VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES BÙI TRUNG NGA LINH IMPROVING GRADE 10TH STUDENTS’ SPEAKING PROFICIENCY AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN DIEN BIEN THROUGH USING ROLE-PLAY ACTIVITIES Cải thiện khả năng nói tiếng Anh của học sinh lớp 10 tại một trường THPT ở Điện Biên qua sử dụng các hoạt động role-play M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Hanoi, June 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES BÙI TRUNG NGA LINH IMPROVING GRADE 10TH STUDENTS’ SPEAKING PROFICIENCY AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN DIEN BIEN THROUGH USING ROLE-PLAY ACTIVITIES Cải thiện khả năng nói tiếng Anh của học sinh lớp 10 tại một trường THPT ở Điện Biên qua sử dụng các hoạt động role-play M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231. Hoàng Văn Vân Hanoi, June 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I, Bùi Trung Nga Linh, hereby certify that the thesis entitled “Improving grade 10th Students‟ speaking proficiency at a high school in Dien Bien through role-play activities” is the result of my own research, and that the thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or tertiary institution.
Hanoi, June 2018 Student‟s signature Bùi Trung Nga Linh LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the process of writing this thesis, I have been fortunate to receive support and assistance from a variety of people. First and foremost, I would like to express my extreme gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Hoàng Văn Vân for his patient and enthusiastic guidance, encouragement, invaluable assistance throughout my research. I am also grateful to the lectures and all the staff members of the Faculty of Post- Graduate Studies, ULIS, VNU for providing me valuable lessons, support and encouragement in fulfillment of this thesis.
My thanks also go to the principal, teachers and the 10th graders at X high school in Dien Bien for their cooperation and support for my data collection. Finally, but most of all, my thanks to my beloved family who always supported and encouraged me to overcome the difficulties during my study. Hanoi, June 2018 Bùi Trung Nga Linh i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This action research aimed at improving students‟ speaking proficiency by implementing role-play technique. The research subjects were 32 grade 10th students in class 10A1 at X high school in Dien Bien city in the first semester.
The role-play activities were organized in each speaking lesson from unit 1 to unit 8 of the textbook “Tiếng Anh 10”. This research was carried out in two cycles including 4 steps: planning, doing action, observing and reflection. The qualitative data were obtained by observing, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires the grade 10 students in class 10A1. The instruments used to collect data were observation, teaching diaries, interviews, and questionnaires.
Pre-test and two post-tests were administered to obtain the quantitive data which were in the forms of speaking scores. The research findings showed that the use of role-play activities improved students‟ speaking skills. The improvement could be seen from: (1) Students‟ pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency (2) Students‟ confidence, enthusiasm, and opportunities to speak (3) The mean score of pre-test (4.437), and post-test 2 (7.703) In conclusion, role-play was a trustworthy technique in promoting students‟ speaking competence. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.
ii TABLE OF CONTENTS. vi LIST OF TABLES. vi LIST OF FIGURES. Scope of the study.
Design of the study. 5 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW. Definition of speaking. Difficulties in speaking.
Aspects of speaking. Types of speaking activities. The role of teachers in teaching speaking. Assessing speaking skills.
Definition of role-play. Types of role-play. Procedures for making successful role-play activities. 22 iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Previous research on techniques/methods to improve students‟ speaking proficiency in general and role-play in particular. Techniques/methods used to improve students‟ speaking skill in general. Prior studies on using role-play to enhance students‟ speaking proficiency in particular. 29 CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY.
The setting of the study. An overview of X high school. The course outline of teaching and learning English. Selection of the participants.
Data collection methods. Testing students‟ performance. Semi-structured interviews. Data collection procedure.
36 CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Discussion of the research findings. 47 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. For further studies.
52 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABBREVIATION ECAs: Extracurricular activities LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Sample 1 of scoring rubric speaking. 16 Table 2: Sample 2 of scoring rubric speaking. 17 Table 3: Speaking activities and topics designed for class 10A1. 32 Table 5: The mean score of the pre-test.
41 Table 6: The mean score of the pre-test. 41 Table 7: The mean score of the post-test 2. 41 Table 8 : A summary about the improvement of students‟ speaking ability. 43 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Action Research Process.
