VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ------------ NGÔ THỊ KHÁNH NGỌC USING INFORMATION GAP ACTIVITIES TO PROMOTE STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION AND PARTICIPATION IN SPEAKING LESSONS FOR SECOND YEAR STUDENTS IN USSH, VNU. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 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 ------------ NGÔ THỊ KHÁNH NGỌC USING INFORMATION GAP ACTIVITIES TO PROMOTE STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION AND PARTICIPATION IN SPEAKING LESSONS FOR SECOND YEAR STUDENTS IN USSH, VNU. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Cao Thúy Hồng, M.A HANOI, 2013 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of contents Page Declaration i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Table of content iv Lists of tables, charts and abbreviations vii PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 I. Rationale for the study 1 II.
Aims and research questions 2 2. Research question 2 III. Scope of the study 3 IV. Significance of the study 3 VI.
Organization of the study 4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5 Chapter I: Theoretical background and Literature review 5 I. Theoretical background 5 Part 1: Information gap activities 5 1. Types of Information gap activities 6 1. Littlewood (1981)‟s classification 6 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Benefits of information gap activities 10 1. Increase students‟ talking time in class 10 1. Promote students‟ motivation 10 1. Promote students‟ equal participation 11 1.
Build students‟ confidence 11 1. Develop student‟s fluency and accuracy 11 Part 2: Motivation 12 2. Types of motivation 13 2. Assess students‟ motivation 13 2.
Behaviour of a highly-motivated student 14 Part 3: Participation 16 3. Types of participation 16 3. Assess students‟ participation 17 II. Literature review 17 Chapter II:Methodology 20 2.
The context of the study 20 2.The teaching and learning conditions 20 2.The description of the material used 21 2. The teachers 22 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Data collection methods 25 2. Data collection procedure 27 2.
Data analysis 29 Chapter III: Results and discussion 31 3. Data collected from the pre-intervention stage 31 3. Data collected from the while-intervention stage 32 3. Students‟ motivation in speaking tasks in two groups.
Data from the self-report questionaire 32 3. Data from the observation sheet 1 35 3. Students‟ participation in speaking tasks in two groups 38 3. Data collected from observation sheet 2 38 PART C: CONCLUSION 41 I.
Major findings of the study 41 II. Limitations of the study 41 III. Suggestions for further studies 42 IV. Contributions of the studies 42 REFERENCES 44 APPENDICES I vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LISTS OF TABLES, CHARTS AND ABBREVIATIONS List of tables: Table 3.1 Motivation in two groups in pre-intervention stage Table 3.2 Students‟ times on task in two groups in pre-intervention stage Table 1 Motivation of students in speaking tasks in the control group Table 2 Motivation of students in speaking tasks in the experimental group Table 3 The data on the overall class motivation in the control group Table 4 The data on the overall class motivation in the experimental group Table 5 The data on the students‟ on-task/off-task behavior in the control group Table 6 The data on the students‟ on-task/off-task behavior in the experimental group List of charts: Chart 1 Students‟ motivation in the control group Chart 2 Students‟ motivation in the experimental group Chart 3 Students‟ motivation in two groups Chart 4 Overall class motivation in the control group Chart 5 Overall class motivation in the experimental group Chart 6 The level of overall motivation in two groups Chart 7 Students‟ times on-task/off-task behaviour in the control group Chart 8 Students‟ times on-task/off-task behaviour in the experimental group Chart 9 Students‟ times on-task in two groups List of abbreviations: IGA: Information gap activities USSH: University of Social Sciences and Humanities VNU: Vietnam National University ULIS: University of Languages and International Studies vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION I.
Rationale for the study It is obvious that nowadays English is becoming an international language, which is used worldwide for the purpose of communication. It is English that helps us keep up with updated information about the surroundings and establish relations with foreign countries all over the world. English is needed in various fields such as tourism, education, trade, science, economy and so on. In Vietnam, English is taught as one of the compulsory subjects at senior secondary schools and universities.
Among four main skills, speaking skill plays an important role in English teaching in the context of Vietnam. Nunan (1991) emphasized that success in learning a language is measured based on the ability to carry out a conversation in the target language. For many students, speaking is by far the most important of the four skills in a second language in general and in English in particular. However, many EFL students find this skill most difficult to obtain.
Most Vietnamese learners find it hard to use English to communicate in real life. One of the reasons may be the lack of environment for communicating. In most classes, students just come to class to listen to teacher‟s lecture without any real communication in English. The teacher may use some available speaking tasks in textbook, but most of them can‟t create the real demand for communicating of students.
