VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HUYỀN THE USE OF ROLE PLAY ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE SPEAKING SKILLS FOR THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY SỬ DỤNG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG ‘ĐÓNG VAI’ NHẰM CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG NÓI CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT CHUYÊN ANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP HÀ NỘI M. Minor Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 HÀ NỘI - 2012 i z VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HUYỀN THE USE OF ROLE PLAY ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE SPEAKING SKILLS FOR THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY SỬ DỤNG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG ‘ĐÓNG VAI’ NHẰM CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG NÓI CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT CHUYÊN ANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP HÀ NỘI M. Minor Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 Supervisor: Hoàng Thị Xuân Hoa Ph.D HÀ NỘI - 2012 i z TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLA RATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS vii LISTS OF TABLES AND CHARTS viii PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 1. Background of the study and problem statement 1 2.
Aim and objectives of the study 3 3. Scope of the study 3 5. Method of the study 4 6. Significance of the study 4 7.
Thesis organization 5 PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 6 CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 6 1. An overview of speaking skills 6 1. Definition of speaking 6 1. Difficulties in teaching / learning speaking skills 7 1.
Methods of teaching speaking skills 9 1. A successful speaking activity in classroom 10 1. Activities to promote speaking skills 12 1. Definition of role play 13 1.
Types and procedures in using role play 15 1. Significance of role play in teaching speaking 19 1. Summary 20 iv z CHAPTER TWO: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 21 2. Setting and subjects of the study 21 2.
Conducting preliminary study 22 2. Planning the action 22 2. Choosing teaching materials 22 2. Preparing the lesson plan 23 2.
Making role play activities evaluation form 23 2. Setting the criteria of success 24 2. Implementing the action 24 2. Observing the action 25 2.
Reflecting the action 25 2. Summary 26 CHAPTER THREE: DATA ANALYSIS, RESEARCH FINDINGS 27 AND DISCUSSION 3. Data analysis of teachers and students‟ survey 27 questionnaires in preliminary investigation 3. Findings from preliminary investigation 31 3.
Research findings and discussion from action 32 implementation 3. Findings from cycle 1 32 3. Finding on the students‟ speaking performance 32 3. Findings on the students‟ self-confidence 33 3.
Findings from cycle 2 35 3. Findings on the students‟ speaking performance 35 3. Findings on the students‟ self-confidence 37 3. Data analysis and findings from the students‟ 37 questionnaires 3.
Summary 42 PART THREE: CONCLUSIONS 43 1. Limitations of the study 45 4. Suggestions for further study 45 REFERENCES 46 APPENDICES I Appendix 1: Survey questionnaire for teachers I Appendix 2: Survey questionnaire for students III Appendix 3: Lesson plans V Appendix 4: Role play activities evaluation form XLVIII Appendix 5: The frame of Harris‟s oral English rating scores XLIX Appendix 6 : Situations LII Appendix 7 : Survey questionnaires for students LVI vi z LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS HaUI: Hanoi University of Industry TESL: Teaching English as a Second Language EFL: English as a Foreign Language ESL: English as a Second Language N: Number Ts: Teachers Ss: Students vii z LISTS OF TABLES AND CHARTS TABLES: Table 1: Teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes towards speaking skills and the role of teaching and learning speaking skill Table 2: Teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes towards speaking material Table 3: Teachers‟ techniques to encourage students to speak and improve their English speaking skills Table 4: Results of students‟ speaking performance in cycle 1 Table 5: Results of students‟ speaking performance in cycle 2 Table 6: Results from survey questionnaire for students CHARTS Chart 1: Teachers‟ and students‟ self-assessment towards students‟ speaking competence level Chart 2: Teachers‟ and students‟ difficulties in teaching and learning English speaking Chart 3: The improvement in the students‟ speaking skills through using role play activities Chart 4: The improvement in the students‟ self-confidence through using role play activities viii z PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1. Background of the study and problem statement Currently, English has become a language of international communication, so it is important for people to learn English.
However, today‟s world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should focus not only on linguistic competence of the language learners but also on the development of their communicative abilities, because, only in that way, learners can express themselves in each communicative circumstance. There are four skills in teaching and learning a language: listening, speaking, reading and writing, but out of the four skills, speaking is considered as the most essential skill to be mastered. Considering how important speaking skill in learning English, O‟Malley and Pierce (1996) state that speaking seems to be an important skill in order to enable learners to communicate effectively through oral language because the disability of the learners to speak may lead them to be unable to express their ideas even in a simple form of conversation. However, using English for speaking is not simple since learners have to master several important elements of English such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.