30 Figure 2: The procedure of the research. 38 Figure 3: The comparison of the mean score of each aspect among the tests. 42 Figure 4: The comparison of the total mean scores of the students‟ speaking skills. 42 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Rationale English has been used more and more widely, and it is considered as one of the most important languages in every part of the world. It plays an instrumental role in all aspects such as education, travel and business, internet, and so on. It helps people communicate with each other even they come from other countries. Understanding the necessity of English in the development of society in the integration and globalization in general and of each individual in particular, the demand for learning English Vietnamese people gets stronger and stronger power.
That is the reason why the teaching and learning English has been paid more attention recently in Vietnam, and it cannot be denied that English is now a compulsory subject in language teaching programs at many schools and universities. In teaching language, there are four major language skills taught such as listening, speaking, reading, writing. Of all the four skills, speaking seems intuitively the most important: people who know a language are referred to as „speakers‟ of that language, as if speaking included all other kinds of knowing (Ur, 1996, p. It can be understood that when a man goods at speaking; he also goods at listening, reading and writing.
He will know how to use language actively to express and convey the message to the listeners easily. Actually, the recent research also demonstrated that speaking is an important factor which helps the learners form and develop their language learning process such as developing listening skills (Regina, 1997), writing skills (Trachsel & Severino, 2004) and reading competence (Hilferty, 2005). Although it is considered as the central skill integrated with other skills, it is also seen as one of the most difficult and challenging skills that the language learners have to face. Thus, this is the reason why the students are not interested in speaking lessons as well as find it very difficult to participate in speaking activities.
Based on my observation and teaching experience, there are some problems in teaching – learning speaking. I can see that most my students are unwilling to 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com participate in all oral activities because of nervousness, lack of confidence or ideas. They tend to sit passively, take notes, rarely contribute to any lessons, and even let the teacher talk all the time. Another problem is, most the pairs get stuck when teacher asks them to act out in front of the class.
They do not know how to express what they want to say in English, and they are afraid of making mistakes. Furthermore, the results of each speaking examination are usually low, therefore, as a teacher of English at a high school, I would like to find a certain suitable method to help my students have ability to communicate confidently in English. During attending four years at Hanoi National University of Education and from my own experience, I realize that creating enjoyable and effective activities in the classroom plays a vital role; moreover, the learners‟ language performance will be more successful if they practice in real or realistic communicative task, so I think that using role-play technique can be seen as a good way to motivate and give students opportunities to enhance their speaking skills. As identified by Harmer (2001, p.352), role-play can be used as the teaching tool to encourage students‟ oral fluency or to train them to be aware to speak in specific situations by playing role to be another person in that case.
This leads the learners to practice directly and have experiences in solving the problems in real world situation as natural as possible. In line with Harmer, Ladousse (2009, p.5) also states that role-play is an enjoyable activity and does not threaten the students. It brings up various experiences into classroom such as broadening the knowledge about grammar, vocabulary and creating more chances for the children to make the conversation, communication games and humanistic exercises. In other words, the students can have more opportunities to speak by doing these activities.
The above reasons have inspired me to conduct an action research to on “Improving grade 10th Students‟ speaking proficiency at a high school in Dien Bien through role-play activities”. I hope that the research will make a little contribution to enhance the quality of teaching and learning speaking skills as well as teaching and learning language for both teachers and students at this school. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Research objectives This action research is conducted in order to: Seek how “role-play” activities improve English speaking skills and develop communicative skills for the grade 10th students at a high school in Dien Bien.
Research questions In order to achieve the objectives mentioned above, the study is designed to answer the following research question: “How does role-play help grade 10 students at a high school in Dien Bien overcome their difficulties in speaking lessons?” 4. Scope of the study This study is only a small-sized scale study and it is conducted to find out the students‟ difficulties in learning speaking English as well as examine how role-play activities help them improve their speaking ability. Thus, there is only one grade 10 class at a high school in Dien Bien is selected for study. Design of the study The study is organized into three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion.
Part A, Introduction, introduces the importance of learning English, especially learning speaking English; presents the rationale, the objectives when applying the role-play activities to improve speaking skills for the students who have never been acquainted with this technique before. Part B, Development, is divided into three chapters: Chapter I defines some key terms related to this topic with a critical literature review of previous related studies. Chapter II illustrates the research methodology with the elaboration on the participants, data collection and analysis instruments as well as research procedure. Chapter III analyzes and discusses the results found from the data to get 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com the answer to the research questions.
Part C is the conclusion of the study which summarizes and synthesizes the main issues discussed in the thesis, points out some implications of the research and recommends some suggestions for teachers, students and further studies.