F: The frequency of students choosing scales of difficulties
3.4 Solutions to the 8 most common difficulties in teaching TOEIC speaking skills
3.4.3 The difficulty of students’ low motivation level
The students’ low motivation level is believed to result from two main reasons. First of all, students themselves dislike the subject or they do not find it necessary or important to study the subject. The second reason may be the teachers’
inappropriate teaching methodologies.
Four teachers agreed to make it clear to students the purpose of learning TOEIC speaking skills during their very first lesson with the students. Teacher F suggested a group discussion about whether it is essential to study TOEIC speaking. Students are asked to give reasons, explanations and examples to support their answers. By this way, students have an opportunity to express their real thoughts about TOEIC
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traditional format and the new format of TOEIC test. In Vietnam, most companies require a certificate of TOEIC reading and listening as one of the job requirements, not another for TOEIC speaking and writing. However, teachers can initiate a small discussion about the reason for the TOEIC speaking and writing being added to the traditional format. That is to make the test more reliable, to meet the demands of the business world for staff who are capable of communicating well in English with regard to all the four skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing. Some other students may, at the same time, recognize the importance of using English at work, then highly appreciate the TOEIC speaking skills which are designed to closely meet daily tasks and duties of employees in the workplace. Furthermore, by communicating well in English, candidates can create a very good impression on the interviewers during their job interview. This communicative competence can even help them to fast track their job later on by scoring some important points in the eyes of their bosses.
To make the lessons more interesting to students, most of the teachers agreed to use a wide range of communicative activities such as information gaps and role-play. In an information gap activity, two students get two different pieces of information which must be gathered to solve a problem or make decisions (Neu & Reeser, 1997). Information gap activities satisfy all of the criteria of a successful speaking activity which, according to Ur (1996), ensures that most of speaking time is occupied by the students and their participation in the activity is even.
In role plays, students are asked to play different roles in life-like situations to practice their sociolinguistic competence which means they have to use the appropriate language to the situations and characters. As the situations come from real life, they certainly arouse students’ interests.
Another suggestion which was supported by all the participants is the use of communicative ESL games. Communicative games are believed to make the
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meaning rather than on the form of utterance (See a sample of an information gap activity which is designed as an ESL game in teaching TOEIC speaking in Appendix F)
All participants supported the idea of using visual aids to attract students’ attention.
Some common visual aids widely used by the teachers are power point, projector, video, graphs, and etc.