VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI University of languages and international studies FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ------------ NGUYỄN MINH HỒNG THREE WAYS TO MOTIVATE THE STUDENTS AT BANKING ACADEMY-BACNINH BRANCH IN ENGLISH SPEAKING ACTIVITIES BA CÁCH TẠO HỨNG THÚ CHO SINH VIÊN HỌC VIỆN NGÂN HÀNG-PHÂN VIỆN BẮC NINH TRONG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NÓI TIẾNG ANH M. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 HANOI - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI University of languages and international studies FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ------------ NGUYỄN MINH HỒNG THREE WAYS TO MOTIVATE THE STUDENTS AT BANKING ACADEMY-BACNINH BRANCH IN ENGLISH SPEAKING ACTIVITIES BA CÁCH TẠO HỨNG THÚ CHO SINH VIÊN HỌC VIỆN NGÂN HÀNG-PHÂN VIỆN BẮC NINH TRONG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NÓI TIẾNG ANH M. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Dr. Hoàng Thị Xuân Hoa HANOI - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF CHARTS. vi PART ONE: INTRODUCTION. Background to the study.
Aims of the study. Significance of the study. Scope of the study. Outline of the thesis.
3 PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT. 5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Definitions of speaking. The importance of speaking.
Accuracy or fluency in the teaching of speaking. Phases to teach speaking. Common speaking activities. Problems with speaking activities.
Definitions of motivation. Types of motivation in foreign language learning. The importance of motivation in foreign language learning and teaching. Strategies for motivating students in speaking activities.
An action research. 19 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Description of the subjects. The action research procedure.
Description of Data Collection Instruments. 23 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS. Data collected from preliminary investigation stage. Data collected from questionnaire 1.
Data collected from observation sheets. The aims of the intervention. The intervention procedure. Data collected from the intervention stage.
Data collected from Observation sheets. Data collected from Questionnaire 2. 38 PART THREE: CONCLUSION. Review of the study.
Limitations and suggestions for further research. 44 APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: Questionnaire 1. II APPENDIX 3: Observation sheet 1 – Overall class motivation. III APPENDIX 4: Observation sheet 2 – Students’ on-task behavior.
IV APPENDIX 5: Action plan implementation. VI APPENDIX 6: A sample of intervention plan .VII APPENDIX 7: Data on overall class motivation. XI APPENDIX 8: Data on the students’ on-task/off-task behavior .XII LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi LIST OF CHARTS Chart 1: Students’ reasons for learning English speaking. 24 Chart 2: Students’ attitude towards learning English speaking.
25 Chart 3: Students' frequency of unwillingness to speak English in class. 25 Chart 4: Factors leading to the students' low motivation in English speaking activities. 26 Chart 5: Overall class motivation phase 1. 27 Chart 6: Students' times on-task/off-task behavior phase 1.
28 Chart 7: Overall class motivation phase 2. 31 Chart 8: Students’ times on-task/ off-task behavior phase 2. 32 Chart 9: Students’ opinions about the teachers’ helping them set their own achievable goals. 33 Chart 10: Students’ opinions about the teachers’ use of various speaking activities.
34 Chart 11: Students’ opinions about the teachers’ use of rewards for success. 35 Chart 12: Students’ attitude towards the teaching in the intervention stage. 35 Chart 13: Overall class motivation before and after the intervention. 37 Chart 14: Students’ times on-task/off-task before and after the intervention.
37 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -1- part one: Introduction 1. Background to the study Theoretical perspective Together with the trend of globalization, English is used more and more widely in international settings. Therefore, the ability to communicate in English is very important. Speaking plays an essential role because without it, communication cannot take place directly between people.
However, speaking is generally considered the most difficult to learn among the four skills in English language learning. In order to teach the students English speaking so that they become more interested in and maintain their interest in speaking learning, when it is not seen as important for their immediate needs other than to pass the oral exams, teachers have to find creative ways to teach and increase students’ motivation to learn. Being concerned with what a teacher can do to enhance student motivation in English speaking activities, a number of interesting and applicable ideas has been found. Among them are useful strategies from Bligh (1971), Sass (1989), Ames and Ames (1991), Harris (1991), Dornyei (2001), Oxford and Shearin (1994): capitalize on students’ existing needs, help students set achievable goals for themselves, give clear explanation, create a comfortable atmosphere, vary teaching activities and methods, make learning visual, increase students’ self- confidence, promote cooperative learning, make students active participants in speaking activities, respond to students’ work and reward success.
Teachers should know how to use these strategies so as to increase students’ motivation in English speaking activities. Therefore, this action research attempts to explore the problems of the students in speaking activities and to find out the most useful strategies in the researcher’s own teaching context. English speaking teaching and learning at Banking Academy-Bacninh Branch Banking Academy-Bacninh Branch is a vocational school which trains students in Banking and Accounting operations. Its English language teaching and learning program is implemented in the first term of the students’ first year.
