Using visual aids to motivate non major english first year students speaking english at hanoi tourism college

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI Vũ Thị Kim Loan Using visual aids to motivate non- major English first year students in speaking English at Hanoi Tourism College (Sử dụng giáo cụ trực quan nhằm gây hứng thú cho sinh viên năm thứ khơng chun học nói tiếng Anh trường Cao đẳng Du lịch Hà Nội.) M.A Thesis Linguistics CODE: 60 14 10 HA NOI - 2009 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI Vũ Thị Kim Loan Using visual aids to motivate non- major English first year students in speaking English at Hanoi Tourism College (Sử dụng giáo cụ trực quan nhằm gây hứng thú cho sinh viên năm thứ không chuyên học nói tiếng Anh trường Cao đẳng Du lịch Hà Nội.) M.A Thesis Linguistics CODE: 60 14 10 Supervisor : M.A Lê Văn Canh HA NOI - 2009 V TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT……………………………………………………………………….II ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………….IV TABLE OF CONTENT……………………………………………………………………….V, VI CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………… 1.1 Rationale……………… ………………………………………………………………1 1.2 Aims of the study…………………………………………………… 1.3 The significance of the study……………………………………… 1.4 The outline of the thesis…………………………………………………………… CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………………… 2.1 Visual aids as a supporting device in language learning……………………………6 2.1.1 Definition of visual aids…………………………………………………………… 2.1.2 Visual aids as a supporting device………………………………………………… 2.2 Visual aids as a motivating device in language learning………………………… 10 2.3 Visual aids used teaching speaking………………………………………………….12 2.3.1 Teaching speaking………………………………………………………………… 12 2.3.2 Using visual aids in teaching speaking…………………………………………….14 2.4 Summary…………………………………………………………………………… 15 CHAPTER 3: THE METHODOLOGY……………………………………………… 16 3.1 Rationales for the use of action research……………………………………………16 3.1.1 What is action research? 16 3.1.2 Rationales for the use of action research………………………………………….17 3.2 The research questions………………………………………………………………18 3.3 Description of the data collection instruments…………………………………….18 3.3.1 Informal talks with the students………………………………………… 18 3.3.2.Questionnaire…………………………………………………………… 19 VI 3.4 Participants………………………………………………………………………… 22 3.4.1 The researcher- The teacher……………………………………………… 22 3.4.2 The Students………………………………………………………………… 22 3.5 The procedure of the action research…………………………………………… 22 3.5.1 Planning…………………………………………………………………………….22 3.5.2 Action……………………………………………………………………………….23 3.5.3 Reflection……………………………………………………………………………23 3.5.5 Dissemination…………………………………………………………………… 23 CHAPTER 4: THE RESULTS……………………………………………………… 24 4.1 Initial data……………………………………………………………………… …24 4.1.1 Results from talks with the students……………………………………………….24 4.1.2 Results from questionnaire 1……………………………………………………….25 4.2 Issues emerging from pre-treatment data………………………………………….30 4.3 Description of the action plan……………………………………………………….29 4.3.1 Aims of the action plan……………………………………………………… .30 4.4.2 Modifications in the plan action to obtain the above objectives ………………….31 4.4 Data collected during two experimental weeks………………………………… 31 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION……………………….35 5.1 Major findings……………………………………………………………………….35 5.2 Recommendations on the basis of the findings…………………………………….36 5.3 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….38 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………… 40 APPENDIX 1…………………………………………………………………………….42 APPENDIX 2…………………………………………………………………………….43 APPENDIX 3…………………………………………………………………………….44 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter, Introduction, contains sections The first section will be the rationale The two aims of the study will be presented in the second section After that, the significance of the study will be discussed in 1.3 and the outline of the rest of the thesis presented in 1.4 1.1 Rationale Students‟ poor involvement in speaking lessons is one of the concerns of classroom teachers It is documented in the literature that students‟ involvement in language lessons in general and in speaking particular depends on cultural, linguistic, and effective factors There has been a variety of different pedagogical solutions recommended to increase students‟ involvement in speaking lessons The choice of those solutions is depend on what factors that inhibit students‟ involvement I was in charge of teaching English to class C5B2, which has 40 non major English first year students at Hanoi Tourism College Lifelines pre- intermediate written by Tom Hutchinson Ann Ward is currently chosen to teach English Lifelines pre - intermediate was chosen because it has some good points First, in this book, the students are guided to an understanding of the new language, rather than just have examples of it on the page Second, the skills work is integrated and balanced, the students have equal opportunities to practice all the four skills in each lesson and there is no exercise for only one skill Third, the material comes from a wide range of reliable sources- newspapers, magazines, biographies, short stories, radio programs, songs However, it is not difficult because it has been simplified