A study on how to improve english speaking skills for first year students in faculty of english at thuongmai university

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY GRADUATION PAPER TOPIC: A STUDY ON HOW TO IMPROVE ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS IN ENGLISH FACULTY AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY Supervisor: Pham Thi Xuan Ha (M.A) Student: Man Thi Phuong Nam Class: K52N3 Student Code: 16D170171 Hanoi, 2019 ABSTRACTS Speaking skills are considered to be one of the most important skills by language learners Learners often measure their success in language learning by the extent to which they can use their spoken English However, speaking skills are regarded as one of the most difficult aspects of language learning Many students struggle to talk and express themselves in English They are generally facing problems in using the foreign language to express their thoughts effectively, even students at that faculty Derived from the urgency of the problem, the researcher has chosen the topic “A study on how to improve English speaking skills for first-year students in English Faculty at Thuongmai University ” Therefore, the study’s purposes are to explore the reality of speaking English of first year students at English Faculty, Thuongmai University, to identify the obstacles in speaking English, to learn more about factors that affect the students’ speaking skills and through findings collected to recommend some feasible solutions to improve English speaking skills for students The study was carried out in Thuongmai University in the first semester of the school year 2019-2020 The participants consisted of 50 students studying at English Faculty The result of the study showed causes of students’ difficulties in speaking English related to vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, learning environment, teaching methods and laziness Based on those, the researcher proposed some feasible solutions for students to enhance their English speaking skills ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the process of completing this research paper, I have received great deal of help and encouragenent from many teachers, friends and my family First of all, i would like to express the deepest gratetitude to the lecturers of Thuongmai University, especially the teachers of the faculty of Business English since i came to the university I am grateful for your supporting and creating the best conditions to study in an effective environment Especially, i would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Pham Xuan Ha for her wholehearted guidance, invaluable advice, constructive criticism and encouragement in the completion of my graduation paper My sincere thanks also go to 50 first-year students in Faculty of English at Thuongmai University, who helped me complete the survey questionnaire with the research data Last but not least, I am profoundly grateful to my family and friends, who gave me their supports and constant encouragements to complete this paper To everyone, thank you so much! Hanoi, 01 December 2019 Man Thi Phuong Nam TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACTS i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii TABLE OF CONTENTS .iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES .vi CHAPTER1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1.Rationale of the study .1 1.2 Previous studies .2 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Research subjects 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Research methodology 1.6.1.Participants and Sample of the Study .6 1.6.2.Research Instrument 1.6.3.Data Collection and Data analysis 1.7 Organization of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definition of speaking 2.2 The importance of speaking 2.3 Characteristics of speaking skills 10 2.4 Speaking problems 11 2.5 Factors affecting speaking skills 13 2.5.1.Language problems 13 2.5.2 Psychological problems 14 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 16 3.1 General introduction 16 3.2 Data analysis .16 3.2.1 Students’ background information 16 3.2.2 The attitude of students toward learning English speaking at the university 19 3.2.3 Students’frequency of speaking English at home 20 3.2.4 Frequency of making mistakes when speaking English 21 3.2.5.Students’ difficulties in speaking English skills .22 3.2.6 Causes of students’ problems in speaking English 23 3.2.7 Students’ methods of studying English speaking skills 24 3.2.8 Reactions of tutors when students makes mistakes .24 3.2.9 Students’expectations 26 3.3 Discussion 28 3.3.1 Current situation of first-year English major students’ English speaking skills in Faculty of English at Thuongmai University .28 3.3.2.Difficulties and problems in speaking of the first-year students in English faculty .29 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 31 4.1 Recommendations and suggestions .31 CONCLUSION .37 5.2 Limitations 38 5.3 Suggestions for further studies 38 REFERENCES vii APPENDIX ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS No Abbreviations TMU ESL VOA BBC SALL etc English meaning Thuongmai University English as a Second Language Voice of America British Broadcasting Corporation Self-Access Language Learning et cetera LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES No Tables and charts Figure 3.1: The number of years learning English Figure 3.2: The importance of English Page 16 17 10 11 12 13 Figure 3.3: The levels of difficulty of speaking English Figure 3.4: Students' levels of English speaking skills Figure 3.5: Frequency