STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. Date: 05/7/ 2016 Signature Truong Thi Hieu i ABSTRACT Since speaking in English is crucial for English language learners, the present study aims at investigating challenges faced by students and teachers of English if the teaching and learning of speaking will be implemented at Kontum Technical – Economic College. The thesis is conducted with the co-operation of 12 English language teachers and 100 students from the College.
Survey questionnaires for both subjects are treated by excel and the statistic data are clearly presented on the tables and charts. The findings of the study exposed the participants’ good perception toward learning English speaking skill. The study also highlights the challenges related to teaching staff, students, and learning facilities. Moreover, some measures are suggested to overcome difficulties if speaking skill is taught at this selected College.
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The current MA thesis would not have been completed without valuable support of many people. Therefore, I would love to express my deepest gratitude to all of them. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Tran Van Phuoc for his guidance and inspiration while I was working on this project.
He enthusiastically helped me in shaping the thesis, conducting the ideas and editing my drafts. Secondly, many thanks go to all the participants of the study, twelve English teachers and one hundred students, for their enthusiastic participation in providing useful information. I would also like to acknowledge the advice, comments I have received from my colleagues at Kontum Technical Economic College. I am very grateful to all my friends in MA class and my closed friends for their support and encouragement whenever I had troubles.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for their special care and support during the challenging time working on the thesis. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Content. Page STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS .iv LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS .vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.
vii CHAPTER I- INTRODUCTION. Research questions of the study. Scope of the study. Significance of the Study.
Structure of the study. 3 CHAPTER II- LITERATURE REVIEW. Definition of Speaking. Components of speaking .3 Principles for teaching Speaking.
Difficulties in terms of learning facilities .2 Teaching English at university in Vietnam .3 Current situation of teaching and learning English at Kontum Technical Economic College. 17 iv CHAPTER III- METHODOLOGY. 22 CHAPTER 4- FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Teachers and students’ perceptions toward learning speaking skill at KTEC.
Challenges in teaching and learning speaking. Challenges by teaching staff .2 Challenges in learning speaking facing by students. Shortage of learning facilities as a challenge. 3 Measures to overcome challenges.
49 CHAPTER V- CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS. Summary of the study .1 To the teacher .3 To the administrators .3 Limitations of the study .4 Suggestions for further study. 68 v LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Chart 4. 1 Teachers’ and students’ perception toward learning English.
2 Teachers’ and students’ perception towards learning English speaking skills .Teachers’ and students’ perception towards the elements needed in learning English speaking skills.Teacher’s and students’ perception towards teaching and learning English speaking skills integrated with other communicative skills.Teachers and students' perception towards teaching speaking skill based on speaking skill's criteria of level B1 in CEFR for non major English students .Challenges in terms of teachers’ competence (Teachers’ perception). 7 Challenges in terms of teachers’ competence (Students’ perception). 8 Teachers and students agree with the challenges in terms of large class size. 9 Teachers and students’ agreement on what teacher do to help students overcome challenges.
10 Measures deal with challenges in terms of teaching staff. 11 Measures deal with challenges related to students. 12 Measures in terms of teaching facilities. 1Describing challenges in questionnaire.
1 Challenges deal with teacher staff (Teachers’ teaching methodology). 2 Challenges facing students. 3 Shortage of learning facilities .41 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language ESL: English as a Second Language KTEC: KonTum Technical-Economic College L1: First Language L2: Second Language LHCs: large heterogeneous classes SLA: Second Language Acquisition VNUH: Vietnam National University, Hanoi vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale We are living in the global world in which English language has rapidly become an international language.
To meet this requirement, English has been taught almost everywhere in Vietnam, especially in schools, colleges, universities, English is a compulsory subject. All the society pays a lot of attention, spends a lot of time and money on teaching and learning English. In Vietnam, the teaching and learning English has mostly been focused on the four skills and speaking is considered one of the most necessary and important skill. David Nunan (1999: 225) wrote: “When someone asks, “Do you know another language?” they generally mean “Can you speak the language?”.
One cannot be considered to know a language without speaking it. It can be seen that speaking is one of the most important skills that learners must master when the learning a foreign language. According to Cao Thanh Nguyen (2011), his research findings show that while teaching English lessons from primary school to high school, or even at university, teachers often taught students grammar and vocabulary which was taken from textbook; other skills were not adequately taught. For this reason, so how to speak English well is a problem for many learners of English, especially for the students of colleges and universities in Vietnam.