and adapted to suit the our students‟ level Last, much attention was paid to practice activities There are greatly various speaking activities, controlled and free, personalized and impersonal In addition, there is a good combination between long and short activities Each unit has one or two long activities interlaced by many short ones so the students can follow them easily Most of the activities in the book are recommended to be organized in pairs and groups At any stage of a unit, warm-up, presentation, controlled practice or free practice, there are always pair and or group activities Take the first unit as an example, in the very beginning of the unit, students are given a chance to communicate with their partners.In Vocabulary and Reading, there are a lot of exercises that students have to exchange their opinions Especially, in Listening and Speaking, there are a lot of interesting speaking activities that go from easy level to more difficult ones In the last part of the unit, there is an exercise that students have to work in pairs to role play a conversation As can be seen, there are a lot of activities for practicing speaking in each unit, and if the activities were well designed and organized, teachers would gain students‟ interest and motivation to speaking English Despite the interesting and well designed speaking activities, what is experienced at Hanoi Tourism College is that the students not like speaking English anymore The problems are various Some of them will be mentioned as follows First, it seems that most of the students find it difficult to make a conversation to practice English As a result, it often takes them a lot of time to get started In addition, many of the students are not patient enough to overcome this obstacle, and the easiest thing for them to is to stop trying and turn to other things Second, it is noticed that the students don't often try their best to finish the tasks by a certain time This leads to the fact that they often waste a lot of time to complete one simple exercise This may be because teachers not have a proper time limit for each activity It is argued that the students will have chance to chat or to something else, when they have plenty of time Since I started teaching at my college, I have taught this textbook for many times By tradition and my own sense, I always try my best to handle my students‟ English language production in speaking lessons However, during the first few times teaching the course, I had frustrations because I often found many of my students were not motivated in class From my personal observation in the classroom, students seem to be unwilling to practice speaking English They appear to be reluctant in participating in classroom activities that require them to practice orally The reasons for this students‟ poor participation could be that they are not sufficiently motivated to speak, which is resulted from their lack of ideas and stimuli to speak English in addition to their low English proficiency To address this problem, I postulate that students need to be provided with necessary cues and stimuli that can help encourage them to speak To solve this problem I undertook this action research First, I talked with the students to find out the reasons why they did not want to speak English in the class room On the basis of the information I gained from these chats with the students, I developed a questionnaire to identify the major factors that inhibited them from speaking English in the class room It was found that students did not like speaking very much because they were not stimulated and largely they did not have ideas to speak, and finally they did not have enough vocabulary The results of this questionnaire encouraged me to undertake this action research in which I wanted to identify if visual aids help to involve students better in speaking lesson 1.2 Aims of the study The study was carried out with the aim to increase the students‟ participation in speaking lessons With the hypothesis that a use of visual aids can increase the motivation of non- major English first year students at Hanoi Tourism College to participate in speaking lessons, this study aims at:  Investigating the reality of students‟ poor participation in speaking activities and the possibility of visual aids to increase their participation in classroom speaking activities if necessary  Exploring the use of visual aids as pedagogical tool to involve students in speaking activities 1.3 The significance of the study The findings of the study will provide us plenty of useful information First, the study will give us convincing information about the great value of using visual aids in increasing students‟ motivation in speaking English Second, the practical aim of the study is to suggest some appropriate techniques to make the best use of the visual aids, so it is possible to have further improvement in making English speaking lessons more motivating Last, by doing this action research, the researcher can evaluate the actual use of visual aids in her classes 1.4 The outline of the thesis Chapter 1, INTRODUCTION, presents information about the rationale of the study, the aims and the research questions as well as the significance of the research and the outline of the thesis