During my process of teaching, I realized some problems. Firstly, speaking is one of the weakest skills of Vietnamese students. This is partly due to their poor grammar and pronunciation, their lack of vocabulary, and partly because of their low motivation in speaking lessons. Secondly, students‟ unwillingness to speak in speaking lesson can be the result of their lack ideas or the uninteresting nature of the speaking.
1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Due to these above reasons, there is a requirement of some interactive techniques to improve students‟ speaking skills and motivate them in learning. Information-gap activities may be a good solution. According to Doff (1988), IGA are activities where learners are missing some information and they need to complete a task and talk to each other to find it. Information-gap activities give students reasons to speak.
If the activities are well- designed to reflect the real-life situations, they can not only motivate students to speak but also prepare students for real communication outside the classroom. All of the above-mentioned reasons have urged the researcher to conduct the research with the title “Using Information Gap Activities to promote students’ motivation and participation in speaking lessons for second-year students at USSH, VNU”. Hopefully, this research will make a minor contribution to the implementation of Information Gap Activities in improving speaking skills for students at USSH. Aims and research questions 2.
Aims The study is specially targeted at finding out the effect of IGA on the students‟ motivation and participation in speaking lesson. Research question Regarding the goals of the study, the following research questions are put forward: 1. Can IGA help increase students‟ motivation in the speaking lessons?If yes, to what extent? 2. Can IGA help increase students‟ participation in the speaking lessons? If yes, to what extent? 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Scope of the study IGA has benefited students in many aspects such as enhance students‟ speaking skill, promote students‟ motivation, increase students‟ talking time, build students‟ confidence, etc. Due to the limited time, this study only focuses on the effect of IGA on students‟ motivation and participation in the speaking class. Besides, the subject of this study is 60 students from two English classes in University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH). Method In order to achieve these aims, this quasi-experimental research employed both survey questionaires and classroom observation in order to collect data.
Participantswere divided into two groups: the control group and experimental group.In the experimental group, teacher used information gap activities in speaking lesson.The control group was taught in the traditional way with the use of speaking tasks in textbook. The researcher observed two groups and delivered questionaires to collect data. Then a comparison was made between two groups to find out the answer to the questions. Significance of the study The study was carried out with the hope to provide teachers of English at USSH with a deeper understanding about benefits of using IGA in teaching speaking skill.
In addition, it is hoped that the study will be of great use in helping teachers find an effective way to increase their students‟ participation as well as motivate them to use English in speaking lessons. 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Organization of the study The thesis covers three main parts as follows: Part A is the Introductionprovides readers with overall information about the research including the rationale for the study, aims and research questions, significance, method, scope as well as the organization of the study. Part B is the Development which comprises three chapters: Chapter I: Theoretical background and literature review deals with three major concepts, namely information gap activities, students‟ motivation and participation in speaking activities with a hope to provide theoretical background for the following chapters.Besides, a review of related studies is also presented.
Chapter II: Methodologypresents the methodsused to find out the necessary data for the study, including the background information of the context where the study is conducted, the subjects, the instruments used to collect data, and the procedures of data collection. Besides, a detailed description of data analysis is presented. Chapter III: Results and Discussion presents the findings of the study basing on the data analysis and synthesis. Furthermore, some pedagogical implications are provided.
Part C is the Conclusion which summarizes the major findings of the paper, indicates limitations of the research and offers suggestions for further studies. The References and Appendices include a list of references that the researcher used for research, samples of questionaires, observation sheet and model lesson plans. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW I. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Part 1: Information gap activities 1.
Definition Information gap is one of the most fundamental concepts in communicative language teaching. A great deal of methodologists have talked and said about information gap activities. They offered different definitions of IGA. Johnson and Morrow (1981) defines IGA as an activity in which one pupil must be in the position to tell another pupil something that he/she does not have.
According to Harmer (1983), IGA are those in which students are given different bits of information. By sharing this separate information, they can complete a task.211) stated about the nature of IGA – “one person has information which another does not have”, so it creates a need to communicate.72) also said that: “In information gap activity, one person has certain information that must be shared with others in order to solve a problem, gather information or make decisions.” These definitions all reflect the nature of information gap activities. In IGA, there is always an information gap among participants, which causes a need to communicate. This characteristic of IGA is similar to the nature of a conversation in real life.
In fact, the need to communicate is created when one of the participants want to find out something they don‟t know. Therefore, IGA can be considered as a bridge to bring features of real life communication into classroom context. 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Types of Information gap activities Different researchers have offered different ways to classify Information gap activities.
Littlewood (1981)’s classification Littlewood (1981) assumed that information gap activities are functional communicative activities. He divided IGA into two main types: Sharing information with restricted cooperation. According to Littlewood, this type of communicative activites produces the simplest patterns of interaction.