of practising English speaking skills 18 19 20 at university Figure 3.6: Frequency of practicing English speaking skills 21 at home Figure 3.7: Frequency of making mistakes when speaking 21 English Figure 3.8: The barriers in English speaking skills Figure 3.9: Causes of students’ problems in speaking 22 23 English Figure 4.0: methods of studying English speaking skills Figure 4.1: Reactions of tutors when students makes 24 25 mistakes Figure 4.2: Students’expectations 26 in class Figure 4.3: Suggested solutions to improve English 27 speaking skills for student CHAPTER1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1.Rationale of the study English is a global language which most people use to interact with other from all over the world With the view to globalization, English has become an optional subject and been taught in some levels of education in many countries included Vietnam such as elementary school, secondary school, and high school This will create the favorite conditions to make young generations exchange the values and access to the modern things in overseas As a global language, English is used a lots we find in many fields of daily life, such as many kinds of modern technology, computers, social media, electronic machines, banking, even used in many labels of products such as medicine, cosmetics, foods and beverage Other impact of English as a global language is that several companies in Vietnam recruit and require their employees who can communicate in English A competence of English will access to the information easily and widely English language consists of four skills, namely: listening, speaking, reading, and writing Listening and reading are input materials while speaking and writing are output competence Listening and speaking are considered as the two most important skills which serve in human communication daily life One of them which are elaborated more is speaking Speaking is a crucial part of the language learning process and it is a key of active communication However, speaking as the importance of language skills get less proportion in the English teaching and learning People usually spend most of time learning writing and reading skills which students assumed that they will make them more settled and quiet and seems to get a better and more effective condition of teaching-learning process In addition, the English examination in formal education focus on reading and writing tests which require students focus more on these skills There is rarely speaking test or oral production test Consequently, speaking is not the priority to study and becomes the most difficulty in the process of learning Speaking is productive skill which involves communicative performance, and other important elements, such as pronunciation, intonation, grammar, vocabulary Speaking is the skill that the learners will be judged upon most in real-life situation It is an important part of everyday interaction and most often the first impression of a person is based on his/her ability to speak fluently and comprehensibly (Liao, 2009) However, Vietnamese learners, especially the first year students in English Faculty have faced with a flood of obstacles in learning and practicing English speaking skills They often fall into confusion when speaking English because of lacking of knowledge, confidence, and the appropriate method as well Besides, students also not have the good learning environment which restricts them to practise and gain English knowledge That is the reason why they usually get the bad marks and find hard to achieve the best performance in learning English, especially with speaking skills Based on the things mentioned above, the researcher try to make English speaking activities more effective for students in learning by figuring out students’ problems and determining the techniques which are appropriate and effective to learn speaking with the hope to help the first-year students in Faculty of English at Thuongmai University better their English performance This is the reason why the researcher decided to choose the research with the title “A study on how to improve English speaking skills for first year students in Faculty of English at Thuongmai University ” 1.2 Previous studies The problem of learning English to students, especially the problem of oral communication is a debateable issue which has not been solved yet and grabbed a lot of attention from hundred researchers These following studies are outstanding and helpful which mentioned some materials related to English speaking skills In 1985, Jen Allwood has listed some problems of communication such as lacking of understanding, meaning the failure in interpreting parts or all of what a person has said to another person; communication on the conditions of only one party, meaning that there is a power difference between both communicating individuals; interruption and breakdown One among the many reasons to take into considerations might be the lack of confidence and anxiety about making errors as stated by Trent (2009) and in other related studies Backlund (1990) assigns three areas of knowledge that influence oral communication effectiveness: social knowledge, self-knowledge, and content knowledge If any one of these is weak oral communication will be somewhat impaired Other problems that hinder oral communication are: dominating the conversation, using inappropriate volume and pitch, using excessive small talk ignoring someone and constantly interrupting people In the study “Improving Adult English Language Learners’Speaking Skills” by Mary Ann Cunningham