Vietnam National University, HaNoi university of Languages and International Studies faculty of Post-Graduate Studies ----------------------o0o---------------------- - NGUYỄN HỒNG HẠNH ENHANCING INPUT TO IMPROVE HANOI COLLEGE OF ELECTRONICS AND ELECTRO-REFRIGERATORY TECHNICS NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ SPEAKING PERFORMANCE Tăng cường kiến thức đầu vào để cải thiện kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh tại trường Cao đẳng Điện tử - Điện lạnh Hà Nội M. Minor Thesis Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 601410 HANOI - 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Vietnam National University, HaNoi university of Languages and International Studies faculty of Post-Graduate Studies ----------------------o0o---------------------- NGUYỄN HỒNG HẠNH ENHANCING INPUT TO IMPROVE HANOI COLLEGE OF ELECTRONICS AND ELECTRO-REFRIGERATORY TECHNICS NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ SPEAKING PERFORMANCE Tăng cường kiến thức đầu vào để cải thiện kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh tại trường Cao đẳng Điện tử - Điện lạnh Hà Nội M. Minor Thesis Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 601410 Supervisor : §ç B¸ Quý, Med. HANOI - 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration Page Acknowledgements Abstract Table of contents List of tables PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 1.
Aims of the study 2 3. Scope of the study 2 4. Methods of the study 2 6. Design of the study 3 PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4 Chapter1: Literature Review 4 1.1 Communicative competence and oral communication 4 1.1 Popular views of communicative competence 4 1.2 The nature of speaking 7 1.1 Definition of speaking 7 1.2 The importance of speaking skill in the classroom 8 1.3 Some problems in speaking performance 8 1.
9 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.1 What is input? 9 1.2 The role of input 9 1.3 What is comprehensible input? 9 1.5 Research into enhancing input through giving extensive readings and enriching vocabulary to improve speaking performance 12 1.1 Definition of extensive reading 12 1.2 Role of extensive reading 13 1. Definition of vocabulary 14 1.4 The place of vocabulary in foreign language teaching and Learning 14 1.6 Summary 15 Chapter 2: Methods of the study 16 2.2 The context of the study 16 2.5 The data collection instruments 18 2.6 Data collection procedures 18 2.7 Summary 19 Chapter 3: Data, Data analysis and Discussion 20 3.1 Pre – input enhancement questionnaire 20 3.1 The students’ opinion on speaking skill 20 3.2 The students’ difficulties in speaking performance 22 3.3 The students’ desires to improve their speaking skill 24 3.2 Post–input enhancement questionnaire 25 3.3 Summary of the findings 30 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 6 PART C: CONCLUSION 31 1. Limitations and suggestions for further study 32 References Appendixes TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 7 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Students’ opinion about speaking skill Table 2: Students’ difficulties in speaking performance Table 3: Students’ expectation for what to be done to improve their speaking skill Table 4: Students’ opinions about the activities intented to improve their vocabulary Table 5: Students’ opinions about extensive readings Table 6: Students’ assessment of the activities and extensive readings’ effectiveness Figure 1: Krashen’s combined model of acquisition and production TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 8 PART A: INTRODUCTION This part presents the rationale, aims, scope, methods, research questions and design of the study. Rationale of the study It is undeniable that English is considered as a means of international communication.
People with good English proficiency are extremely needed in many various fields such as economics, politics, science, tourism and so on. Moreover, English is also a key to access the last achievement of science and technology which are very important and necessary for a developing country like Vietnam. As a result, there has been increasing demand for English language teaching and learning across the country. People learn English with many different purposes as meeting the growing requirements for communication in the society, finding a good job, achieving better position at work, or serving desire of studying or working aboard.
It is widely accepted that one of the main purposes of studying English is to use it for communications. According to Don Xiao Hong (1994:31) speaking is ―one of the most necessary language skills for displaying their language proficiency‖. Be an English teacher, I think that speaking should be paid attention to in the process of teaching and learning. However, it is a common issue at my college that the students rarely speak English, even in English classes, although they have been learning English since they started at the lower secondary school.
They often stand up without speaking any words or they have to think for a long time about what they intend to say when they required to talk in English. The main causes of the Hanoi College of Electronics and Electro–Refrigeratory Technics students’ low speaking performance in particular and the non–English major students’ low speaking performance in background knowledge. With the main causes above, as a teacher at a college of technics, within my minor thesis, I would like to investigate enhancing input that are enriching their vocabulary and giving extensive readings for broadening background knowledge to improve speaking performance. I hope that enhancing input will help the students overcome their difficulties in the process of speaking.
