VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* NGUYỄN QUỲNH ANH SURVEY RESEARCH INTO AN ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL BY TEACHERS AT EQUEST ACADEMY Nghiên cứu về việc đánh giá kĩ năng nói Tiếng Anh của học viên bởi giáo viên tại học viện anh ngữ Equest. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 60140111 HANOI – 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* NGUYỄN QUỲNH ANH SURVEY RESEARCH INTO AN ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL BY TEACHERS AT EQUEST ACADEMY Nghiên cứu về việc đánh giá kĩ năng nói Tiếng Anh của học viên bởi giáo viên tại học viện anh ngữ Equest. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 60140111 Supervisor : Assoc. Ngô Hữu Hoàng HANOI - 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I declare that the materials in this thesis have not been submitted previously or concurrently in the whole or as part of requirements for a degree of ULIS relating to the retention and use of M.A Thesis deposited in the library.
I also certify that the work presented in the thesis is to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. Any help that I have received during the preparation and completion of this thesis has been acknowledged. In addition, I certify all information sources and literature used are indicated in the thesis. 15 Signature: I LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was accomplished with the help of many people.
First, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Ngô Hữu Hoàng for his guidance, invaluable advice, and constant encouragement. He has been my mentor academically and personally. His constant encouragement has helped me complete this thesis.
My further gratitude goes to the English department chairs at ULIS. Lê Hùng Tiến, Assoc.Lê Văn Canh, and Dr. Huỳnh Anh Tuấn , who have shared their knowledge with me during my study. I am grateful to all the research participants, including my teacher colleagues who helped arrange the field work for me.
Many thanks go to all my friends, Hiền, Ngân and Trang who gave invaluable advice and a lot of encouragement to me. I would also like to express my appreciation and heartfelt gratitude to my parents who have always believed in me and supported my dreams. I also thank my sisters: Thuỳ Linh and Quỳnh Mai for their cooperation all through. Most of all, I would like to thank my husband, Quang Vũ, for his love, care, emotional and intellectual support, for his continuous encouragement, and bearing with me during all the tough times.
The completion of my master program would be impossible without him. II LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT The present study investigates the teachers‟ classroom speaking assessment in EQuest Academy, a famous English center in Hanoi. The data is collected from questionnaires and interviews where teachers were the only targeted respondents. 10 teachers recently working in EQuest participated in the questionnaire and are interviewed.
The results have revealed that classroom speaking assessment currently conducted in EQuest Academy has broadly employed performance-based tasks and that somewhat informative feedback has been offered to students in the form of criterion descriptions plus marking scores, one which resulted in teachers having an overall pessimistic attitude towards the positive effects of such testing on teaching and learning. It is evident from this study that there is need for improvements in order to facilitate better learning outcomes in the classroom. Since EQuest teachers are not trained adequately the theory speaking assessment, there is less confidence in assessing students‟ speaking skill. The study also finds that the speaking assessment tasks used by EQuest English teachers are those which gave the students less psychological burden; are time- saving and designed for the convenience of construction and administration and do not demand the teacher to take the role of an interviewer.
III LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION .III TABLE OF CONTENTS. IV PART A: INTRODUCTION. Background to the research. English education in EQuest Academy.
Characteristics of English assessment in EQuest Academy.5 Chapter One: Literature Review .Key term definitions. Classroom speaking assessment. The advantages of classroom assessment. Advantages for speaking assessment.
Issues related to reliability in classroom assessment. Issues related to validity in classroom assessment.10 Chapter Two: Methodology. Steps in the selection of participants. Data collection procedures .18 IV LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Findings and Discussions.
Teachers' perceptions of speaking assessment in EQuest. Positive effects of classroom speaking assessment on teaching and learning 19 3. Types of speaking assessment tasks used by EQuest teachers. Teachers' perceptions of the practical constraints in conducting communicative speaking assessment.
Difficulties caused by the class. Difficulties caused by the students. Difficulties caused by the teachers. Limitations of the study.
Suggestions for further study. I APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS .III APPENDIX C: PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM AND PARTICIPANT INFORMATION SHEET .V APPENDIX D: SUMMARY OF INTERVIEWEES’BACKGROUND INFORMATION .VI V LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION I Rationale In Vietnam there has long been discussion about how Vietnamese people speak English, and this discussion usually arouses strong feelings in people. Like many other Asian countries, Vietnamese people begin their English education very early at school, yet they find themselves helpless when it comes to speaking English. Words do not come out.
