In this part, we will analyze the data which we got from collecting data from the answer to two questionnaires to find out the answering to the first research question of the study:
“What is the first-year students’ attitude to project-base learning at Dong Nai Technology University in speaking lessons”?
The first questionnaire (please see Appendix 2) consists of 6 questions which were designed to find out the attitude of the 30 students in class which had class code 0070133 at Dong Nai Technology University to speaking skills, especially to PBL. They were asked to join in answering to 6 questions in English questionnaire composed by the researcher. In the case, the students could not understand the questions in English, the researcher could help them by translating the questions into Vietnamese. By this way, the answers were more reliable. This was important to have the exact data for analyzing.
For question 1: “Are you afraid of speaking English in front of the class?”, With this question, there were 25 students (83%) who said that they were very scared of speaking English, especially speaking in front of the class and answering lecturer’s questions. Otherwise, 5 students (17 %) answered that they felt happy and excited about speaking in front of class. They wanted to have more chances to speak English. They really wanted to speak as much as possible. With pie chart below, we can easily know the percentage of students’ scare of speaking English in front of the whole class.
(Chart 1: Students’ opinion of being afraid of speaking English in class) To the question 2: “When do you speak in English in the English speaking class?”
When the student were asked this question, a large number of the students (24 students with the percentage 80%) chose option A: “When the teacher asks you”. 5 students (17%) chose option B: “When the lesson is interesting”, and only one student chose option C: “When your classmates talk to you”. Through this question, we can predict the difficulties of students in speaking English. From that we can evaluate the attitude to speaking skills and the frequency of speaking. They considered speaking in class in a task needs to be completed to get the score or evaluation from the lectures. There were only some students having the interest for speaking. This was a good start to learn speaking well. Through this result, the research should focus on the time when the students practice speaking English and encourage them speak as much as possible. Besides that, more interesting speaking activities
To know the frequency of the students’ speaking at class, please have a look for the chart below.
(Chart 2: Students’ frequency of speaking English)
The next question is question 3: “What prevents you from speaking English in the class time”. In this question, most of students (20 students - 67%) chose the option D: “You are afraid of making mistakes”. This was quite true for students. Most of students were not good at pronunciation, speaking, and using exact vocabulary to express their ideas. They were afraid of making mistakes when they spoke. This was the reason why lots of students chose this option. Next, there were 6 students (20%) choose option B: “You feel shy in front of your classmate”. This was completely easy to understand because the students did have a lot of time for experience in speaking English in previous school. They used to think that speaking English is something formidable. So they felt shy when speaking in front of their classmates. A few students (3 students consist of 10%) chose option A: “You have nothing to say”, and one student (3%) chose Option C. Through the data above, we can find out the difficulties of the students in speaking English. We
should focusing on not only the knowledge about the vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, structure of sentences but also the feeling of the students when we teach them speaking skills. To have overview about the difficulties of the students in speaking skills, please see the chart below.
(Chart 3: Students’ difficulties of speaking English in class time)
For the question 4: “How often do you practice speaking English in front of the class?”. With this question, we find out that 5 students (17%) chose option A: “usually”, 21 students (70%) chose option B: “sometimes”
and 4 students chose option B: “rarely”. With the data collected, we can say that students got used to speaking in front of class. To encourage them to speak more in class time, we should make more interesting speaking activities and to make the motivation to them and give them the good scores when they speak well. The pie chart below shows us the frequency of students’
practicing speaking in front of the class.
(Chart 4: Students’ frequency of practicing speaking English in class) For question 5: “Do you work in groups actively in the English speaking lessons?”. In this question, the majority of students (27 students – consist of 90%) chose No and only 3 students (10%) chose Yes. With this result, we can find that with traditional teaching methods, the students only focus on grammar, reading comprehension and writing. These things cause that the students become passive in team working skills. They do not have many chances for working in a group for speaking lessons. We can clearly see this by the chart below.
(Chart 5: The active activities of students in teamwork in English speaking lessons)
And the last question, question 6: “What is your opinion of speaking activities in English speaking class? With this question, we collected data below.
There were 3 students (10%) who chose option A: “Very interesting”, 50 students (50%) chose option B: “Interesting”, 10 students (33%) chose option C: “Not very interesting”, and 2 students (7%) chose option D: “Not interesting at all”. With the figures about, we can see the interest of the students in speaking activities in speaking lessons. There were many students being not interested in speaking activities. They felt bored when studying speaking. Luckily, there were more students who thought Speaking activities were interesting. Basing on the data above, to help student feel excited about speaking activities, we should design speaking lessons with many interesting kinds of speaking activities so that the students have more motivation in learning speaking. The chart below shows us the interest of the students in speaking activities.
Basing on the results of the questionnaire, we can be confident to give the following conclusions. The first thing, most of the students (83%) are scared of speaking English in front of the class. They are scared because they did not have many chances to speak English in the past. They were scared of making mistakes. They were not confidents about their pronunciation, about using exact vocabulary, about reflection in communication. They considered speaking was something awful. They spoke to answer the lecturer’s question as a duty. They rarely communicated with friends in English and spoke in the public. The frequency of using English in communication was inconsiderable.
The second thing, they do not have lots of speaking experience. Especially, in the speaking lessons, they do not have much time and chances for practice speaking. We can know that through the frequency of the students’ practicing speaking skills in class. The next thing, the ability of the students in working in a group is not effective and active. They are usually passive because they do not have many opportunities in working in a team. And the last thing, the students are not interested in speaking activities in the English speaking lessons because these activities are not really interesting to motivate students
to join in speaking activities. Making attractive and various speaking activities should be designed more.
