VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES —o0o-—- YEN HONG HANH ENHANCING INPUT TO IMPROVE HANOI COLLEGE OF ELECTRONICS AND KELECTRO-REFRI NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ SPEAKING PERFORMANCE 'Tăng cường kiến thức đầu vào dé cải thiện kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh tại trường Cao đẳng Điện tử - Điện lạnh Hà Nội M. Minor Thesis FIELD > ENGLISH TEACHING ME’ LHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 HANOI - 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES - -—o0o-—- YEN HONG HANH ENHANCING [NPL O IMPROVE HANOI! COLLEGE OF ELECTRONICS AND ELECTRO-REFRIGERATORY TECHNICS NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ SPEAKING PERFORMANCE 'Tăng cường kiến thức đầu vào dé cải thiện kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh tại trường Cao đẳng Điện tử - Điện lạnh Hà Nội M. Minor Thesis FIELD : ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 - SUPERVISOR : BO BA QUY, MEd. HANOI - 2010 TABLE OF CONTE! Declaration Pagc Acknowledgements Absiract Table of contents List of tables PART A: INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale Aims of the study kỳ bo 3. Scope of the study be 4. Methods of the study eR ew bo 6. Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter1: Literature Review uy anne 1.1 Communicative competence and oral communication ke 1.1 Popular views of communicative competence 1.2 Oral communication De 1.
The nature of speaking 1.1 Definiion of speaking 1.2 ‘The importance of speaking skill in the classroom 1.3 Some problems in speaking performance 1.4 Comprchensible inpuL tà 1.1 What is input? 9 1.2 The role of input 9 1.3 What is comprehensible input? 9 1.5 Research into enhancing input through giving extensive readings and enriching vocabulary to improve speaking performance 12 1.1 Definition of extensive reading 12 1.2 Role of extensive reading 13 1. Delinition of vocabulary 14 1.4 ‘Lhe place of vocabulary in foreign language teaching and Learning 14 1.6 Summary 15 Chapter 2: Mcthods of the study 16 2.2 The context of the study 16 2.5 The data collection instruments 18 2.6 Dala collection pracedures 18 2.7 Summary 19 Chapter 3: Data, Data analysis and Discussion 20 3.1 Pre — input enhancement questionnaire 20 3.1 The students’ opinion on speaking skill 20 3.2 The students’ difficulties in speaking performance 22 3.3 ‘The students’ desires to improve their speaking skill 24 3.2 Posl-input enhancement questionnaire 25 3.3 Summary of the lindings 30 PART A: INTRODUCTION This part presents the rationale, aims, scope, methods, research questions and design of the study. Rationale of the study It is undeniable that English is considered as a means of international communication, People with good English proficiency are extremely needed in many various fields such as economics, potilics, science, tourism amd so on, Moreover, English is, also a Key to access the last achievement of science and technology which are very important and necessary for a developing country like Vietnam. As a result, there has been increasing demand for English language teaching and Icarning across the country.
People learn English with many different purposes as meeting the growing requirements for communication in the society, finding a good job, achieving betler position at work, or serving, desire of studying or working aboard. It is widely accepted that one of the main purposes of studying English is to use it for communications. According ta Don Xiao Hong (1994:31) speaking is “one of the most necessary language skills for displaying their language proficicney”. Be an English tcacher, | think that speaking should be paid attention to in the process of teaching and leaming However, il is a common issue al my college thal Ihe siudents rarely speak English, even in English classes, although they have been learning English since they started at the lower secondary school.
They offen stand up without speaking any words or they have to think for a long lime about. whal they intend lo say when they requtrcd lo talk in English. The main causes of the Hanoi College of Electronics and Elcctro-Reftigeratory Technics students’ low speaking performance in particular and the non-English major students’ low speaking performance in background knowledge With the main causes above, as a teacher at a college of technics, within my mmnor thesis, | would like to investigate enhancing input that are enriching their vocabulary and giving extensive readings for broadening background knowledge lo improve speaking performance. I hope that enhancing input will help the students overcome their difficulties in the process of speaking.
