedures of group work 14 Table 2.4: Problems and solutions in using class group work 17 Table 1: Students‟ evaluation on their anxiety in SEC 27 Table 2: Students‟ feeling when speaking in group work activities 29 Table 3: Student attitude to group work activities in speaking lessons 29 Table 4: Student‟s attitudes toward grouping strategies 30 Table 5: Students‟ preferences to group work activities in speaking lessons 33 Table 6: Students‟ self- evaluated participation in speaking activities in group 33 Chart 1: Students‟ evaluation on their anxiety in SEC 27 Chart 2: Factors making students anxious in SEC most 28 Chart 3: Students‟ favourite activities 31 Chart 4: Students‟ confident participation in group work activities 32 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS SEC Speaking English in classroom DHHS Dong Hy High School AR Action Research MAM Making a mistake BCM Being corrected mistakes as soon as they are made BAS Being asked to speak without preparation ADT A difficult topic SFW Speaking in front of the whole class AO Another one PART A: INTRODUCTION I Rationale of the study In Vietnam for some recent decades, English has taken more and more important role in almost all aspects such as: politics, economy, culture, communication, education and information technology, especially since Viet Nam adopted its open door policy and become a member of WTO English helps Vietnamese labours to have access to latest information in the world and take part in the world labour force with English as an international means of communication in this modern age However, it is the fact that using English for real communication in general, with limited English speaking ability is a big problem for Vietnamese learners The traditional teaching and learning English at high schools in Vietnam leads to the fact that students are inclined to develop reading and writing skills seem to remain a big problem to Vietnamese learners, meanwhile speaking and listening skills are almost ignored Although students can some tasks in English, they can‟t use English as a communicative tool Since the teaching approach Communicative Learning Teaching (CLT) was introduced, the teaching and learning of English has changed its emphasis from “Master of language Structure” to “Master of use” According to this theory, teachers teach students how to understand as well as how to perform But due to the strong effect of the traditional way of ELT in schools in Vietnam, the panorama of ELT, particularly including speaking skill remains dull Like in most of schools in the north of Vietnam, the majority of the students in Dong Hy high school (DHHS) where I work, have no ample opportunity to study the English language because they have few English lessons per week (three English lessons per week) Though they are encouraged to take few courses in school in the use of English, the content of these English courses are grossly inadequate for the students to acquire requisite skills in effective use of language for communication and for the give and take of social experience In order to study English as a foreign language and be successful with it, the students must be helped by the teacher to acquire skills in the four language art skills, namely: speaking, listening, writing, and reading Of the four skills mentioned above, speaking is the skills secondary school students need great support Recently, teachers in my school have introduced activities through which they can help students go beyond the mastery of structures to the points and use them to communicate more meaningfully in real situations Also, group work approach has also been applied in all kinds of lessons and has shown its effectiveness It is said that using group work is one of good ways to motivate students in learning English By grouping students, teachers enables students to help one another study Using group work has many advantages such as more language practice in classroom, more purposeful communication, more students‟ involvement and motivation, more chances for students to help each other, more chances for students to foster responsibility, autonomy and independence (Underwood, 1987; Hyland, 1991; Ur, 1996) Therefore, simply putting students together in a group is no guarantee that it is beneficial Without careful planning and facilitation, group work can frustrate students and instructors and will be a waste of time In DHHS during the group work there, the better students contribute a lot whereas some weaker ones become passive I realized that there were much more students who were anxious than those confident in speaking English in class Moreover, the anxious students have differently certain manifestations, for example giving frequent communicative feedback such as (uh- huh) and playing with the hair, clothes, or other manipulability objects It seemed that studying on students‟ anxiety was really meaningfully important As we all see “Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power.” - said by Tyron Edwards, a famous American theologian of “New Dictionary of Thoughts” The wish to help her students to overcome the obstacles in speaking English encouraged the researcher to carry out this study, entitled the use of group work to reduce grade ten students‟ anxiety in speaking lessons at Dong Hy High School 10 II Aims and objectives of the study The study aims to: gain understanding of factors that cause students‟ anxiety in speaking English lessons in one tenth form class of Dong Hy high school - experiementing solutions that can address anxiety-causing factors so as to help the students