Demotivating factors in speaking lessons of the non english major students at hanoi pedagogical university 2 and possible solutions

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ĐỖ THỊ HƢƠNG DEMOTIVATING FACTORS IN SPEAKING LESSONS OF THE NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS YẾU TỒ GÂY MẤT HỨNG THÚ TRONG GIỜ HỌC NÓI CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TẠI TRƢỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƢ PHẠM HÀ NỘI VÀ HƢỚNG KHẮC PHỤC M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi, 2017 VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ĐỖ THỊ HƢƠNG DEMOTIVATING FACTORS IN SPEAKING LESSONS OF THE NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS YẾU TỒ GÂY MẤT HỨNG THÚ TRONG GIỜ HỌC NĨI CỦA SINH VIÊN KHƠNG CHUN TẠI TRƢỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƢ PHẠM HÀ NỘI VÀ HƢỚNG KHẮC PHỤC M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Kiều Thị Thu Hƣơng Hanoi, 2017 AUTHORSHIP DECLARATION I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and it contains no material previously been submitted and accepted for any degree in any university or other publishing purposes The thesis is my own work and based on my own research Hanoi, December 2017 Signature Đỗ Thị Hƣơng i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Associate Professor Kieu Thi Thu Huong for her excellent supervision and careful guidance in the completion of this thesis She has provided me with valuable experience and comments, which I always highly appreciate My sincere thanks also go to my colleagues for their support, and students at Hanoi Pedagogical University for their cooperation in completing my survey questionnaire as well as attending the interview needed for this thesis paper Last but not least, my gratitude is extended to all members of my family for their love and continuant encouragement during the time I carried out this study ii ABSTRACT This minor thesis aims at investigating some demotivating factors that nonEnglish major students at Hanoi Pedagogical University have encountered in speaking lessons The study involved 150 non-English major students from different faculties except for the ones whose major is English For more accurate results, the researcher has also invited three English teachers to attend an interview Through the use of quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) methods as research instruments and the implementation of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software, the study has collected valuable data and drawn reliable conclusions There are six main demotivating factors facing nonEnglish major students at HPU2 in their speaking classes namely: students’ negative attitude toward language learning and speaking, teacher-related factors, facilityrelated factors, teaching materials, unfavorable classroom climate, and insufficient opportunities for speaking practice Several pedagogical strategies of these findings have been offered to assist instructors in helping learners be aware of and successfully cope with these demotivating factors iii CONTENTS AUTHORSHIP DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii Contents iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vii PART A INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the study Significance of the study Aims and objectives of the study Research questions Scope of the study Methods of the study Design of the study PART B THE STUDY CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Notions of speaking and teaching speaking skills 1.1.1 Speaking skills 1.1.2 Theories of teaching speaking skills 1.1.3 Characteristics of a successful speaking activity 1.1.4 Problems with teaching speaking 1.2 Motivation and demotivation 1.2.1 Motivation 1.2.2 Demotivation 1.3 Factors affecting students’ demotivation in learning speaking skills iv 1.3.1 Factors related to learning attitudes 1.3.2 Factors related to teacher’s competence and performances 1.3.3 Factors related to facilities 10 1.3.4 Factors related to teaching materials 10 1.3.5 Factors related to classroom climate 11 1.3.6 Factors related to speaking practice opportunities .11 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 13 2.1 Context of the study 13 2.1.1 An overview of the research site 13 2.1.2 Description of the participants 13 2.2 Research method 14 2.2.1 Quantitative research approach 14 2.2.2 Qualitative research approach 15 2.2.3 Research instruments 15 2.3 Data analysis 16 2.3.1 Quantitative data analysis 16 2.3.2 Qualitative data analysis 16 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 17 3.1 Quantitative results 17 3.1.1 Demographic Information 17 3.1.2 Demotivating factors in speaking lessons of non-English majors at HPU2 17 3.1.3 Possible solutions 22 3.2 Qualitative results 24 3.2.1 Semi-structured interviews with students 24 3.2.2 Semi-structured interviews with teachers 28 v 3.3 Discussion 32 3.3.1 Students’ negative attitude toward language learning and speaking 32 3.3.2 Teacher-related