Many Vietnamese students do have the words, they either heard them or read them but they can't say them. The reason might be that oral skills have not usually been emphasized in Vietnamese schools and oral skills are not tested in the matriculation exam. However, speaking skills are increasingly important in work life, and many Vietnamese students have expressed the need for learning better oral skills and thought speaking to be the most important area of learning in English. As a result, many Vietnamese take part in extra English classes in English centers like EQuest, RES, ILA and so on.
Obviously, there is a clear need for better oral skills, but the means how to achieve them are still developing. My study focuses on the assessment of oral skills, and I wanted to emphasize English classrooms in EQuest Academy, not in any schools because of the following reasons. Firstly, recently there are so many students learning English outside schools and most of the feedback and evaluation they receive come from their teacher during those lessons in English centers without being affected by national education system. I wanted to investigate how teachers assess students‟ speaking skill in everyday classroom situations where time and equipment are limited.
Personally, I also find this topic interesting as I am also a teacher of English in EQuest Academy, a famous English educating center. Secondly, in Vietnamese schools, there are few opportunities to evaluate students' speaking skills because speaking assessment is not administered in any formal exams including the high school entrance exam and English education puts a greater emphasis on passing the entrance exam. By contrast, in EQuest Acadery, students‟ speaking ability is tested regularly. Thirdly, assessing speaking in a normal classroom situation has some obvious problems such as limited time and the large class of around 20 people if the situation is not recorded? Creating equal test or evaluation situations during lessons is also challenging.
1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Background to the research II. English education in EQuest Academy In EQuest, an English language program is officially offered for all students at differrent levels with a variety of English courses (pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper intermediate and advanced). The curriculum has put an increasing emphasis on enhancing students‟ oral communication skills.
However, there are few opportunities to evaluate students' speaking skills because speaking assessment is not administered in any formal exams including the high school entrance exam and final course examination. Unlike with the curriculum focus, in practice, English education in almost school in Vietnam which puts a greater emphasis on passing the course exam. EQuest Academy emphasis on enhancing oral communication skills, classroom assessment is widely practiced in EQuest classroom. For many students in EQuest, classroom assessment is the only opportunity to have their speaking skills assessed when they take tests such as the Test of Spoken English (TSE), the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), and the International English Language Testing System (IELTS).
Despite the strong recommendation of assessment by classroom teachers, there is still a challenge which stems from the emphasis for a measurement driven orientation toward assessment. In other words, even if the rationale for classroom assessment is to provide both students and teachers with information about their current level of speaking skills and how to improve their speaking skills on the basis of their real language performance, teachers are nevertheless under pressure from such a policy to reflect the results of classroom assessment as a certain portion or percentage of the students‟ final courses. Characteristics of English assessment in EQuest Academy High stakes test situation In EQuest, most of students learn English for IELTS or TOEFL certificate to study oversea, so English assessment plays an important role in determining whether students move to the higher level. This accounts for a high stakes test situation in class.
High stakes testing refers to tests upon which test-takers‟ futures or study plans. In other words, test outcomes are likely to affect the students‟ future careers 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com or life directions. Because of the substantial impact of such assessment on students‟ futures and careers, students and parents are greatly concerned with their grades of English in EQuest and the accurate judgment of this assessment work by their teachers. Therefore, under the high pressure from students and parents, EQuest English teachers tend to develop less subjective testing in order to improve reliability and objectivity.
Assessing four discrete skills The high stakes test situation influences the traditional exam-dominated culture in Vietnamese schools. For instance, in terms of the assessment format, pencil-and paper tests prevail and the style is based on multiple choice questions where the correct response is sought to each. This test format may be seen as improving assessment reliability and objectivity because as Hughes (2003) points out, no judgment is required on the part of the scorer so that scoring may be objective. At the same time, teachers are supposed to assess all four language skills in a balanced manner so as to satisfy the assessment guidelines as noted in the previous section.
Consequently, teachers tend to assess the four skills separately. More specifically, conventional pencil and paper tests assessing reading comprehension including grammatical knowledge are the primary type of assessment while speaking and writing assessments which do not have any authorized assessment tools, may be conducted as part of classroom assessment. Research aims Despite the increasing attention paid to assessment of foreign language learners in recent years among linguistic scholars and practitioners, few studies have been found concerning teachers‟ perceptions on assessment of students‟ speaking skill, especially ways in which different teachers‟ perceptions affect how students speaking skill would be assessed. The present study is to investigate what features classroom speaking assessment present in the situation where it is expected to achieve both pedagogic usefulness and meet the desired measurement purpose.
Also, this study explores whether the current practice of classroom assessment in EQuest Academy can be effective in terms of pedagogical benefits and speaking assessments. There is still a strong tendency here towards traditional formal testing 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com to measure and report learning outcomes.