THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES NGUYEN THI THU IMPROVING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS FOR STUDENTS OF GRADE 6 AT A LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOL THROUGH ENGLISH EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 THAI NGUYEN – 2022 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES NGUYEN THI THU IMPROVING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS FOR STUDENTS OF GRADE 6 AT A LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOL THROUGH ENGLISH EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES M.A THESIS (APPLICATION ORIENTATION) Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Nguyen Thu Hanh, PhD THAI NGUYEN – 2022 ĐẠI HỌC THÁI NGUYÊN TRƯỜNG NGOẠI NGỮ NGUYỄN THỊ THU CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG NÓI TIẾNG ANH CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 6 TẠI MỘT TRƯỜNG THCS THÔNG QUA CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NGOẠI KHÓA TIẾNG ANH LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ (Định hướng ứng dụng) Ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8220201 Cán bộ hướng dẫn: TS. Nguyễn Thu Hạnh THÁI NGUYÊN – 2022 DECLARATION I certify my authority of the thesis submitted entitled “Improving English speaking skills for students of grade 6 at a Lower Secondary School through English extracurricular activities” in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MA in linguistics. Approved by SUPERVISOR Author’s signature Nguyen Thu Hanh, PhD Nguyen Thi Thu Thai Nguyen, 2022 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to offer my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has helped me with my research. First and foremost, I would want to express my heartfelt thanks to PhD.
Nguyen Thu Hanh, my esteemed supervisor, for her essential guidance, contributions, and meticulous attention to my study. I would like to take this occasion to thank the lecturers of the School of Foreign languages for providing me with excellent conditions in which to complete this thesis and complete this M. In addition, I am grateful to my colleagues and students who are the subjects of my thesis for agreeing to participate in my presentations, questionnaires, and interviews. My sincere gratitude also goes out to my pals for their unwavering support and concern during the project.
Finally, I want to express my gratitude to my family for their unwavering support throughout the study process. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION .ii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iii LIST OF FIGURES. LIST OF TABLES.
i LIST OF BREVIATIONS. Aims of the study. Scope of the study. Significance of the study.
Methods of the study. Structure of the thesis. Overview of speaking skill. Definition of speaking skills.
Relationship between speaking and three other skills. The purpose of speaking skills. Overview of English extracurricular activities. Concepts of English extracurricular activities.
The importance of English extracurricular activities. Types of extracurricular activities. Benefits of English extracurricular activities in teaching and learning speaking skills. Previous studies on improving English speaking skills for students through English extracurricular activities.
An overview of Doc Lap Lower Secondary School. The situation of English teaching and learning English in Doc Lap Lower Secondary School. Description of the participants. Data collection instruments.
Data collection and analysis procedures. Data collection procedures. Data analysis procedures. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.
Findings and discussion from the test. The results from pretest. Finding from the pre-elimination investigation. Research findings and discussion from action implementation.
Improvement in the students’ speaking. The students’ attitudes towards extracurricular activity. Implication of the study. Limitations of the study.
Suggestions for further study. II APPENDIX 3 – RESULTS OF THE PRETEST AND POSTTEST .VI SAMPLE OF EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY. XII v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3. Action research model by Kimmis and McTaggart (1998).
Differences between the pretest and posttest ranges of scores. 31 LIST OF TABLES Table 4. Number of students with passing scores of the pretest. Results of the pretest and posttest mean scores.
Distribution of the pretest and posttest scores. Results from questionnaire. 33 i LIST OF BREVIATIONS TEFL: Teaching English as a Foreign Language CLT: Communicative Language Teaching EFL: English as a Foreign Language ECAs: Extracurricular activities ECA: Extracurricular activity MC: Master of Ceremony ii ABSTRACT The focus of this thesis is on how extracurricular activities might be planned, the usefulness of extracurricular activities in enhancing students' speaking skills, and the students' feedback on extracurricular events. The research was conducted in Doc Lap Lower Secondary School's classes 6A1 and 6A2 during the first semester of the school year 2020-2021.
A total of 90 students were invited to participate in the study by the researcher. English extracurricular activities, like the English speaking club…, are offered for the 6th graders. Individual, small group, and pair work were the activities. The researcher gathered data from students' evaluation forms, extracurricular activity observations, interviews, and discussions to arrive at the findings.
Extracurricular activities are particularly valuable for students and teachers of English in teaching and learning English, especially speaking abilities, as evidenced by the experiment with 6th graders. Students' speaking abilities have significantly improved as a result of their involvement in extracurricular activities. Participating in extracurricular activities has also aided students in developing other abilities such as teamwork, the ability to present in front of a big audience, and so on. More importantly, students are more engaged in classroom speaking lessons.
This shows that extracurricular activities such as these can be effectively integrated into the English teaching curriculum at our school and others, benefiting both teachers and students. Rationale It can no longer be ignored that English is becoming the universal language of our global world. English is the passport to success and greater knowledge of our rapidly changing world, whether you live and work in an English-speaking nation or require it for travel and leisure. As a result, teaching and learning English is extremely vital and required since understanding English provides us with the greatest and quickest path to achieving life success.