Chapter 2, LITERATURE REVIEW, reviews the literature in the issue of visual aids in language learning Chapter 3, METHODOLOGY, provides the reader with the detailed description of the subjects and the data collection instruments, and the procedure of the study The data collection instruments include the questionnaire and informal talks The procedure of the study will be also mentioned Chapter 4, RESULTS, Data analysis and Discussion, will be divided into five parts as follow: initial data, issues emerging from pre- treatnent, the action plan, the data collected during the experimental period and the evaluation of the action research Chapter 5, CONCLUSION, Major findings, Recommendations and Conclusion, will summarize the major findings of the study The writer's recommendations for using visual aids in speaking lessons will follow After that, there will be the conclusion of the thesis Finally, the writer will point out some limitations of the study and there will be some suggestions for further study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter, Literature review, will discuss about visual aids in language learning There are three main issues in this: the discussion of visual aids as supporting device, visual aids as motivating one and visual aids in teaching speaking 2.1 Visual aids as a supporting device in language learning: 2.1.1 Definition of visual aids: According to Wingard (2000) the aids can help in teaching languages and that can be seen are called “visual aids”.They provide practical solutions to the problems of a language teacher whose equipment, as a rule, consists of nothing more than books and classroom They include black-board, pictures, actual objects (realias) that facilitate the process of teaching Visual aids are anything visible to students, which the teacher uses for different purposes in the class They can be used in different stages of a lesson, and they are rich in forms , cheap to make, easy to find, convenient and effective use in a language class.The function of each of these in helping the teaching process is discussed below * Black board: A big strong piece of wood, called black-board, is the oldest associate of the teacher but an essential teaching aid It is used to reading and writing to the pupil Anything to which the teacher wants to draw the attention of the students, is written on it, e.g difficult words, phrase patterns, structure patterns, grammar works, questions to test comprehension In this way the teacher finds his lessons more interesting, lively and effective It is an important means of picture composition *Pictures: Pictures comprise text pictures and class pictures Text pictures are to be found in the texts designed primarily for beginners The meaning of a single word can be shown in different pictures For example, the very first lesson of the beginner's text may have different patterns of heads of persons and animals to teach the word head Class pictures may be sub-divided into picture cards and wall pictures Picture cards or post cards are extremely helpful in language teaching 33 language In general, results showed that most of the students were satisfied with the way of using visual aids for them to have more ideas to speak because the visual aids might help to make a difficult topic clear and easily understood Moreover, Chart also revealed the ideas of the students about visual aids that the teacher showed supported pre- speaking preparation The results pointed that there were 29 students who agreed with this statement and this meant that visual aids made the teacher‟s instruction really meaningful for students It is evident that visual aids could engage my students to the topic that the students were from hearing to seeing and sometimes touching They enabled the students to appeal to more than one sense at the same time, thereby increasing my student‟s understanding and retention level Clear pictures, real objects, or models multiply my students level of understanding of the material presented, and they could be used to reinforce my topic, clarify points, and created interest The answers collected from the question indicated that the students mostly agreed with the statement that real objects made them feel easier and more memorable in learning new words There were 32 students who agree that using visual aids could dramatically help the students to remember, getting on with the practical skills of driving would help them to understand the new words in the lesson Finally, it was revealed from the last open question about the students‟ opinions of how useful the visual aids the teacher used in the classroom helped to increase their interests in speaking English in the classroom As shown in the results, there were 24 students to agree that visual aids using for the oral topic motivated them to speak English Moreover, there were 25 students accepting that using visual aids in speaking lessons, they created situations to make the meaning of a word or a structure clear, and students practiced the word and structure in meaningful situations, that helped the students to be more memorable In addition, there were 29 students said that they took part in the clssroom speaking activities well when the teacher used visual aids in the speaking lessons during the lessons 