In that case, teachers are supposed to be creative in developing their teaching learning process to give attention to the elements of speaking, improve students‟ speaking skill, and make the English lesson more exciting. Since the elements of the teaching speaking are various, many problems occur in the teaching learning process. In learning English speaking skill, students often face with some problems. The first common problem found is that the influence of their native language makes it difficult to use the foreign language.
The second one is students‟ low motivation, high anxiety and limited vocabulary. Students are not enthusiastic and not confident enough to use English in speaking class. The author has found that those problems are also confronted by the first-year English major students of HaUI. The problems with students‟ speaking skills can be caused by a lot of different factors including students‟ interest and attitudes towards learning English, the material, and even teachers‟ monotonous and inappropriate 1 z use of teaching techniques, which makes students bored and unmotivated in the speaking lesson, and not confident about their speaking skills.
Hence, it is crucial to propose appropriate techniques to overcome the students‟ low speaking ability. It is the responsibility of the teacher to find out an effective technique in order to stimulate the students‟ positive attitude towards the speaking class and their speaking skills. To teach the students how to speak in the best way possible, the author decided to choose role play activities as an effective teaching technique. The effectiveness of role play activities in improving students‟ speaking skills has been demonstrated in a number of research studies.
In specific, role play has an important role in teaching speaking because it offers students a chance to practice communicating in different social contexts and in different social roles. In role play activities, students act to be someone else in the actual world situation that is brought into the classroom. “By bringing the outside world into the classroom, we can provide a lot of useful practice that would otherwise be impossible in cafés, shops, banks, etc. Besides, for the shy learners, according to Ladousse (1989), role play supports the confidence of shy learners because here they are provided with a mask where learners with difficulty in conversation are liberated.
They learn how to interact with other peers without being afraid that their mistakes might cause some misunderstanding. In brief, role play is indeed a useful teaching technique which should be applied by ESL/EFL teachers more often in the ESL/EFL classrooms. Based on the theoretical background and the findings of previous studies about the effectiveness of role play activities above, the author would like to implement an action research in which role play activities were used as a technique of teaching speaking to improve the speaking skills for the first year English major students at HaUI. Aim and objectives of the study The general aim of the study is to improve the first-year English major students of HaUI speaking skills through using role play activities.
There are several objectives of the study, those are: To investigate the real situation of teaching and learning speaking skill to the first year English major students at HaUI including the quality and methods of teaching and learning speaking kills; To research how the speaking skills of the first year English major students at HaUI can be improved through using role play activities; To examine the students‟ attitudes toward using role play activities in teaching and learning English. Research questions In order to achieve the above-mentioned objectives, the following research questions are raised: (i) What is the present situation of teaching and learning English speaking skills at HaUI? (ii) How can the speaking skills of the first year English major students at HaUI be improved through role play activities? (iii) What are the first year English major students‟ attitudes toward using role play activities in teaching and learning speaking? 4. Scope of the study The study focuses on examining how using role play activities improve speaking skills in a number of criteria including “pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension” (adapted from Harris, 1969). Also, the study is limited to the context of HaUI with the participation of 28 first –year English major students from the Faculty of Foreign Languages.
Although the author is well aware that the survey statistics are not fully representative of all the major students of English at many universities in Vietnam, she hopes to propose some of the most popular facts that occurring in the study. Method of the study In order to achieve the aims and objectives mentioned above, action research procedures were used in this study. Firstly, a survey questionnaire was delivered to the teachers so that more information on the current situation and problems they faced and solutions implemented can be collected. Then, another questionnaire was also given to the first year English major students to investigate their problems in learning speaking skills.
The information from questionnaires can help to draw a general picture about the reality of teaching and learning speaking skills at HaUI and to find out an effective solution that is using role play activities to improve the students‟ speaking skills. To investigate how speaking skills of the first year English major students at HaUI can be improved through using role play activities, the author implemented an action plan in the form of cycles that follows Kemmis and McTaggart‟s model (2000:564) including, planning, implementation, observation, and reflection. Also, the author distributed open-ended and close-ended questionnaires to the students to examine their attitudes towards role play activities in improving their speaking skills. Significance of the study The result of this study is expected to give practical contribution to the teaching of English, particularly at HaUI where the study was conducted.
For the English teachers, the use of role play activities can be one of the effective teaching techniques to improve the students‟ English speaking skill. For students, using role play activities can help them to improve their English speaking skills as well as overcome shyness in order to be able to communicate in English orally. For other researchers who conduct the same study, the result of this study is expected to be a reference and contribute more information to solve the same problems. Thesis organization The author makes an organization of this thesis in order to make an easy understanding.
Part one is Introduction.