When students begin studying English they are not self- confident to speak, they are fear of making mistakes. This difficulty seems due to a number of reasons.
Firstly, when asked to speak English in classroom students don’t have an idea about the subject. They may don’t know about what they are learning to do. Their knowledge about the subject is not very much, so they can’t speak. I think the starting point of every lesson should be an operation of some kind, which students might actually want to perform in the foreign language.
Moreover, some students have an idea but they can’t speak out, so why? Some surveys showed that learners are usually worried about what the others might say or think. Before speaking they always think that they will speak incorrectly and their friends will laugh at their mistake in pronunciation or in grammar. All of these reasons make them keep silent during the period. In addition, student may have an opinion, but do not feel that they can say exactly what they mean. They are afraid they might not be able to put their words and the opinions in order, to make other understand their ideas easily.
The next reason makes learners can’t speak that is, students have a good idea, but want to express it in same eloquent manner that they are capable of their mother tongue. They forget that the way or the rule of expressing ideas in English and Vietnamese is different. Also, the grammar, the words order and intonation of Vietnamese are very different to English. Moreover they always think of what they are going to say in Vietnamese first then translate into English. This make them think slowly and the order of the words in the sentences may be wrong. One more reason for students making mistakes in speaking class may come from their teacher who believes that some small mistakes of grammar or pronunciation do not matter as long as the student gets his message across. In some language classroom, students haven’t been prepared well about what they are going to speak, they may be forced in to activities and in an effort to deal with them they make mistake because they to do something they have been shown how to do, or they have not mastered sentence the all construction so it’s not really a mistake at all.
It easy for students to make mistakes when teachers ask them to try to express something that students are not quite sure of how to say, they are frightened of making mistakes and do not want to express their ideas in front of their classmates
1.8.1.2. Shyness when talking in English
Most of Vietnamese student are introverts so they are not self confident to stand in front of class, many people, their classmates, and teacher to speak English.
Students, who asked if they want to volunteer or wait to be asked to perform in front of class, said that they usually wait to be asked by teachers. The reason is that they are too shy.
To help students overcome their shyness in language conversation class.
Teachers should limit speak their mother language, teachers need to actually communicate in English. Students are reluctant to spoken out, they don’t volunteer answer. When teachers bring up a new topic and students may not know clearly about it but they seldom ask question for clarification. Some students will only talk if specifically called upon and only then if there is a clear cut answer. But even if the answer is obvious, it may be preceded by a silence so long that the teacher is tempted to supply the answer first. This type of silence does not necessarily signify an unwillingness to comply, but may simply indicate that the students are too nervous to respond, or too uncertain of the answer to risk public embarrassment.
Moreover, in a classroom, there are students who know the answer and want to make a good impression on the teacher, but something keeps their hands down and stifles their voices. They are inhibited from acting because of inner commands from the guard- self: “ You’ll look ridiculous, your classmate will laugh at you this is not a place to that… you will be safe if you are not seen and not heard”. And the students decide not to risk the dangerous freedom of a spontaneous answer and meekly comply.
Another reason makes students ‘shyness may be caused by the way of teaching.
Traditionally, the teachers organized their lesson follow the teachers- central method. When the lesson starts, the teachers always stand behind a desk at the front
of the class. He speaks and do his work all the time, he only stops his work to make question to students when he thinks it is necessary, most of time students sit in silence, write down on their notebook and receive the information from the teachers’ lecture. It is boring method when a lesson takes place where one talks and learners listen but don’t speak, don’t give any question. This ways of teaching forms the learners’ passive style day by day. It’s a one way transmission of information from teacher to student. Students have no opportunity to express themselves. Because of this, it is natural that students will feel shy when they want to express themselves…all that things make students have a very good condition to be passive for so long that they will feel shy when they want to express their thoughts event when they know the clear answered .As teachers who respect and care about students as individuals and hope to take into account their choices of learning and social style, some teachers may be reluctant to address this issue of shyness and hence, not attempt to mediate in helping those students overcome the emotion and behavior that is called shyness. And indeed, well- intentioned but misguided approaches to shyness can exacerbate the students’ suffering; probably one of the most powerful things teachers do to help their students is to create a classroom atmosphere, which is conductive to inspiring confidence.
1.8.1.3. Thinking of what to say in Vietnamese then Translating into English
We know that the mother tongue has a big affect on learner when they study the second language. It has both positive and negative sides. The positive side is that many skills acquired in the first language can be transferred to the second language. For example, if a student has developed good reading skills in Vietnamese, he or she is likely to be able to apply this skill when reading English.
But its negative side is that the first language, Vietnamese is deeply ingrained in students, they usually tend to think in Vietnamese, and then translate into English when they want to express their idea. This takes a lot of time because they have to think of how to put the words and their thought in order. This is not useful because
while they pay attention to thinking and translating, the others may stand up and say what they want to transfer from Vietnamese to English in class. Hence they have lost the change of speaking English in class. In addition, things like the grammar or intonation of Vietnamese and English are quite different. We all know, for example, that in Vietnamese an adjective always goes after a noun, while an adjective always stands before a noun in English. For this reason, some students sometimes make mistakes when they apply the rude of Vietnam grammar into English, they may say
‘dog black” instead of “black dog”. Moreover, Vietnamese is considered a rich language, so the more interesting the idea they thought in their mind, the more difficult it is to find the word in English to translate. So we can state that beside the positive sides which we can transferred from the mother tongue into the second language there are some negative sides which are not good habit for the students to think and translate from Vietnamese into English while speaking.