VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES Department of Post-graduate Studies BUI THI BICH LIEN AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE TEACHERS AND THE 10TH FORM STUDENTS AT NAM TIEN HAI HIGH SCHOOL IN IMPLEMENTING PAIR WORK AND GROUP WORK IN SPEAKING LESSONS NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN MÀ GIÁO VIÊN VÀ HỌC SINH KHỐI MƯỜI TRƯỜNG THPT NAM TIỀN HẢI GẶP PHẢI KHI TRIỂN KHAI CÁC HOẠT ĐÔNG THEO CẶP VÀ NHÓM TRONG GIỜ HỌC NÓI. Thesis Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 601410 Supervisor : Tran Hien Lan, M. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii TABLE OF CONTENT INTRODUCTION 1 1. Aim of the study 2 3.
The research questions 2 4. Scope of the study 3 5. Methods of the study 3 6. Design of the study 3 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I : LITERATURE REVIEW 1.
Communicative language teaching 4 1. What is CLT? 4 1. Features of CLT 4 1. Communicative techniques and activities 6 2.
What is speaking 7 2. What are the characteristics of speaking 7 3. Pair work and group work 3. What is the definition of pair work and group work 8 3.
What is the organization of pair work and group work 9 3. Difficulties in organizing pair work and group work 11 3. What’s the procedure of implementing pair work and group work 3. What are the good points and bad points of using pair work and group work LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
The good points 14 3. The bad points 15 3. The roles of the teachers and the students in pair work and groups work 3. The role of the learners 17 3.
The role of the teachers 17 Summary 18 CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY 1. Methods of data collections 20 2. The questionnaire for the teachers 20 2. The questionnaire for the students 21 2.
The interviews 21 CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 1. The questionnaire for the teachers. The teachers’ attitude towards using pair work and group work. The procedure of implementing pair work and group work.
The difficulties in implementing pair work and group work. The questionnaire for the students. The students’ attitude towards working in pair or in group. The students’ preferable ways of implementing pair work and group work.
The difficulties encountered by the students in working in pair or in group. Summary of the study. Suggestion for further study. 42 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Rationale Nowadays, English is very important in all fields such as trade, tourist, science, technology and etc. Therefore, the proficiency in English is not measured based on the knowledge of grammar but on the abilities to communicate in real life. Speaking skill, therefore, plays a very important role in the communicative process. According to Bygate (1995), “it is this very skill that” language learners “are most frequently judged for their language proficiency”.
As for its importance, speaking skill, nowadays, counts for a major and separate part in the language curriculum. Realizing the importance of communicative skills in life, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has recently edited new set of English textbooks for high school students with the aim of enabling them to communicate in English. In new set of textbook, pair work and group work are designed to be two main kinds of activities used in teaching and learning speaking skill. However, the result of the using these techniques at Nam Tien Hai high school seems to be still under the expectation.
Like other schools in the country, the teachers of English at Nam Tien Hai high school are also applying pair work and group work techniques in teaching English, however, the result of this application is very low. Both the teachers and the students here have a lot of difficulties in implementing them. The students here often hesitate in taking part in pair work and group work activities. Therefore, the teachers usually get embarrassed at designing and applying their lesson plans in speaking lessons.
As a result, most of speaking lessons turn into writing or reading ones Being one of the teachers of English at this school, I really want to find out what made the implementation of pair work and group work activities in speaking lessons become so boring and ineffective. From the findings, some personal suggestions are hoped to be given to make the situation better. That is the reason why I decided to carry out this research entitled “An investigation on difficulties encountered by the teachers and LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 the 10th form students at Nam Tien Hai high school in implementing pair work and group work in speaking lessons. Aim of the study This study is carried out with the aim of exploring the reality of implementing pair work and group work in speaking lessons of both the teachers and the learners at Nam Tien Hai high school where the researcher is working.