Florez, National Center for ESL Literacy Education (June 1999) showed that communicative and whole language instructional approaches promoted intergration of speaking, listening, reading and writing in ways that reflected natural language use But opportunities for speaking and listening requires structure and planning if they were to support language development This study focused on what speaking involved and what good speakers did in the process of expressing themselves It presented an outline for creating an effective speaking lesson and for assessing learners’ speaking skills Bashiruddin (2003) conducted a study to improve student's Oral Communication Skills in lower secondary public school in Karachi, Pakistan The sample of the study consisted of two schools systems work side by side One is the private English medium school and second is government Urdu-medium school English is learnt as a second language in both cases Both students and teachers use the regional language to communicate inside the class, and practice traditional methods which focus on reading and writing skills, but productive skills such as: speaking is given on important The results of the study discussed the reasons of weakness of students in communication were the English language teachers are not proficient in speaking English and this is the main obstacle in the way to teaching English in Pakistan Many researchers like Baily (2005) and Goh (2007) have proposed methods to enhance speaking skills by mean of syllabus design, teaching principles, and speaking assessment BBC Learning English To build vocabulary, learners should read transcripts after they listen and write some new words down After that, they should repeat that material until they understand its meaning and not have any new words  Besides, there are also some ways to learn vocabulary including consulting the dictionary if they find hard, learning following the topics with supportive devices such as pictures, songs, etc, learning through books, movies, music, etc Learning vocabulary and store them is a long process and the best way to remember them is to use them regularly So students should actively practice English every day - Improving grammar: As analyzed above, the grammar plays the most important role in the English speaking skill of students It should be taught in an effective way and used with appropriate structures, in a natural way and in right contexts  Practising English grammar through reading: Through reading, the students not only can learn new vocabulary but also know how the grammar works Students read a lot of English books, they are taking in models of correct grammar that will help them in their own writing and speaking It will help students when they express their ideas and when they come to check their work  Practing English grammar through exercises: If you don’t like to grammar exercises or to be taught grammar, then it is more important that you follow the advice in the paragraphs above You should try to work out the patterns and rules of the language for yourself If you like to grammar exercises, then go ahead But being good at grammar exercises does not mean you will not make mistakes in your own work You could be like someone who has learned how to play tennis by reading a book, but once he is on the tennis court, he can’t hit the ball properly If you decide to grammar exercises, try to go beyond just filling gaps or doing multi-choice answers Write out some sentences of your own that follow the same rule that you are practising - Improving Pronunciation: Many students said that they were not unable to pronounce or usually make mistakes in pronunciation Some methods is as followed:  Read a passage out loud: No matter what stage of learning you’re at, daily practice is essential Choose a passage from a magazine, online news site or book Read it out loud every day This way will help you recognize what you make mistakes and try to correct again  Record yourself speaking: Find something to read, like a passage from a magazine, a poem, or a blog Then, use a voice recorder to record your English performance When you are done, play it back to see how you speak From those records, you will identify words that you need to spend more time on practising  Practice tongue twisters Pronouncing pharases that are difficult to say quickly because they contain many similar sounds For advanced students, this is a great way to practice their skills Try to say the following phrases correctly and quickly For example: She sells sea shells on the sea shore Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry Moreover, intonation, accent, pitch techniques should be practiced during the course of Phonetics Teachers’ pronunciation gives strong influence to the students’ learning of the pronunciation, so lecturers need to pronounce correctly To remain this skill, the students must maintain their reading and pronunciation with the international phonetics, usual practice and right pronunciation at the beginning stage Solutions 2: Create environment or condition to practice speaking A rich English language learning environment can be created through making full use of the time and resources both inside and outside in school It is also required that first-year students need to learn how to think and speak English by joining English speaking clubs in campus and off campus - Raising students’ motivation and interest: All students should be helped to become aware that better English would allow them to communicate with a wider range of people Their enhanced interset in learning English does not only open up