VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES --- --- BÙI THỊ NGỌC HUỆ A STUDY ON MOTIVATIONAL STRATEGIES IN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS TO THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANAM TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE (Nghiên cứu về các chiến thuật thúc đẩy dạy kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên năm nhất chuyên ngành tiếng Anh tại trường Cao đẳng Sư phạm Hà Nam) MINOR M.A THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.10 Hanoi, 2013 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES --- --- BÙI THỊ NGỌC HUỆ A STUDY ON MOTIVATIONAL STRATEGIES IN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS TO THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANAM TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE (Nghiên cứu về các chiến thuật thúc đẩy dạy kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên năm nhất chuyên ngành tiếng Anh tại trường Cao đẳng Sư phạm Hà Nam) MINOR M.A THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60. Nguyễn Văn Độ Hanoi, 2013 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I certify that this minor thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of the Master of Arts is the result of my own work. The data and findings in the thesis are true and have not been published elsewhere. Signature Bùi Thị Ngọc Huệ i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To accomplish this study, I am indebted to many people for their meaningful help. First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Nguyen Van Do for his valuable guidance, enthusiastic support, critical feedback, and especially, his enormous encouragement for the completion of the study. I am also grateful to all the lecturers of Post-graduate Department, Hanoi, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University for their enthusiastic guidance and valuable lectures during the course. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all my colleagues and my students at Hanam Teachers’ Training College for their helpful participation in my questionnaires and my interviews, without which my thesis could not have been accomplished. Finally, I am indebted to my friends and my family, especially my husband for his love, his care, his help and his enormous encouragement during the process of writing this thesis, and my little baby, who gave me great inspiration and spiritual support for the completion of this study. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Motivation is considered one of the most important factors in helping teaching and learning gain success. The majority of the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers’ Training College need motivating to get effective communication in English speaking skills because of the fact that at high school they almost only focus on other skills such as reading, writing, grammatical competence to pass the entrance exam. Therefore, this study aims at investigating kinds of motivation the first-year English major students are having, strategies and techniques teachers of speaking are applying to motivate their students, as well as seeking difficulties the students are facing. Then, some suggestions on motivational strategies and techniques are provided for teachers and students to help them to succeed in speaking lessons. The instruments employed in this study were surveyed questionnaires for teachers and first-year English major students, direct interviews and classroom observation. The data collected were calculated, analyzed and the results were also drawn out. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT: Communicative Language Teaching No: Number L2: Second language LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Components of foreign language learning motivation (Dornyei, 1994a: 280) Table 2: Williams and Burden’s (1997) framework of motivation in language learning Table 3: Students’ goal for learning speaking Table 4: Necessity to motivate students in stages of a speaking lesson Table 5: Activities teachers do before a speaking task Table 6: Ways of organizing speaking activities Table 7: Ways of grouping Table 8: Activities teachers do while students practice speaking Table 9: Activities teachers do when students show low motivation in speaking activities Table 10: Activities teachers do to encourage students to speak Table 11: Activities teachers do after students finish practicing Table 12: The motivational strategies used by the teachers by frequency Table 13: Level of difficulty of speaking English well Table 14: Difficulties students encounter when participating in speaking activities Table 15: Students’ preference of being grouped iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ………………………………………………………………. iii LIST OF ABREVIATION ……………………………………………………. iv LIST OF TABLES ……………………………………………………………. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ……………………………………………………… v PART I: INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………. Rationale of the study ………………………………………………………. Aims of the study ……………………………………………………………. Methods of the study ………………………………………………………… 2 5. Scope of the study …………………………………………………………… 3 6. Significance of the study ……………………………………………………. Design of the study …………………………………………………………. 3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT …………………………………………………. 4 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW …………………………………….1 Theoretical background of motivation …………………………………… 4 1.1 Definitions of motivation ……………………………………………….2 Motivation in L2 learning ……………………………………………….3 Type of motivation in L2 learning ……………………………………… 8 1.4 The importance of motivation in L2 learning ………………………….5 Main de-motivating factors affecting motivation in L2 learning ……….1 Definitions of de-motivation ……………………………………….2 Main de-motivating factors affecting motivation in L2 learning …… 11 1.3 Teaching and learning conditions ………………………………. 14 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.6 Motivational strategies in teaching and learning L2 …………………… 14 1.2 Theoretical background of teaching speaking skills …………………….1 Definitions of speaking ………………………………………………… 16 1.2 The importance of speaking skills ……………………………………… 16 1.3 Communicative language teaching approach ………………………….4 Approaches to teaching speaking skills ………………………………… 17 1.1 Teaching interactional skills ……………………………………….2 Integrating pronunciation teaching ………………………………….3 Accuracy and fluency .5 Principles of teaching speaking ………………………………………….1 Context of the study ……………………………………………………….2 Participants of the study …………………………………………………….3 Instruments of the study …………………………………………………….4 Data collection procedures …………………………………………………. 