Despite the fact that most of the students have been learning English since they were at high school, they are deficient in English speaking. Consequently, the teaching and learning English speaking in reality is still far from satisfaction. Especially, in the remote and poor areas like the highland, learning speaking skill has had lots of difficulties relating to general knowledge, class organization, students’ motivation, … Kontum Technical-Economic College (KTEC) is one of the four junior colleges and vocational schools in Kontum City situated in the West highland, a remote area in Vietnam; and, English is taught as a compulsory subject there. However, English teaching and learning mainly focused on grammar and there are 1 no speaking tests in the final exam so that the other skills are not adequately taught at this college.
As a teacher of KTEC, from my observation and my own ten - year teaching experience, I see that students at KTEC get high marks at the final writing and reading exam, but students’ speaking ability is still low. With the hope of helping students to learn to speak English effectively, the teacher’s duty is to find out the answer to the question “What are students’ challenges in learning speaking English?” For the mentioned reasons, I would like to conduct a study on “An investigation into challenges of learning English speaking faced by students at Kontum Technical Economic College. Research aims The research is done with the hope to understand the teachers and students’ perception toward teaching and learning English speaking skill at KTEC as well as the challenges facing students at KTEC when English speaking skill is taught. Moreover, based on the findings, the researcher also suggests some measures to overcome the challenges at the college.
Objectives The objectives of the research are: - to investigate the important role of learning speaking skill through teachers and students’ perception. - to explore the challenges that students at KTEC have faced in learning speaking English. - to give some measures to overcome these challenges in order to improve teaching and learning English speaking at KTEC. Research questions of the study This study is aimed to answer the following questions: 1.
What are teachers and students’ perceptions toward teaching and learning English speaking skill at Kontum Technical Economic College? 2 2. What are the challenges that students have faced in learning English speaking at Kontum Technical Economic College? 3. What should be done for overcoming these challenges? 1. Scope of the study The study is at KTEC only due to the constraints of time, effort, finance and knowledge of the field.
The participants of the study include 100 students and 12 teachers at KTEC. The study investigates the challenges in terms of teaching staff, students and learning facilities facing students if speaking skill is taught at KTEC. The research also suggests some measures which will be only applied for students and teachers at this college to learn speaking English better. Significance of the Study The present study is conducted to explore the challenges that students have encountered in learning speaking English.
The result of this research would help the teachers and students aware of the difficulties in teaching and learning speaking English at KTEC, so that it will be the premise for teaching and learning speaking at KTEC. Moreover, it can apply to teaching and learning speaking in other school. Structure of the study This study includes five chapters. This chapter is about the rationale, research aims, research objectives, research questions, scope of the study, significance of the study and structure of the study.
Chapter 2: Literature review. This chapter presents the theoretical background of the study and revises some relevant studies in Vietnam as well as in other countries. It presents the details of the study, participants, research instruments and data analysis. Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions.
This chapter deals with the results of the questionnaire analyzed by Excel software and clearly described in tables and charts. 3 This chapter also covers the analysis and interpretation of the prominent findings that consequently lead to the discussion of the findings. Chapter 5: Conclusion and Implications. This chapter first summarizes the main findings from the study and then informs the readers with the pedagogical implications, limitation of the study.
Suggestions for further study successfully end the chapter as well as the whole study. 4 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter reviews the theories related to the concept of English speaking and some challenges facing students in learning speaking skill. Moreover, this chapter also revises relevant studies in the field of teaching and learning speaking skill, and ends with justification of the study. Definition of Speaking Among four skills of learning English, speaking is considered as one of the most important ones that are really essential to master for the purpose of language communication.
However, what is exactly speaking skill? “Speaking is the delivery of language through the mouth” (Hornby, 1995). He defined that speaking is the skill that the students will be judged upon most in real-life situations. It is an important part of everyday interaction and most often the first impression of a person is based on his/her ability to speak fluently and comprehensively. Additionally, Oxford Advanced Learner’ s dictionary defined “Speaking is the action of conveying information or expressing one’s feelings in speech”.
In addition, according to Chaney (1998:13) speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts".a) also defined that speaking consists of producing systematic verbal utterances to convey meaning. To know deeper what speaking is, Nunan differentiated it from writing as follows: Spoken language Written language Auditory Visual Temporary; immediate reception Permanent; delayed reception Prosody (rhythm, stress intonation) Punctuation Immediate feedback Delayed or no feedback Planning and editing limited by Unlimited planning, editing, 5 channel revision Furthermore, Luoma (2004) defined that speaking as interaction and as a social and situations based activity. This perspective sees speaking as an integral part of people’s daily life. Most of interactions happening in daily activities are done in form of speaking activities.
Besides, Spratt and Williams (2005) also defined speaking as a productive skill, like writing. It involves using speech to express meanings to other people.