After having the result from the survey questionnaire in Appendix 2, the researcher applied project-based learning to test the effectiveness of this method. And the result showed that students’ speaking skills improved remarkably through the result of the post-test. Beside the positive result of the scores which the researcher achieved, the researcher also wanted to evaluate the students’ attitude to PBL applied during optional lessons. Therefore, 30 students were given a post-trying out questionnaire with 5 questions for evaluation. (see Appendix 7)
With the question 1 in the post – trying out questionnaire (Appendix 7):
What do you think about using Project-based learning in the optional lessons?
After collecting and analyzing from the answers of the students, we have the pie chart below.
(Chart 7: Students’ opinions of using Project-based learning in optional lessons.)
Basing the answers of the student and the chart above, most of the students (15 students- 50%) chose option B: “challenging but interesting”
and 8 students (26%) chose option C: “normal”, 2 students (7%) chose option D: “too easy”. This is a positive signal. It shows that the students are really interested in PBL. This can bring the student motivation and interest in learning speaking skills. Although this teaching method is quite new to the students, the students can acquire it in the short time. So we can consider PBL as an effective teaching speaking method in the first stage. The attitude of the students to PBL is positive. This is strong motivation to the researcher to do the next steps. However, A few students (5 students -17%) chose option A:
“too difficult”. We can easily understand why they chose this option. They got used to studying with the traditional teaching methods. They need the time to get used to it. Through this, the researcher also needs to study more how to apply PBL effectively to make the student easy to understand. Good attitude affects much on the result of learning. So the research believes that PBL can bring the students good attitude make them feel confident in speaking English. This thing will help them improve their speaking skills.
And the question 2: “Do you think using Project Based Learning in the lessons has helped develop your English speaking skill?” With this question, Most of the students (28 students - 93%) chose Yes. They have noticed their improvement in speaking skills when PBL applied. And, a small number of students (just 2 students – 7%) chose No. With this result, we can consider PBL as the success of the action research.0102030405060Option AOption BOption COption D3-D Column 53-D Column 6 The pie chart below shows us clearly about that.
(Chart 8: Students’ opinions about the effectiveness of using Project- based learning in improving speaking skills.)
With the question 3: “Which criteria of speaking skill have you improved?”
the choice for this question is 100% students chose more than one criterion.
With 12 students (40%) chose: they have improved fluency, vocabulary, and interactive communication, 9 students (30%) chose: fluency, pronunciation and interactive communication, 8 students (27%) chose: fluency and interactive communication, and especially, one students (3%) chose 5 per 5 criteria. This is a result which exceeds the expectation of the researcher. This result shows us the effectiveness of Project-Based Learning in improving the students’ speaking ability. In the learning process, the students have many chances to work and discuss in group. Besides that, they also have to search information, self-study, learn vocabulary, pronunciation, practice lecturing in front of mirror and many other things to prepare for the presentation. These things help students improve the necessary criteria in speaking: fluency, vocabulary, grammatical accuracy, pronunciation and interactive communication. And this result was checked by the results of the post-test.
This was a convincing evidence of their improvements.
(Chart 9: Students’ improvement for criteria after applying Project- based learning in improving speaking skills.)
With the question 4: “What are your opinions of your own changes after taking part in the lessons using Project-based learning?”. And the result of the changes is shown by the table below:
Changes A B C D E
1. I have made progress in speaking English.
15 (50%)
12 (40%)
3 (10%)
2 (0%)
0 (0%) 2. I am motivated to take part in the
lessons.
12 (40%)
12 (40%)
5 (16.7%)
%)
1 (3.3%)
0 (0%) 3. I have taken greater
responsibility for my own learning.
13 (43.3%
)
14 (46.7%)
2 (6,7%)
1 (3.3%)
0 (0%) 4. I have developed collaborating
skill.
15 (50%
)
12 (40%)
3 (10%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%) 5. I have gained confidence in
speaking in front of the audience.
12 (40%
)
17 (56.7%)
1 (3.3%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%) (Table 6: changes after taking part in the lessons using PBL)
These are the levels of students’ opinions of their changes in the lessons using Project-based learning.
A. strongly agree B. agree C. I don’t know D. disagree E. extremely disagree
Most of student (about 90%) chose the options (A,B) for the positive changes. This is an expressive change in positive aspect. Through that the success of PBL is affirmed.
The question 5: “Which difficulties did you encounter when carrying out your projects?”. You can choose more than one answer.
A. I was not familiar with group work B. The duration of the project is too long.
C. I had difficulty accepting the new role of the teacher as a facilitator.
With this question, we have some choices below. 18 students (60%) chose option A, 3 students (10%) chose option B, and 9 students (30%) chose option C. With data above, we can know the difficulties of the students when they must complete the project in group. With 18 students per 30 students in class chose option A, this choice proves that most of students got trouble in team work for the first time. They were not given the project in the past. So they do not have much experience in doing in team work well. So when they did in the team work or in group, they needed the lecturer’s help to complete the project as well as possible. With 30% of the students chose option C. This choice shows us that the students have not accepted the new role of the teacher as facilitator well. They got used to the role of teacher as normal teacher who teaches them, directs them and takes care of them from the lesson to homework. So the lecturer should note this problem to find the way to help students accept the new role of the teacher easier. And about the duration of a project is too long, few students chose it so it is not the important problem,
but we should also pay attention to this problem to adjust the time of the project more suitable. The pie chart below shows us more detailed about the students’ difficulties when carry out the project for the first time.
(Chart 10: The students’ difficulties when carrying out the project for the first time)