factors 32 3.3.3 Facility-related factors 32 3.3.4 Teaching materials 33 3.3.5 Unfavorable classroom climate 33 3.3.6 Insufficient opportunities for speaking practice 34 PART C: CONCLUSION 35 Summary of the study 35 Suggested solutions 35 2.1 Students’ positive attitudes toward speaking 36 2.2 Various teaching methods 36 2.3 Sufficient teaching facilities 36 2.4 Good teaching materials 37 2.5 Warm classroom climate 37 2.6 Speaking opportunities 38 Limitations of the study 38 Suggestions for further study 39 REFERENCES 40 APPENDIX A I APPENDIX B IV APPENDIX C VII APPENDIX D VIII APPENDIX D IX vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 3.1.Demographic Information: Gender 17 Table 3.2:Demographic Information: Years of studying English 17 Figure 1: Factors related to negative attitudes toward language learning and speaking 18 Figure 2: Factors related to teachers’ competence and performances 19 Figure 3: Factors related to facilities 20 Figure 4: Factors related to teaching materials 21 Figure 5: Factors related to classroom climate 21 Figure 6: Factors related to speaking practice opportunities 22 Figure 7: Possible solutions 24 vii PART A INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study The use of English is growing country-by-country internally and for international communication As stated by John, Helen, and Paul (2015), five per cent of the world’s population speak English as their first language; but about one billion people (one in every seven people in the world) learn and use English as the second language In a fully Integrated Age, a working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of occupations and professions such as medicine, finance, entertainment, computing and education, etc As a result, the ability to communicate in the world most popular second language has become the key to everyone’s success in their career Most people learn English for practical rather than ideological reasons Accordingly, teaching English speaking skills is one of the most important tasks assigned to educators and learning speaking skills efficiently is becoming so demanding to students today However, as written examinations are much more commonly found and oral examinations are rarely required to non-English majors, we have long been focusing on grammar in teaching pupils at schools Learners are gradually hesitant to and anxious about speaking English even when they are not so bad at the written one As a result, the goal of improving students’ proficiency in using English communicatively has not been fully achieved at lower levels, which puts up great barrier against effective teaching and learning spoken English language at universities and colleges In this complicated situation, the question of how to make it easier and possible for HPU2 non-English majors to master the vital skills of speaking is what my teaching now concerns Identifying what are the major causes stands in need of accomplishing this task This study, therefore, tries to figure out what are demotivating factors in speaking lessons of the nonEnglish majors at HPU and possible solutions Table 2: Factors related to teachers Teachers' poor pronunciation ability Valid Valid Not encouraging stude Valid Teacher's not speaking English in classroom or doing so little Valid Yes X Teachers' not usin Valid Table 3: Factors related to teaching facilities No or little use of visual aids such as videos and DVDS Valid Missing Total Valid Valid XI The arrangement of tables and chairs is not supportive to speaking activities Valid Table 4: Factors relate Valid Difficult and unfam Valid Valid XII Classmates not speakin Valid Not doing speaking activities because of short class time Valid Feeling anxious while speaking because of classmates laughter and teacher's inappropriate reactions No Valid Yes Tota XIII Table 6: Insufficient opportunities for speaking practice Little chance of communicating in English inside the class due to large- sized class Valid Little chance to commu Valid Table 7: Possible solutions Do not angry w Valid XIV Vary the teaching techniques Valid Give marks or add marks if you participate in the speaking activities regularly Valid Valid Valid XV Increase the use of language games Valid Valid Organize extra activities regularly such as: English speaking clubs, quizzes, etc Valid Give homework (conversations, role-play, group presentation, etc), check and give marks Valid XVI Others Valid No XVII ... communicatively 21 Figure 6: Factors related to speaking practice opportunities 3.1.3 Possible solutions In concerning demotivating factors in speaking lessons of the nonEnglish majors at HPU2, there... NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ĐỖ THỊ HƢƠNG DEMOTIVATING FACTORS IN SPEAKING LESSONS OF THE NON- ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS. .. lessons of the non- English major students at Hanoi Pedagogical University (HPU2) and providing some possible solutions Following are the objectives of the study:  To find out what demotivate non- English