This has given me the impetus to carry out the study of TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 9 ―Enhancing Input to Improve Hanoi College of Electronics and Electro–Refrigeratory Technics Non-English Major Students’ Speaking Performance‖ 2. Aims of the study The study is aimed at: - Identifying the factors affecting the non-English major students’ speaking performance; - Investigating how input enhanced in terms of vocabulary and knowledge of the world affects the students’ speaking performance; - Making some suggestions for the teachers at Hanoi College of Electronics and Electro– Refrigeratory Technics to help the students improve their speaking performance. Scope of the study Concerning the scope of the study, the following are to be taken into consideration. First, the subjects of the study are the first-year students at Hanoi College of Electronics and Electro–Refrigeratory Technics.
They all have basic English knowledge and skills. Second, the study only focuses on enhancing input to improve the students’ speaking performance. Finally, as the time allowed for the study is limited, it concentrates only on identifying the effects of input enhanced in terms of vocabulary and knowledge of the world through collaborative activities and extensive reading on the students’ speaking performance. Research questions of the study The two main research questions corresponding to the two major aims are: (1) What are the factors affecting the students’ speaking performance? (2) How does the enhanced input improve the students’ speaking performance? 5.
Methods of the study The study was carried out on the basis of relevant document analysis, material collection and survey questionnaire. The data collected for the study came from the first year non–English major students at Hanoi College of Electronics and Electro– Refrigeratory Technics. For the practical basis, survey research is chosen with questionnaire and interview with the first year non–English major students at the college. All comments, remarks, conclusions and recommendations provided in the study were based on the data analysis.
TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Design of the study The minor thesis consists of three parts: The first part is an introduction to the thesis which presents the factors as plan of the study such as the rationale, aims, scope, methods, research questions and design of the study. The second part presents a theoretical background, research methods, presentation of the data, data analysis and discussions. The final part focuses on the conclusions of the study, its limitations, recommendations and suggestions for further study.
TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 11 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW As any study should be based on certain theories, the following is a review of relevant-to-the-aims-of-the-study literature to form the theoretical basis for the study.1 Communicative competence and oral communication Popular views of communicative competence It is well-known that communicative competence underlies language performance; therefore the ultimate goal of language teaching is to build and develop the learner’s communicative competence. In order to do this, the learner should be provided with sufficient input, comprehensible input. In the history of English language teaching, communicative competence is currently considered the primary goal of language teaching. Many methodologists and linguistics who work on foreign language teaching tend to define communicative competence simply as interaction in the target language as definitions of Savignon, 1983.
However, others who work in ESL tend to be in favor of Hymes’ theory of communicative competence. In Hymes’ theory, communicative competence includes not only the linguistic forms of the language but also its social rulers, the knowledge of when, how and to whom it is appropriate to use these forms. It means that the social – cultural rules for language use are also included in the teaching process. Besides, Canale and Swain (1980) consider communicative competence as the combination of five areas’ competence: rule of grammar (grammatical competence), rules of discourse (discourse competence), sociocultural rules of use, and probability rules of occurrence and communication strategies.
Grammatical competence Savignon (1983:37) states ―Grammatical competence is the mastery of the linguistic code, the ability to recognize the lexical, morphological, syntactic and phonological features of a language and to manipulate these features to forms, words and sentences‖. Discourse competence TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 12 The real world, knowledge of the linguistic code, knowledge of the discourse structures and knowledge of social setting. Sociolinguistic competence: It is the ability to interpret and express functional and social meaning of language, depending on degrees of formality, setting, topic, channel and purpose of communication. It is also an understanding of the social context in which language is used.
Probability rules of occurrences It is the ability to recognize what communication functions are likely to be expressed in a given context and what are not. As Canale and Swain (1980), a learner can not have a satisfactory communicative competence if not any of his knowledge of probability of occurrence of grammatical forms and communicative functions are developed. Strategic Competence According to Richard (1983), strategic competence includes: Speaker’s repertoire of verbal and visual gestures which signal interest in which the partner is saying. Speaker’s stock of topics and formulaic utterances which are produced at relevant point in discourse such as a small talk which is required to make brief encounters with acquaintances comfortable and positive.
Awareness when to talk and what to talk in an appropriate use of turn – taking conversations. Communicative strategies also include the ability to adapt when one’s message is not taken and to sustain communication by paraphrases, circumlocution, avoidance and shift in register and style. In summary, the above-named competencies are almost entirely language knowledge- bound ones. In EFL teaching and learning context, these are insufficient for the learner to learn effectively.
In practice, Quy (2009) claimed that to be a competent speaker in a language, the learner needs not only sufficient knowledge of the target language but also necessary knowledge of the world that is relevant to the communicative tasks the learner is to perform in the target situation. Thus, alongside with knowledge of the target language, the learner should also be provided with appropriate knowledge of the topics at hand. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 13 Oral communication It is known that language communication involves some skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. That is the reason why learners of English are required to have an adequate mastery of the four skills.
Nevertheless, the degree of fluency of each skill, which is a learner requires, depend on the course purpose. Among four skills, Byrne said that listening and reading are considered as the receptive skills, speaking and writing are the productive skills. As we know, each skill has particular importance. Of the four skills, speaking plays a very important role since it is the step to identify who knows or does not know a language.