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 ...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