The students are taught general English with New Headway Elementary (Liz & John Soars, 2000) in the time span of 120 forty-five minute class periods. With 12 parallel classes, teaching is basically synchronized LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -2- across classes; that is, all the teachers are required to teach the same textbook and go through the same materials at more or less the same pace. Each class is composed of students at mixed abilities. During five years of teaching at Banking Academy-Bacninh Branch, the researcher often found many of my students were low motivated in class.
There were always students absent from class, and even for those who came to class, some of them did not participate in the activities, some of them pretended to participate in but in fact they chatted with others in Vietnamese, some just listened to others speaking but say nothing, some of them even dozed off, etc. Later, after the investigation, the researcher realized that many of them were low motivated as they did not have achievable goals for themselves, the activities in the class were monotonous, the teacher did not create a comfortable atmosphere for them to speak and they were afraid of making mistakes and being laughed at by their classmates. Being aware of the importance of English speaking, motivation and motivational strategies in English speaking, and bearing in mind the context of teaching and learning speaking at Banking Academy-Bacninh Branch, the researcher conducted this action research on the use of three strategies: helping students set achievable goals, varying speaking activities and using rewards for success with the aims at motivating the students in English speaking activities. Aims of the study This research was an attempt to motivate the students at Banking Academy-Bacninh Branch in English speaking activities by using three strategies: helping students set achievable goals, varying speaking activities and using rewards for success.
In order to achieve this aim, the specific objectives of the study are: - Finding out the causes of the students’ low motivation in English speaking activities in order to have proper intervention to motivate them. - Examining whether the teacher’s intervention consisting of the three changes: helping students set achievable goals, varying speaking activities and using rewards for success could motivate the students in English speaking activities or not. Research questions With the above objectives, the research questions are: LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. What are the causes of the students’ low motivation in English speaking activities? 2.
Can the teacher’s intervention consisting of the three changes: helping students set achievable goals, varying speaking activities and using rewards for success motivate the students in English speaking activities? If yes, to what extent? 4. Significance of the study It is hoped that the study will identify the main causes of the students' low motivation in speaking activities at Banking Academy-Bacninh Branch. In addition, by doing this action research, the researcher can evaluate the use of the three changes - helping students set achievable goals, varying speaking activities and using rewards for success - in her classes. And this would provide the teachers with guidance and assistance to boost students' motivation in learning to speak English.
Students will find it more useful and interesting in their learning and spend more time on this specific skill. The study will give us convincing information about the great value of the combination of the three changes in increasing learners' motivation. Scope of the study The research was conducted on the students at Banking Academy-Bacninh Branch. Due to the limitation of time, the researcher only focused on the use of the three changes in class K43B in the first term, in which the researcher taught as a teacher, as K43B can be the representative of all the classes at Banking Academy-Bacninh Branch.
Research method The method employed in this study is an action research, with the use of two instruments: observations and questionnaires. All comments, remarks, recommendations and conclusion are based on the data analysis. Action research has proved to be the best choice for this study as the study was aimed at motivating the students to take part in speaking activities within a certain context. The combination of different instruments used in this research would help to gain reliable data and help the researcher have a close investigation into the problems that the students were having.
Outline of the thesis The study consists of three parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -4- The first part, “Introduction”, presents background to the study, aims of the study, research questions, significance of the study, scope of the study, research method, and outline of the thesis. The second part, “Development” comprises 3 chapters: Chapter 1, LITERATURE REVIEW, presents relevant theoretical basis for the study, relating to speaking learning and teaching in language classroom, motivation, motivational strategies in speaking class and presents previous studies relating to the field. Chapter 2, METHODOLOGY, provides the readers with the definitions of the action research, the data collection instruments.
Detailed information about the research procedure and the participants of the study is also presented. Chapter 3, DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS, analyzes the data collected from the preliminary investigation stage to form the hypothesis of the study. An intervention plan is worked out and implemented. The data from the intervention stage are collected and analyzed to make an evaluation of the effectiveness of the intervention.
The last part, “Conclusion”, reviews the study, gives out pedagogical implications, presents the limitations of the study and gives suggestions for further study in the same field. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -5- PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Definitions of speaking Speaking, as Bygate (1987) defines, involves not only the use of the right sounds in the patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also the choice of words and inflections in the right order to convey the right meaning. Speaking, a productive skill, is known to have two main types of conversation namely dialogue and monologue, which are rather different.
In monologue, you give uninterrupted oral presentation while in dialogue you interact with one or more other speakers for transactional and international purposes. It is noticeable from the two productive language skills that speaking is different from writing in both processing conditions and reciprocity conditions.