From elementary school children to university students, from workers to government bosses, English is studied with zest and zeal. With the trend of globalization, there has been a growing demand for teaching and learning English in Vietnam. However, Vietnamese students have several challenges in acquiring and practicing their English language skills, specially speaking skills. They frequently become perplexed when speaking English due to a lack of professional expertise, confidence, and an effective learning strategy.
Aside from that, the passive learning environment, which consists of the same monotonous courses with no intriguing extracurricular activities, prevents children from practicing and developing their English. That is the primary reason why individuals do not get the desired results in learning English, particularly in terms of speaking ability. Besides, there is a part of components of talking influencing the capacity to talk fluidly such as dialect highlights (associated discourse, expressive gadget, lexis and language structure, arrangement dialect) and the capacity to handle data and dialect “on the spot” such as dialect handling, interacting with others… Be that as it may, in a period of 45minutes, it appears to be outlandish for both instructors and learners to control them. Having taught English for many years, the researcher discovered that the majority of her students are reluctant to participate in oral activities.
Most of them sit passively and take notes, rarely contribute to the lesson, and never seek the teacher's assistance when they have a problem. Large classes, psychological or cultural differences, teaching methods, teacher knowledge, student’s lack of idea or linguistic knowledge, such as 1 grammatical structures or vocabulary, are some of the reasons for this. Whatever the reasons, the primary goal of the researcher as a teacher is to encourage her students to speak up in class and thus improve their communication skills. During the teaching process, the researcher also found that extracurricular activities in English are considered as one of the effective tools to create a positive English practice environment for students, increase interaction between lecturers and students, between students or encourage students to acquire language and cultural knowledge.
Therefore, based on the afore-mentioned reasons, the researcher determines to carry out a research on “Improving English speaking skills for students of grade 6 at a lower secondary school through English extracurricular activities” 1. Aims of the study The current study is about to help the grades 6th students at Doc Lap Lower secondary school improve their speaking skills through extracurricular activities and to provide them with the basic knowledge of speaking skill of higher requirement for the next graders. In a nutshell, this study is aimed at investigating how extracurricular activities could help improve the English speaking skills of 6th graders at Doc Lap Lower secondary school. Research questions In order to achieve the aims stated above, the research is conducted to address the two following questions: 1.
To what extent does English extracurricular activities enhance English speaking skills of the grade-6 students at a lower secondary school in Thai Nguyen? 2. What are these students’ attitudes towards the employment of English extracurricular activities to improve English speaking skills? 2 1. Scope of the study There are so many different material resources and researchers that require a lot of time and effect while the researcher’s personal experience is limited. Therefore, this study can only focus on studying the effectiveness of studying English speaking skills through the extracurricular activities for the grades 6th students at Doc lap Lower Secondary School in Thai Nguyen in the second term of the academic year 2020-2021.
Significance of the study By conducting this study, the researcher expect that the result will have some significant contributions to teaching English, especially in improving speaking skill for students in grade 6. The researcher hopes that the result of this research will have several significance as follows: Practically, the researcher hopes that this result can give motivation for teachers to be more creative and innovative in using alternative strategies to teach English, especially in teaching speaking for school students. Theoretically, the researcher hopes that this result can be useful as a reference for those who have interest in the same topic. Pedagogically, the researcher hopes that this result can become a way to improve the English teaching and learning process for school students, typically to increase the students’ motivation and engagement in English lessons, including speaking ones.
Methods of the study Action research was adopted in this study by the researcher and also the teacher; therefore, extracurricular activities would be applied directly into the class where the researcher was teaching. Also, both qualitative and quantitative data collection were applied in this study. Questionnaire and interview with students were used to gather the students’ opinions about the use of extracurricular activities in speaking classes. The data analysis from tests would help to understand more the students’ improvement in speaking skill.
All of the methods were triangulated to get the validity 3 and reliability of the research, therefore, the results from students’ tests would be compared with the data collected in the interview and questionnaire. Structure of the thesis Apart from declaration, acknowledgement, abstract, table of contents and appendices, this thesis is structured in three main parts namely: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion. Chapter 1, INTRODUCTION, presents the rationale, the aims of the study, research questions, scope of the study and structure of the thesis. Chapter 2, LITERATURE REVIEW, begins with the literature on extracurricular activities, its importance, its different types and priors studies related on extracurricular activities, Chapter 3, RESEARCH METHODOLOGY, provides the English teaching and learning situation in Doc Lap Lower Secondary School, the research methods that involve information about the participants, procedures and instruments.
Chapter 4, RESULTS AND DISCUSSION, presents major findings and discussion, and analyses the collected data to answer the research questions. Chapter 5, CONCLUSION, addresses the key issues in the study, summarizes some shortcomings revealed during the process of this study and the recommendations for more effective application of extracurricular activities in improving students’ speaking skills.