23 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS ……………………….1 Kinds of motivation in learning speaking skills …………………………….2 Strategies and techniques applied by the teachers to motivate their students.3 Main factors de-motivating students in English speaking ………………….4 Motivational strategies and techniques can be applied to motivate students. 39 PART III: CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………. Summary of the findings ……………………………………………………. Limitations of the study ……………………………………………………. Suggestions for further researches …………………………………………. I vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com APPENDIX 1 …………………………………………………………………… I APPENDIX 2 …………………………………………………………………… IV APPENDIX 3 …………………………………………………………………… IX APPENDIX 4 …………………………………………………………………… X APPENDIX 5 …………………………………………………………………… XI vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study Today, English has become an international language. It is spoken as a second language and an official language in many countries, and as a foreign language by a great number of people in the global world as well. Besides, it is also a medium of communication in many fields such as aviation, technology, politics, science, commerce, internet, and so on. Therefore, competence of using English accurately and fluently is of great importance to a lot of people. Because English has become so important, many non-native English speaking countries including Vietnam pay more and more attention to teaching and learning English. In fact, in Vietnam English is a compulsory subject in schools, colleges and universities. The number of people using English to communicate is on the rise. Most of the English textbooks are republished in the forms of communicative ones to meet learners’ need. Also, instead of traditional methods in which grammatical competence is much more paid attention to, communicative language teaching approach has been widely applied. However, there is a fact that a large number of students, even English major students cannot communicate in oral English although they are the first-year students at a college or a university. One of the reasons for this issue is that most of the students only focus on grammatical competence to sit for the entrance exams, and distract communicative competence. Indeed, much more attention is paid to reading skill, writing skill and language focus. Whereas, speaking skill is considered as one of the most important skills to help learners to gain communicative competence. As researchers and educators, what we should do to help learners achieve communicative goals to meet their needs in using oral language effectively. Therefore, with the study “A study on motivational strategies in teaching speaking skills to the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers’ Training College”, the researcher of this study does hope that the study 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com will help teachers of speaking skill in some ways to find appropriately motivational strategies in speaking lessons to respond to their students’ need for effective communication. Aims of the study The study aims at investigating the motivational strategies in teaching speaking skills to the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers’ Training College. To be more specific, the aims of the study are: To investigate kinds of motivation the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers’ Training College possess. To investigate strategies and techniques teachers of speaking skill apply to motivate their students in speaking lessons. To investigate main factors de-motivating students in learning speaking skill. To suggest strategies and techniques teachers of speaking can apply to motivate the students in English speaking lessons. Research questions The following research questions are raised to answer to the aims of the study: 1. What kinds of motivation are possessed by the first-year English major students in learning speaking skill? 2. What strategies and techniques are applied by the teachers of speaking to motivate the students in speaking lessons? 3. What are main factors de-motivating the students in learning speaking skill? 4. What motivational strategies and techniques can be applied in teaching speaking skill to help the students achieve effective communication? 4. Methods of the study Both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed to carry out the study. The data are collected by means of survey questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Scope of the study To succeed in teaching and learning a foreign language, many factors are paid attention to. Among these factors, motivational strategies are the focal point of the study as a main factor in teaching speaking skills. Due to the time constraints, this study only involves teachers of English speaking skills and the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers’ Training College. Significance of the study The study hopes to contribute a part to help teachers find out more motivational strategies to give a great assistance to their students to improve their speaking skills and achieve communicative competence. Design of the study This study consists of three main parts: Part I, Introduction presents the rationale of the study, the aims of the study, research questions, scope of the study, significance of the study, methods of the study, and design of the study. Part II, Development includes three following chapters. Chapter 1, Literature Review displays the theoretical background of motivation and the theoretical background of teaching speaking skills. Chapter 2, Methodology presents the context of the study, participants, research instruments and data collection procedures and methods. Chapter 3, Data Analysis and Findings focuses on analysis about kinds of motivation possessed by the first-year English major students, strategies and techniques used by teachers of speaking, factors de-motivating students in learning speaking skills, and motivational strategies and techniques can be applied. Part III, Conclusion summarizes the findings, limitations of the study and suggestions for further study are provided in this part. References and Appendices are presented in the last pages of the study 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background of motivation 1.1 Definitions of motivation There have been a great number of different theories of motivation throughout many researches in years. Motivation is considered to be hard to define.242) states “motivation is a very complex phenomenon with many facets … Thus, it is not possible to give a simple definition”.