opportunities for work and study, but more importantly, it provides them with greater opportunities for pleasure and enjoyment in their personal life  When students like the subjects, they are more motivated to learn Teaching methods which arouse students’ interest such as providing more learning activities and making use of multi-media learning and teaching resources should be employed in the English classroom  A whole-school language curriculum, which takes into consideration the needs, interests and abilities of students, should be developed to make language learning more related to the daily life of students Mass media, particularly English television and radio programmes in English, should be widely used  School should provide more opportunities for the use of English The promotion of learner autonomy and Self-Access Language Learning (SALL) encourages students to take responsibility for their own learning as well as monitor and evaluate their own progress - Widening students’ learning space-providing additional opportunities for language learning:  Providing students with opportunities to explore both spoken and written English language through appropriate and effective teaching strategies as well as learning activities which are designed to engage students in the authentic  Developing a trilingual language environment in the school, encouraging the use of speaking English outside the classroom among peers and between students and teachers With the information, the teachers can strengthen their relationships with the students, motivate them to learn English The students will be most comfortable and motivated to learn when the learning environment is fun and fair  Providing easy access to a wide range of materials, equipment and other facilities that can enhance students’ familiarity with English, e.g authentic materials in English including newspaper and magazines, posters, dictionaries, multi-media resources for language learning Solutions 3: Renovating teaching methods It is recommended that the teachers should flexibly apply different teaching strategies that may reduce their use of mother tongue in their classes such as integrating various speaking activities for students of different levels of speaking performance, updating information related to English programs, cooperating with other lecturers of language skills to organise more English programs and share teaching experiences Moreover, the university should reconsider the improvement of curriculum and syllabus regarding teaching textbook to provide students with frequent opportunities of speaking Meanwhile, there should be more consideration into supplying more well-equipped facilities, and organising weekly or monthly English practice programs to encourage students’ involvement Furthermore, more international cooperation should be considered to increase the number of English speaking teachers in the current context as another effective strategy to encourage both lecturers to upgrade new teaching methods of English speaking and students to practice speaking English with native speakers in real contexts It is necessary for language teachers to implement some natural strategies such as: role plays, group work, projects, group presentation, group discussion, debate competition, direct correction, speaking in group, speech competition, dialogues, games and listening song, etc to avoid shyness and unwillingness to speak English Teachers should provide appropriate feedback and correction, at the same time encourage students develop speaking skills Solutions 4: Releasing psychological problems One of the most difficult problems when learning English, especially speaking English maybe relates to psychological problems Psychological factors concerning on low self-confidence, low self-esteem, anxiety, less concentration and the like were common features while the students were performing the speech.There are some ways to deal with these problems:  Encourage responses from them specifically during class presentation  Give special tasks to especially shy students to make them feel important and make them responsible students  Engage in private conversations if necessary to monitor their progress  Exhibit the good artwork or assignment of your shy students to develop their self-worth and confidence  Give them specific roles in the classroom that will initiate interactions too among them as students  Peer Involvement, teacher can ask some peers or students to become confederates and help shy children cope  Teachers can create activities that require the formation of small group and cooperative learning activities The key factor to the success of learning speaking is the students themselves It is suggested that the students be braver to speak, without feeling afraid of making mistakes They should be creative to find their own ways to develop their speaking ability The students should use every opportunity to practice English in and out of class They may make commitments with classmates to use English as much as possible in their daily communications CONCLUSION English today is believed to be the most influential medium in bridging the global communication Learning the speaking skills is the most important aspect of learning a second or foreign language and success is measured based on the ablity to reform a conversation in the language The aim of this study contributes in improving learning English language speaking skill Therefore, this study comes to be as a reference in difficulties that face students in speaking skills and helps students, teachers, educators, and university instructors In