NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ENGLISH NGUYEN THI MAI HOA FACTORS ATTRIBUTED TO SILENCE IN SPEAKING CLASSES OF ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY OF NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ENGLISH NGUYEN THI MAI HOA FACTORS ATTRIBUTED TO SILENCE IN SPEAKING CLASSES OF ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY OF NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY Supervisor: DR. NGUYEN THI THANH HUYEN Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa — 11192000 — Business English 61C ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Upon finishing my graduation thesis, I would like to express gratitude to all of my teachers, family members, and friends who have provided me with a lot of support, advice, and encouragement. First and foremost, I would like to express the greatest thanks to my supervisor, my lecturer, Dr. Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen, from the bottom of my heart.
This graduation paper could not have been finished without her all- encompassing supervision, encouraging counsel, and genuine inspiration. I wish to extend my greatest gratitude to all of the teachers in Faculty of Foreign Languages - National Economics University for their insightful lessons over the course of my four years of studying. Last but not least, I would want to express my sincere thanks to my family members for their unwavering support and encouragement while I worked on my research. Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa — 11192000 — Business English 61C EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Contributing factors that are responsible for silence in speaking classes of BE students at NEU cover three areas: linguistic problems, psychological problems and teaching strategies problems.
Their effects on students’ in-class oral performance include inadequate speaking skills practice and hindrance in developing their full potential. The research’s conclusions are based on the data of BE students studying at NEU of all school years supplied by 100 questionnaires’ responses and 15 interviews. Findings suggested three factors attributed to silence in speaking classes: In a linguistic sense, English unproficiency such as lack of vocabulary, inaccurate and unstressed pronunciation and ungrammatical uses, indirect process of forming ideas (from Vietnamese to English), improper listening and comprehension skills are all responsible for BE students’ silence in speaking classes. In a psychological sense, students may be prevented from speaking up during class discussions due to their shyness, lack of confidence, or fear of embarrassing themselves in front of the teacher and other students.
A number of additional elements of teaching strategies related problems including insufficient time for information processing, turn-taking, and uninteresting topics are also considered to be the causes of the student's silence behaviors. These factors affect students’ speaking skills in terms of lacking spoken English practice and prevent students from showing their fullest potential in oral interaction. To reduce in-class silence of BE students, it is suggested from these findings that when practicing speaking skills, it is important to increase students' confidence in their capacity to express themselves, boost students' language competency, adopt communicative teaching strategies, and provide an enjoyable classroom environment. Moreover, teachers should alter their teaching methods to stimulate students’ interest in the subject matter, reduce boredom in the classroom, and foster better involvement in order to eventually entice more students to enhance their English language competence.
ii Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa — 11192000 — Business English 61C LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BE Business English NEU National Economics University EFL English as a Foreign Language L2 Second language FFLs Faculty of Foreign Languages 1H Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa — 11192000 — Business English 61C LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 3.1 Students’ troubles in expressing themselves in English. Psychological problems related to peer pr€SSUT€. Problems of starting time and break time. Problems of turn-taking.
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LinguistiC pFOĐÏ€IHHS.ĂẶ TS TS HH re 10 3.- Ặ SG S St sehherreireirssrreeres 18 3. Suggested solutions from students’ perspectfives. HH HH Hy 26 Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa — 11192000 — Business English 61C CHAPTER 4. Recommendations for pedagogical purp0ses.
Recommendations for future research. HH HH HH Hit 311 30 9037) 0 0. 33 APPENDIX 1 APPENDIX 2 VI Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa — 11192000 — Business English 61C CHAPTER 1. Rationales It is widely accepted that English is one of the most spoken languages over the world.
Despite its argumentative nature as an international language, English has become a useful tool for people in a variety of fields of life such as science, medicine, commerce, and especially business. Therefore, mastering English, especially speaking skills, is vital for university students as English-speaking skills is most certainly in their job requirement. This is particularly true for English- major students whose future occupations are deeply associated with English of specific professions. As important as English fluency should be to English-major students, through observation, a significant number of these students are afraid to speak up in English classes, specifically Speaking skills classes because of some underlying reasons that need to be investigated.