to feel less anxious in speaking English in the speaking lessons Those aims are specified into the following objectives: - to find out what students say about factors that make them anxious in speaking English in the classroom; - to find out effective classroom techniques that can create a low-anxiety classroom atmostphere so that students can be more active in speaking English in the lessons Research questions: In order to achieve the above-mentioned aims and objectives, the study is to seek answers to the following research questions: What factors a group of grade 10th students in Dong Hy high school think cause their anxiety in speaking English? What classroom techniques that help to reduce the students‟ stated anxiety in speaking English? III Scope of the study As an action research project, the study was conducted with the researcher‟s own students in her own class The study is, therefore, limited itself to just one „problem‟ the researcher was encountered with in her teaching, i.e students‟ speaking anxiety On the basis of the analysis of the factors the students, who were in one grade-10th form, stated, the researcher experiemented with some interventions to address the problem 11 APPENDIX 2: QUESTIONNAIRE Time: Class: 10A12 This questionnaire is part of the survey of my study I would be grateful if you are answer truthfully Your responses will be anonymous and strictly used for my research Please tick one appropriate box for one each item How did you feel about speaking English after these six weeks? Very confident Quite confident A little bit more confident No change Which group work activities made you feel more relaxed? Discussion in groups about a suggested title Communicative game Role play Information Gap Activity Interview How you self- evaluate your participation in group work activities? a I spoke most of the time b I spoke as much as others in the group c I spoke the least in the group d I never spoke in the group Thank you for your cooperation! III APPENDIX 1: PhiÕu ®iỊu tra Thêi gian: Líp: 10 A12 Phiếu điều tra phần nghiên cứu đề tài nghiên cứu Tôi biết ơn em trả lời cách trung thực Câu trả lời em không công khai đợc sử dụng nghiêm túc cho mục đích nghiên cứu Em hÃy đánh dấu vào ô lựa chọn thích hợp Khi tham gia vào hoạt động nói tiếng Anh, mức độ lo lắng em ? a Em không lo lắng b Em lo lắng chút c Em lo lắng d Em lo lắng 2, Nhng yếu tố khiến em lo lng tham gia vào hoạt động nhóm gi hc núi nh vËy? a Em mắc lỗi b Giáo viên chữa lỗi sau em nói sai c Em khơng chuẩn bị trước nói d Chủ đề khó e Em nói trước lớp e Các lí khác … Theo em nãi theo nhãm cóthuâṇ tiêṇ khơng? Cã Kh«ng 4, Theo em, học theo nhóm? a Thú vị em tham gia khơng khí học sinh động b Khiến lớp trật tự lộn xộn IV c Khiến em mạnh dạn thực hành kĩ giao tiếp Tiếng Anh nhiều d Em khơng có hội lên tiếng bạn học tranh lượt nói em d Học sinh có nhiều hội để sử dụng tiếng Việt Nếu em đươcc̣ hoaṭđơngc̣ nói theo nhóm thủthṭhoaṭđơngc̣ nhóm giáo viên áp dụng em thích nhất? Em tư cc̣ hoṇ nhóm hocc̣ minh̀ Giáo viên xếp em vào nhóm Giáo viên ln ln xếp thay đởi thành viên nhóm 6, Trong hoaṭđơngc̣ học nói em thích tham gia hoaṭđơngc̣ ? Thảo luận nhóm theo chủ điểm Chơi trị chơi ngơn ngữ Đóng vai, nói theo mẫu hội thoại học Khoảng trống thông tin Phỏng vấn Thc hnh luyn ng õm ng Cám ơn hợp tác em! V Appendix 2: Phiếu điều tra Thời gian: Lớp: 10A12 Phiếu điều tra phần nghiên cứu đề tài nghiên cứu Tôi biết ơn em trả lời cách trung thực Câu trả lời em không công khai đợc sử dụng nghiêm túc cho mục đích nghiên cứu Em hÃy đánh dấu vào ô lựa chọn thích hợp cđa m×nh 1, Em cảm thấy thếnào tham gia giờluyêṇ nói theo nhóm sau tuần? Tự tin nhiều Khá tự tin Tự tin chút it́ Khơng thay đởi 2, Hoạt động nhóm theo em thú vị nhất? Thảo luận nhóm theo chủ điểm Chơi trị chơi ngơn ngữ Đóng vai, nói theo mẫu hội thoại học Khoảng trống thông tin Phỏng vấn Thực hành luyện ngữ âm đồng Em tư đc̣ ánh giánhư thếnào em làm việc theo nhóm? Em đươcc̣ nói hầu hết thời gian Em đươcc̣ nói bằng baṇ khác nhóm Em nói it́ nhóm Em khơng bao giờtham gia nói nhúm Cám ơn hợp tác em! VI Appendix 3: LESSON PLANS FOR SPEAKING GROUP-WORK ACTIVITIES OF THE STUDY Three lesson Plans for Speaking Group Work Activities in the Intervention Stage * Unit 12: Music (speaking lesson Task 2, page 127) Date: Friday, March 2nd, 2012 Level of the students: Grade 10 Organization: groups with 5-6 students in each Time: 20 minutes Speaking group work activity: Interview I Objectives: By the end of this lesson Ss will be able to express their favorite kinds of music, the reason why they liked those kinds of music and the time when they listen to those music or singers whom they liked II Material: Textbook: “Tieng Anh 10” Nha Xuat Ban Giao Duc III Teaching Aids -Board, chalk, -6 role cards for each group (1 pink card for interviewer and yellow cards for interviewees) -25 blue practice cards for each group IV Procedure Stage Time Pre- 6‟ VII activity Teac stud Folk Rock Music Classical Jazz Pop - T writes down some suggested words on the board and asks Ss to read in chorus e.g rousing/ lyrical/serene/peaceful/ pleasant / help (smb)forget troubles / make (smb)excited /make relaxed translation Purpose: To draw students‟ interest in the lesson To expand Ss' vocabulary of music T gives clear, detailed instructions for the required task Whileactivity 8‟ VIII Post- 6‟ activity Handout for interviewers Kind of music Reason for listening to music Favorite band/musician Favorite song/piece of music When listen to music IX * Unit 14: The World Cup (Speaking lesson Task page 147) Date: Monday, 26th, 2012 Time: 20 minutes Organization: groups with 5-6 students in each Level of Ss: Grade 10 Speaking group work activity: Information Gap Activity I Objectives: After the lesson, students will be able to talk about the world cups which were held They can talk about some football teams, about the information related to the world cups like the time and the place where the world cups were held, the events in the world cups, etc II Material: Textbook: “English 10” Training and Education Publisher III Teaching Aids -Board, chalk, some sheets of paper A4, some pictures of football teams Information cards which contain different pieces of information, one card per student IV Procedure Stage Time Pre- 6‟ activity While- 8‟ activity X Post- 6‟ activity Handouts for each member of the groups The first World Cup was held _ in 1930 The sixth World Cup _ between Sweden and The _ match was between Uruguay and Argentina Brazil was the winner and Sweden was _ defeated Argentina by to Sweden was defeated Brazil by Argentina was _ The sixth World Cup was in 1958 Uruguay became the Argentina was runner up _ became the champion and Sweden was runner up XI Appendix 4: The description of the second lesson during the intervention: Task 2- Unit 13: FILMS AND CINEMA –(English 10), page 134 * Original Task 2: Work in groups: Find out what your friend feel about each kind of film Use the words in the table below Example: A: What you think of horror films? B: Oh, I find them really awful C: I don’t quite agree with you I find them very interesting Detective films Science fiction films Love story films Cartoon films War films Thrillers Action films * Intervention task 2:  Pre-speaking activity: Brainstorming (4 minutes) To check if students understand the different types of films and the adjective Preteach is necessary The students played a game called “who knows the most adjectives?” T writes a word of a kind of films then asks students to give more adjectives to describe it E.g Cartoon films – funny, interesting, attractive, colorful, Detective films-exciting, nervous XII Teacher can introduce some other types of films which attracted a lot of attention because these kinds of film are popular especially among the young: comedy, family, fantasy, historical and so on Through this activity, some new adjectives: moving/ good fun/ violent/ exciting/ terrifying were presented A brief introduction to the topic was then given to the students to arouse more interest in the speaking topic Revising the frequently-used structure The frequently-used structures in the short dialogue were written on the blackboard Teacher conducts a mini substitution drill to practice a) I find + O + adj Example: T: interesting Ss: I find them interesting b) Showing agreement using “ Me, too.” Example: S1: I find detective films boring S2: Me, too I find thrillers exciting S1: Me, too Demonstrate the model dialogue with a strong student The teacher gave clear, detailed instruction for the task and set the time  While activity: (8 minutes) Work with three other students and demonstrate the model conversation T: What you think of horror films? S1: Oh, I find them quite disgusting S2: I don’t quite agree with you I find them interesting S3: Me, too What you think of thrillers? Get students into groups of four randomly, one passive/ anxious student in each group was assigned the role of an interviewer with the question “What you think XIII of … films? One dominant was assigned the role of a secretary to complete the table given by the teacher Ss‟ name There were groups in this task There were students in group from1 to Group had students Let students practice the task When they finish, the dominant students was asked to write the information they had collected While the activity was in process, the teacher walked around and helped the students to implement the task and took notes of common mistakes In addition, the teacher reminded the secretary to complete the table which leads in to the post activity of task and come to task For more information, see the lesson plan in Appendix  Post Activity: (5 minutes) “4/3/2 technique” was implemented at this stage At the end of the task, group was asked to present their group work result to the whole class as the model Following is their discuss: Ss‟ name Vi Ngoc Anh Nguyen Bao Trung Tong Anh Tuan Hoang Tieu Phuong XIV The dominant student of group who copied their friends ideas onto the table gave the first delivery of the talk S/he explained that every time they prefer a type of film Example: Some of us/ Most of us/ None of us like … film because… Average students who were neither the best nor the worst in the groups gave the second same talk The most anxious student who was assigned the role of an interviewer was the last talker After the students had finished reporting, the teacher gave constructive comments, and the whole class applauded to encourage them Get the rest students talked in their group All the students seemed to be happy after the activity XV ... relating to ? ?anxiety in SEC”, including definitions, main factors causing students? ?? anxiety, effect of anxiety on students, teacher‟s role to students? ?? anxiety, teaching techniques to reduce students. .. theories related to the study: speaking skill, group works, students? ?? anxiety in SEC, teacher‟s role to students? ?? anxiety in SEC, and teaching techniques to reduce students? ?? anxiety in SEC The... harmful to students? ?? speaking It also was the factor causing students? ?? anxiety to SEC most Question 3: The students? ?? attitude when speaking in group work activities Table 2: Students? ?? feeling when speaking