order to find out the problems in learning speaking English, both a survey questionnaire and an interview were carried out with the participation of 50 firstyear students of English faculty at TMU They provided some information about their background, their perception on learning English speaking skills, their difficulties, the causes of these problems and some suggested solutions which helped the researcher have the data to analyse and find out some feasible solutions From the results of the study, it can be concluded that the English performance of students was not high and still far from satisfactory Almost students could not speak English fluently, even some of them only could speak single sentence or word by word Although the majority of the students were aware of the importance of speaking English nowadays, they still spent less time on practising these skills or even never did it in class Besides this, the researcher also pointed out the problems and difficulties which students usually encountered and divided into language and psychological problems Then, the author will suggest some methods to address with each of problem separately Based on the results of the study, solutions to each problem were given The researcher focused on some suggestions for both teaching and learning English speaking skills From teacher perspective, these included the ways to increase students’ interest and motivation, to apply different approaches to teach vocabulary, to train students with different speaking strategies and to organize activities for teaching to speak English In term of learners, the students should enjoy learning English Because if English became one of their interests, they would not feel bored or pressured, they learned it easier and achieved that they wanted more quickly The researcher also advised the students to find a strong motivation during learning English It was way to overcome laziness, to think in English, to strengthen speaking ability The last, the students had to be proactive in learning English They had to actively explore new learning methods, create an effective way of speaking English and practice so much In short, all solutions withdrawn were the results of study basing on the data in researching process, helped students in English Faculty improve English speaking skills However, the most important method is by themselves Students should realize that awareness may be the important step in habituating speaking English because the majority of English users can be found in countries where the language is employed as a foreign or second language As for the students, they should gained awareness that speaking English is very essential since they are the English students and demanded to speak fluently and accurately toward the target language It is hoped that the study may be useful to enhancing English speaking skills for Thuongmai University’ students in particular and to all students at university in Vietnam in general 5.2 Limitations Due to the lack of time, the data was only collected through one main instrument, with questionnaire Therefore the result of this study might only reflect a part of situiation of English speaking skills of first-year students in Faculty of English at Thuongmai University There are many things that need considering and investigating thoroughly Mistakes and shortcomings are unvoidable so many comments or extra contributions are welcome 5.3 Suggestions for further studies This study focuses on the difficulties in speaking English of first- year students in English Faculty at Thuongmai University and gives some feasible solutions which help to improve English speaking skills There are some suggestions for further researches concerning the teaching speaking skills at TMU in particular at other educational and training institutes in general: - A study on the ways of introducing students to current ways of learning speaking skills - A study on techniques and activities for students which help them to improve their learning speaking skills REFERENCES Guoqiang Liao (2009) Improvement of Speaking Ability through Interrelated Skills Trent, J (2009) Enhancing oral participation across the curriculum Backlund (1990) Strategy Instruction to Improve Speaking Ability in Egypt and Japan Mary Ann Cunningham Florez (1999) Improving Adult English Language Learners’ Speaking Skills” Bashiruddin, A (2003) Learning English and learning to teach English Bailey, K.M (2005) Practical English Language Teaching: Speaking Goh, C (2007) Teaching speaking in the language classroom Cotter, Ch (2007) Speaking well - four steps to improve your ESL EFL Students Speaking Ability Urrutia, W., & Vega, E (2006) Encouraging Teenagers to Improve Speaking Skills through Games in a Colombian Public School 10 Rama, Ying, lee & Luei (2007) Encouraging Teenagers to Improve Speaking Skills through Games 11 Hamzah & Ting, (2009) Teaching Speaking Skills Through Group Work Activities 12 Brown (1994) The Advancement of Learning 13 Burns and Joyce (1997) Focus on Speaking Sydney: National Center for English Language Teaching and Research 14 Ur, P (1996) A course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 15 Baker, J., & Westrup, H (2003) Essential Speaking Skills: A Handbook for English Language Teachers London: Continuum 16 Johnson and Morrow (1981: 70) said “ speaking is an activity to produce utterance to oral communication” 17 Harmer, J (1991) The practice of English language teaching Essex, UK: Longman 18 Oxford, (1990) Taxonomies of Language Learning Strategies 19 Krashen, S D (1982) Principles and practice in second language