34 The results of the students‟ opinion seemed to support the fact that the more intense the accompanying the stimulus the better classroom speaking participation 35 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION The previous chapters have presented the background to the research, the literature review, the methodology to conduct the action research and analyzed data This chapter aims at summarizing the main findings of the study, recommendations, limitations and suggestions for further study 5.1 Major findings The action research was carried out in class C5B2 at Hanoi Tourism College and the result indicates that the use of visual aids can help to increase students‟ participation into the learning task as well as to stimulate the level of the students‟ motivation Following are major findings  A positive change in students‟ motivation was recorded when the teacher provided students necessary non-linguistic cues and stimuli i e, visual aids that can help encourage them to speak Visual aids may help to attract the students‟ attention and to arouse their interest and cultural curiosity Although the daily lesson is varying in terms of the topic, the physical conditions etc…, visual aids appeared to be a motivating factor which helps to increase the students‟ participation in classroom speaking activities  Although the currently used course book, the Lifelines, is commonly perceived as a good course book, it has some drawbacks when used with the group of students involving in this study Firstly, some tasks are too difficult for students while others are too easy In either case, the students are likely to be demotivated to use English for oral communication in the classroom Secondly, almost every student uses the dublicated version of the book and consequently the pictures are not colorful and clear enough to attract the students and to help them develop ideas about the topic Although the present study was conducted with a small class of the students, this class bears much resemblance to the other classes in the College in terms of age, 36 proficiency level, educational background, etc…Therefore it is speculated that the findings might be transferable to other groups of the first year non- English majors of the College As a result, the following recommendations are made for the use of visual aids to teach speaking skills to the first – year non English majors in the College 5.2 Recommendations on the basis of the findings Teacher at Hanoi Tourism College in particular and language teachers in general might use visual aids in speaking English to motivate students and help students take part in the speaking lessons eagerly Visual aid is considered one of the ways that students interact and it is one of the most important methods of communication in the classroom When the visual aids are used for the purposes of motivating the students‟ participation in speaking lessons, they should be clear, colorful, attractive and meaningful enough to catch the students‟ eyes Moreover, the visual aids that the teacher used for the oral topic should be relevant to the learning topic and the students can see the significance of the visual aids to their learning and they want to participation more into the speaking tasks My teaching experience has shown that any teaching teachnique, no matter how good it may sound, can turn out to be ineffective if used inappropriately Therefore, the teacher should be careful in choosing visual aids for teaching the speaking lessons Visual aids can not produce any learning outcome unless they are supported by appropriate activities, which match the students‟ proficiency level, intersts, learning styles, and the objectives of the lesson The way to use visual aids plays an important part in making the advantages of visual aids in bettering students‟ participation and motivating students Thus, when using visual aids in teaching, the ways to use visual aids should be considered carefully In other words, when applying visual aid techniques in teaching, teacher has to know well about the learning objectives, learning activities, learning conditions and about his/her students 37 The way of applying visual aid techniques should be various to create joyful atmosphere in teaching and learning and to give students chances to practice with other partners so that they can participate more and learn more from each other Thus, when visual aid based activities are organized in pair work or in group work, different pairs and groups should be arranged to avoid boredom created when the students work with the same partners most of the time In addition, using different ways to arrange students in groups to change learning atmosphere in the class and the students are lazy enough not to change their seats if we just tell them to stand up and find a partner Besides using visual aid techniques to make the lesson more attainable, it is essential for the teacher to share the ideas in organizing the lessons with the students, so that the students can understand the teacher‟s intentions and they can be more confident with the speaking tasks In fact, giving the students instructions when the visual aids are used are very important It helps to save the time and leads students to correct work Therefore, beginning the visual aid based activity, the teacher should give her/his clear instructions to every student and make sure that all of them understand her/his instructions To make the instructions clear teacher should use simple and clear language for instructions, the instructions for similar activities should be consistent while students pay attention to the teacher‟s instructions Moreover, checking students‟ understanding of what they are supported to is essential to make sure of their success This can be done by asking such questions as “What are you going to with this?”, “How many people are there in your groups?”, “How many minutes have you got?