Numerous studies of silence in second language classrooms have been conducted, Bao & Nguyen Thanh-My (2020); Bista, K. (2008); Safford & Tracey Costley (2008); to name a few. Nonetheless, they mostly focused on those of non-English major students. In addition, although several prior studies have discussed the verbal muteness in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes (Choi 2015; Liu, 2005; Nguyen Thu Hanh & Pham Thi Hoai Phuong, 2019; Schultz, 2012;), it seems that insufficient exploratory approach, which places factors attributed to in-class silence at the center of its analysis, has been done.
It is then crucial that more cases of silence in the classroom, especially in speaking classes of English-major students, locating the contributing factors at the heart of their examination be carried out. Purposes of the study The study aims to investigate factors attributed to silence in the speaking classrooms of BE major students at NEU as well as their influences on English speaking skills and in-class performance. On the basis of the examined information, the research then suggests some solutions to prevent or reduce this silence in order to minimize these effects. Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa — 11192000 — Business English 61C 1.
What are the factors attributed to silence in Speaking classes reported by BE-major students at NEU? 2. What are the effects of these factors on those students’ speaking skills and their performance in oral practice? 3. What can be done to break the silence in Speaking classes of BE-major students in order to minimize the effects of these factors? 1. Scope of the study The research focuses on major factors attributed to silence within Speaking classes of BE-major students at National Economics University, Vietnam.
The researcher examined the frequency of verbal participation of these students as a background knowledge, and then further investigated to specify contributing factors. This research also explored the effects of the factors attributed to in-class silence. Some suggestions were then generated. This study only investigates BE students without classifying their school years and English levels due to the limited time available for performing the research.
The data were collected after one week of distribution. Participants Questionnaires’ participants A total of 100 BE-major students of FFLs, NEU from three classes who were supposed to be at least at a pre-intermediate level of English ranging from first year to fourth year students participated in this study. All had received standard English education from primary to high school. The research was conducted anonymously and voluntarily by which students’ names were not collected which meant that participation or non-participation had no effect on the student's result in their classes.
Students were asked to complete an in-class questionnaire on their perspectives and behaviors toward silence in speaking class. Semi-structured interviews’ participants 15 BE-major students of the three classes mentioned above participated in the semi-structured interviews. Chosen respondents were familiar with the researcher in order to create a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere. Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa — 11192000 — Business English 61C 1.
Instruments The research used two instruments to acquire a more thorough understanding of the factors attributed to student’s silence in speaking classes: a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. In a quantitative sense, this study yielded statistical data to measure the differences in students’ attitudes toward silence via a survey. Anticipated factors and related situations were measured on a 5-point Likert scale from always, frequently, occasionally, rarely to never. Moreover, the questionnaire included four open-ended questions to encourage independent thinking and stimulate participants' ideas, a theory motivated by Johnson and Christensen (2017).
Thanks to this open design, the questionnaire functioned as both a qualitative and quantitative data collecting tool. Another qualitative tool of data collection was semi-structured interviews with students to collect detailed information of the reason behind their silence during classroom engagement. Procedures The questionnaire was distributed to 100 BE students at all school years. A corresponding 100 responses were received.
An informal meeting was scheduled between the researcher and the participants after they finished their classes to explain each question in detail and to affirm the confidentiality of the study before handing out the survey forms. The data were then collected, tallied and computed. In the findings, open-ended questions were decoded, and relevant replies were grouped together. Respondents who chose to answer the open-ended questions were coded as Q1 to Q41.
The 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted online to match with interviewees’ schedules. Each interview lasted for 15 minutes in a non-judgmental way in which respondents were repeatedly reassured that there were no right or incorrect responses prior to describing their personal behaviors and beliefs concerning silence in language courses. The interviews were recorded with respondents’ permission. From the recording, key points were then noted.
To ensure the confidentiality of all participants, interviewees’ names were coded from S1-S15. The fundamental benefit of interviews is that they offer far more extensive information than other methods of data collection as people may feel more comfortable in a conversation than filling out a survey Boyce, C. The study, therefore; focused on qualitative methods. Results of the Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa — 11192000 — Business English 61C quantitative analysis served as the foundation for the qualitative analysis, commentary, and evaluation.
Organization of the study This research is divided into four chapters, each of which has a distinct purpose and is structured as follows: CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION: This chapter provides an overview of the study, including its context, objectives, goals, scope. It also discusses the research's rationale and research questions. LITERATURE REVIEW: This chapter deals with the concepts of Classroom silence and reviews findings of previous studies related to factors contributing silence in second language classes.
DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS: This chapter offers the conclusions reached after performing research and gathering data.