acquisition Oxford: Pergamon Press 20 Efrizal, D, (2012) Improving students’s speaking through communicative language teaching method at MTs J-Alhag Sentot All Basa Islamic boarding school of Bangkulu, Indonesia, International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, (20), 127-134 21 Bachman & Palmer, (1996) Construct validation of Bachman and Palmer's (1996) strategic competence model over time in EFL reading tests 22 Nation & Newton (2009) Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking 23 Chane (1998) Teaching Oral Communication in Grades K-8 Boston 24 Richards, J., & Rodgers, T (2001) Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (p 204) New York: Cambridge University Press 25 Vo Phuong Quyen,Pham Thi My Nga and Ho Thao Nguyen (2018) Challenges to speaking skills encountered by English-majored students: A story of one Vietnamese university in the Mekong Delta 26 Le Thi Ngoc Diep.(2017) Measurement of factors affecting English speaking skills of students at the foreign languages department of Vanlang University 27 Hendra Heriansyah.(2012) Speaking problems faced by the English department students of SYIAH KUALA University 28 Thornbury S.(2005) How to teach speaking 29 Al-Sibai D (2004) Promoting oral fluency of second language learners: Educational linguistics Department of English King Saud University 30 DeaAriesFitriani, RahayuApriliaswati, Wardah A study on student’s English speaking problems in speaking performance 31 Shumin (1997) Factors To Consider: Developing Adult EFL Students' Speaking Abilities 32 Nunan, (1995) Language Teaching Methodology; A Textbook for Teachers, London; Phoenix EFT 33 Rivers (1968) Teaching Foreign Language Skills APPENDIX SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE This survey questionaire is designed for “ A study on how to improve English speaking skills for first-year students in English Faculty at Thuongmai University” Your assistance in completing the following questions is highly appreciated The privacy will be kept and the results of the survey are only used for the purpose of the study Personal Information Name: Gender: Class: Please put a tick () in the box beside the option(s) you choose For questions to 13 you may have more than one option Please make sure that you have at least one option for each question How long have you learned English?  Less than years  3-10 years  More than 10 years Do you think English is important?  Very important  Important  Normal  Less important  Not important In your opinion, speaking skill is difficult for students, isn’t it?  Very difficult  Difficult  Normal  Less difficult  Easy Can you evaluate your level of English speaking skills?  Speak fluently  Speak according to the topics  Say individual sentences slowly  Say word by word  Speak incorrectly grammar How often you spend speaking English at university?  Never  Rarely  Sometimes  Often  Always How much time you practice speaking at home?  About hour  – hours  More than hours How you perform English speaking?  Anxious  Stressful 10  Motivated  Confident How offen you make English-speaking mistakes?  Not at all  Sometimes  Frequently  Always Which speaking problems you encounter? (you can choose more than option)  Frequently make pronunciation mistakes  Unable to express ideas in English  React slowly  Translate word by word  Unable to arrange the word in a sentence  Misuse tenses and difficult grammar 10 What are causes of your Speaking problems? (You can choose more than one option)  Lack of vocabulary  Lack of knowledge in grammar  Unable to pronounce accurately 11  No environment or conditions to practice speaking  Nervous when speaking English 11 Which methods you use to practise English speaking? (You can choose more than one option)  Put the target for everyday such as learning new words, common sayings or structure grammar everyday  Correct the sounds based on the standard accents  Practise English by yourself  Make friends and talk with foreigners  Take part in some English courses  Seek a part-time job which requires to speak English often 12 How teachers react when students make mistakes? (You can choose more than one option)  Ignore  Take note and give feedback  Give useful advices 13 What you expect to have in English speaking classes? (You can choose more than one option)  have fun and be comfortable when practising English  more activities such as games, quizzes, etc  Work with friendly and enthusiastic lecturers 12  to be praised and encouraged to speak more  Practise with partner or foreigners 14 What ways you recommend to improve English speaking skills? (You can choose more than one option)  Talk to yourself  Practice speaking in conversations with friends  Practice with foreigners  Practice through international music and movies  Learn to speak according to the topics  Take part in speaking courses at the center  Record voice  Join some English Club  Other ( please specify): Thank you very much for taking your valuable time to complete this survey! 13 ... study might only reflect a part of situiation of English speaking skills of first- year students in Faculty of English at Thuongmai University There are many things that need considering and investigating... researches concerning the teaching speaking skills at TMU in particular at other educational and training institutes in general: - A study on the ways of introducing students to current ways of. .. Literacy Education (June 1999) showed that communicative and whole language instructional approaches promoted intergration of speaking, listening, reading and writing in ways that reflected natural