‟…, etc It supposed that the action research would be better if the size of students in the classroom were smaller and the number of female students were equal to the number of male ones, the visual aid used in the lesson were more various and some pictures were big and colorful enough for every student could see clearly 5.3 Conclusion 38 After having taught English for three years at Hanoi Tourism College, the author of this paper realized that the students did not gain much motivation when they were in English speaking lessons, though the chosen book was highly appreciated as it contains many interesting in speaking activities related to tourism field Nevertheless, the author of the paper identified the problems related to students‟ participation in speaking lessons That is why she wanted to prove the existence of those problems and found out necessary non-linguistic cues as visual aids to motivate students The researcher decided to conduct an experiment on using visual aids to motivate students to speak English in the classroom Firstly, she confirmed the problem and the assumption on the cause of the problem She observed the class and the data helped her to state that the problem of students‟ poor speaking participation really existed The teacher worked out the causes of the problems by doing the literature review on visual aids in language learning and teaching speaking Then, she collected the data on students‟ poor participation and the teaching method through informal talks with the students and questionnaire within questions in the first phase of the action research The data helped her to find out the main cause of the students‟ poor participation in the speaking lessons , that is the students lacked of stimuli to produce the their ideas with the oral topic so that the students could not participate well in the speaking activities in the classroom The data analysis helped the researcher clarify main cause of problems and she implemented an experiment, applying the visual aid based activities in the speaking lessons The experiment was implemented within four lessons During the experiment, the data on the ideas of the students about the teacher‟s visual aid techniques were collected through the questionnaire Finally, I evaluated the effect of the experiment by doing the data analysis The results from data analysis indicated that the students were interested in the visual aids used by teacher in speaking lessons and these ones helped the students 39 take part in well in the speaking activities Thus, the students‟ poor participation in the speaking lessons was improved This study has attained some noticeable results in the use of visual aids to motivate non- major English first- year students at Hanoi Tourism College However, limitations are inevitable Firstly, the research has been done with a rather small number of participants and shortage of time Secondly, the researcher was unable to control some variables, such as topic of lessons, absence of some students etc The study would be more reliable and more generalizable if it were conducted with a larger number of participants In addition to that, due to limited time, there are some questions about how to make students the researcher cannot answer, whether teacher always use visual aids in every speaking lesson that make the students boring with the same activities or not Therefore, further research on this field should be done As this is an action research by design, in the next cycle of action research, I will expand the participant body by using visual aids in other classes to see if similar results can be obtained Also, I will find out if visual aids have similar impact on students of various intelligences This means I will design another action research to measure the impact of visual aids on students of different intelligences 40 REFERENCES Nunan, D (1993), Research Methods in Language Learning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Jimmy G Cheek (n.d), Using Visual Aids in Extension Teaching, Retrieved December 4, 2005 from http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/MG098 Canning, C (1998) „Visual Perception and Language Learning‟, TESOL Arabia News, 6:1, November 1998, pp 8-9 Canning, C (1998) „Visual Perception and Language Learning‟, TESOL Arabia News, 6:1, November 1998, pp 8-9 Canning, C (1999) „Ideas for Transforming Your Classroom Into a More Visually Aesthetic Learning Center‟, Visual Support in English Language Teaching (VSELT) Newsletter, 2:2, p 1-2 Canning, C., "Implementing Visual Support in F/SL Materials", Visual Support in English Language Teaching (VSELT), 1:1, March 1998 p.1-2 Doff, A (1988) Teach English- A training Course for Teachers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Tanner, R & Green, C (1988) Tasks for Teacher Education, Edinburgh: Longman Wallace, M.J (1998) Action Research For Language Teachers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Gibson and Levin (1975) The Psychology of Reading MIT Press, Cambridge MA Forseth, R., Forseth, C., Ta Tien Hung & Nguyen Van Do (1994) Methodology Handbook for English Teacher in Vietnam, Hanoi: English Language Institute Harmer, J (1991) The Practice of Language Teaching, London: Longman Hamer, J (1998) How to Teach English, London: Longman 41 Hutchinson, T & Ward, A (1997) Lifelines- pre intermediate, Oxford: Oxford University Press River, W.M (1983) Communicating Naturally in a Second Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Brown, H D 1994 Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents Brown, H D 2001 Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, Second edition, Addison Wesley Longman, Inc Bacon, S.M and M.D Finnermann 1990 A Study of the Attitudes, Motives, and Strategies of University Foreign Language Students and their Disposition to Authentic Oral and Written Input- Modern Language Journal 74/4: 459- 73 42 APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE (pre- treatment) How you like speaking English in the classroom? a I hate it c I don’t know b I don’t like it d I like it but very much e I like it very much How you rate your participation in speaking activities in the classroom? a Very poor c Neither poor or good d Good b Poor e Very good Which of the following factors inhibit you from speaking English in the classroom Choose as many as you agree - I’m shy - My English is poor - I am afraid of making mistakes - I find speaking activities boring - I lack of vocabulary - I have no ideas to speak - There is nothing that stimulates me to speak * Other factor: 43 APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE (post- treatment) How you agree with the following statements: The pictures the teacher drew on the board helped stressful The pictures the teacher showed me helped me to generate easily The pictures the teacher showed me made the speaking topic clearer to me The real objects the teacher showed helped me memorize words better Write a paragraph about your opinion of how useful the visual aids the teacher used in the classroom helped to increase your interests in speaking English in the classroom 44 APPENDIX SAMPE LESSON PLAN OF UNIT ( SPEAKING) CLASS C5B2 NUMBER OF STUDENTS : 40 TIMING: 45 MINUTES Unit 8: FOOD AND HEALTH Aims: - Students are able to use taking speech acts appropriate to customers‟ meal orders in the restaurant - Students are able to conduct interactional conversations with customers in the restaurant Objectives: After the lesson, Students are able to Order meals in a restaurant in English Take customers‟ meal orders in English To use appropriately some expressions for performing speech acts in the restaurant I  II HOMEWORK CHECKING: (1m) Exercises given by the teacher THE NEW LESSON: - Teaching aids:*A picture depicting a restaurant waiter and a customer * A picture showing various kinds of food * A restaurant menu Time procedure 3ms Students look at a picture depicting a Orientate students to the restaurant waiter and a customer and answer oral topic the questions “Who are they? Where are they? What are they doing?” Students answer some open questions: “Do you often go to the restaurant? What kinds of 45 food you often have? What ki you like having? ” Students look at a picture of var food and a restaurant menu and to match the suitable names of t the words on the menu Students exchange their ideas Students look at the picture and menu again give their answers a discussing T corrects if necessa Students predict the topic which going to deal with and the aims 12ms 2.Pre- speaking Students look at a picture dep restaurant waiter and a customer the questions about what langua used for a restaurant waiter/ wai customer T corrects if necessary Students repeat these expression 25ms While- Speaking In pairs, students study the situa language provided in the course 46 Then in pairs, students role play the provided situations using the language prompted in the coursebook according to the teacher‟s instruction Students are noticable to the speaking task Make sure that the students to understand the according the teacher‟ s ICQs (Instruction teacher‟s instruction Checking Questions) 4ms Students improve their language independently according to the teacher‟s feedback Students further form-focused practice under the teacher‟s supervision To identify Ss‟ errors for further improvements ...VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI Vũ Thị Kim Loan Using visual aids to motivate non- major English first year students in speaking English at Hanoi Tourism College (Sử dụng giáo... the use of visual aids to motivate non- major English first- year students at Hanoi Tourism College However, limitations are inevitable Firstly, the research has been done with a rather small... 24 students to agree that visual aids using for the oral topic motivated them to speak English Moreover, there were 25 students accepting that using visual aids in speaking lessons, they created