In other words, this study attempts to find out the attitudes of the teachers and the learners towards the implementation of pair work and group work as well as the procedures of organizing these activities in the speaking lessons of the 10th form students. Moreover, this study will explore the difficulties that the teachers and students often encounter when dealing with pair work and group work in large classes. Finally, the study will offer the solutions from the teachers and give some suggestions based on the literature review to these difficulties so that it can help the students and the teachers in this school find the way to take advantages of pair work and group work techniques in learning and teaching English in general and speaking in particular. The research questions To get the main purpose, this research will aim at finding the answers to the following questions a) What are the attitudes of the teachers and students towards using pair work and group work? b) What are the procedures and activities used in pair work and group work? c) What hinders using pair work and group work? 4.
Scope of the study. Pair work and group work are used in every skill; however, it is not my intention to cover all of them because of the limitation of time and the length of the study. Consequently, the researcher only focuses on finding out the difficulties the teachers and the students at 10th form level in speaking lessons when they use pair work and group LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 work by investigating the reality of implementing these techniques at NamTienHai High school 5. Methods of the study This research will be mainly conducted as a quantitative study by mostly using observation and survey techniques through using two sets of questionnaire (one for students and the other for the teachers at Nam Tien Hai high school).
Besides, other instruments such as consulting the supervisor, reading books and other references, discussing with the colleague and observing the classroom environment will be also used for this research. Design of the study The thesis consists of three main parts: Introduction; Development and Conclusion In the first part, some brief information about the reasons for choosing the topic, the method, the aims, the scope as well as the design of the thesis. The second part is divided into 4 chapters such as literature review, methodology, data analysis and findings. In chapter I, Literature review, it deals with the basic theoretical background knowledge from the literature on communicative language teaching (CLT), speaking skill as well as the knowledge involving pair work and group work activities.
Chapter II presents the methods which are used to carry out the thesis. Chapter III describes and analyses the data collected from the questionnaires. From the result of the analysis, the difficulties of implementing pair work and group work in teaching and learning Speaking skill at Nam Tien Hai High school are found out. The last part reviews the main content of the entire thesis and gives some suggestions.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Communicative language teaching (CLT) 1. What is CLT Communicative language teaching began in Britain in the 1960s as a replacement to the earlier structural method, called Situational Language Teaching. This was partly in response to Chomsky's criticisms of structural theories of language and partly based on the theories of British functional linguistics, such as Firth and Halliday, as well as American sociolinguists, such as Hymes , Gumperz and Labov and the writings of Austin and Searle on speech acts.
Communicative language teaching makes use of real-life situations that necessitate communication. The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life. Unlike the audio-lingual method of language teaching, which relies on repetition and drills, the communicative approach can leave students in suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary according to their reactions and responses. The real-life simulations change from day to day.
Students' motivation to learn comes from their desire to communicate in meaningful ways about meaningful topics. Berns, an expert in the field of communicative language teaching, writes in explaining Firth's view that "language is interaction; it is interpersonal activity and has a clear relationship with society. In this light, language study has to look at the use (function) of language in context, both its linguistic context (what is uttered before and after a given piece of discourse) and its social, or situational, context (who is speaking, what their social roles are, why they have come together to speak)" (Berns, 1984, p. Communicative language teaching (CLT) is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language.
It is also referred to as “communicative approach to the teaching of foreign languages” or simply the “communicative approach” 1. Features of CLT LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 As an extension of the notional-functional syllabus, CLT also places great emphasis on helping students use the target language in a variety of contexts and places great emphasis on learning language functions. Unlike the ALM, its primary focus is on helping learners create meaning rather than helping them develop perfectly grammatical structures or acquire native-like pronunciation. This means that successfully learning a foreign language is assessed in terms of how well learners have developed their communicative competence, which can loosely be defined as their ability to apply knowledge of both formal and sociolinguistic aspects of a language with adequate proficiency to communicate.
CLT is usually characterized as a broad approach to teaching, rather than as a teaching method with a clearly defined set of classroom practices. As such, it is most often defined as a list of general principles or features. One of the most recognized of these lists is David Nunan’s (1991) five features of CLT: An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language. The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the Learning Management process. An enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning. An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the classroom. These five features are claimed by practitioners of CLT to show that they are very interested in the needs and desires of their learners as well as the connection between the language as it is taught in their class and as it used outside the classroom.
Under this broad umbrella definition, any teaching practice that helps students develop their communicative competence in an authentic context is deemed an acceptable and beneficial form of instruction.