This has given me the impetus to carry out the study of PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTERI: LITERATURE REVIEW As any study should be based on certain theories, the following is a review of Televant-Lo-(he-aims-oF-the-sludy hileralure to form the theoretical basis for the study.1 Comnranicative conypetence and oral communication Popular views of communicative competence It is well-known that communicative competence underlies language performance; therefore the ultimate goal of language teaching is to build and develop the leamer’s communicative compolenee. In order to do this, the tearner should be provided with sufficient input, comprehensible input In the history of Linglish language teaching, communicative competence is currently considered the primary goa! of language teaching. Many methodologists and linguislics who work on foreign language teaching tend to define communicative competence simply as interaction in the target language as definitions of Savignon, 1983. However, others who work in EST.
tend to be in favor af Hymes’ theory of communicative compslones. In Hymes’ theory, comnmnicative competence includes not only the linguistic forms of the language but also its social rulers, the knowledge of when, how and to whom it is appropriate lo use Uhese forrns, ILincans that the social — cultural rules for language use are also included in the teaching process. Besides, Canale and Swain (1980) consider communicative competence 2s he combinalion of five areas’ competence: rule of grammar (grammatical competence), rules of discourse (discowse competence), sociocultural rules of use, and probability rules of occurrence and communication strategies. Grammatical competence Savignon (1983:37) states “Grammatical competence is the mastery of the linguistic code, the ability to recognize the lexical, morphological, syntactic and phonological features ofa language and to manipulate these features to forms, words and sentences”, Discourse competence LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Students’ opinion about speaking skill Table 2: Students’ diflicultics in spcaking performance ‘Table 3: Students’ expectation for what to he done ta improve their speaking skill Table 4: Students’ opinions about the activities intented to improve their vocabulary Table §: Students’ opinions about extensive readings Table 6: Students’ assessment of the activities and extensive readings’ effectiveness Figure 1: Krashen’s combined model of acquisition and production PART A: INTRODUCTION This part presents the rationale, aims, scope, methods, research questions and design of the study.
Rationale of the study It is undeniable that English is considered as a means of international communication, People with good English proficiency are extremely needed in many various fields such as economics, potilics, science, tourism amd so on, Moreover, English is, also a Key to access the last achievement of science and technology which are very important and necessary for a developing country like Vietnam. As a result, there has been increasing demand for English language teaching and Icarning across the country. People learn English with many different purposes as meeting the growing requirements for communication in the society, finding a good job, achieving betler position at work, or serving, desire of studying or working aboard. It is widely accepted that one of the main purposes of studying English is to use it for communications.
According ta Don Xiao Hong (1994:31) speaking is “one of the most necessary language skills for displaying their language proficicney”. Be an English tcacher, | think that speaking should be paid attention to in the process of teaching and leaming However, il is a common issue al my college thal Ihe siudents rarely speak English, even in English classes, although they have been learning English since they started at the lower secondary school. They offen stand up without speaking any words or they have to think for a long lime about. whal they intend lo say when they requtrcd lo talk in English.
The main causes of the Hanoi College of Electronics and Elcctro-Reftigeratory Technics students’ low speaking performance in particular and the non-English major students’ low speaking performance in background knowledge With the main causes above, as a teacher at a college of technics, within my mmnor thesis, | would like to investigate enhancing input that are enriching their vocabulary and giving extensive readings for broadening background knowledge lo improve speaking performance. I hope that enhancing input will help the students overcome their difficulties in the process of speaking. This has given me the impetus to carry out the study of PART C: CONCLUSION 1. Limilalions and suggestions for further study References Appendixes “Enhancing Inpul.
to Improve Hanoi College of Electronies and Eleoo-Roifigoratory Techies Nor-English Major Students’ Speaking Performance” 2. Aims of the study The study is aimed at - _ Identifying the factors afftcting the non-English major students’ speaking performance; - Investigating how input enhanced in terms of vocabulary and knowledge of the world affects Ihe students” speaking perlornemce;, - Making some suggestions for the teachers at Hanoi College of Electronics and Electro Reftigeratory ‘Technics to help the students improve their speaking performance. Scope of the study Conecining the scope of the study, the following arc to be taken into consideration. First, the subjects of the study are the first-year students at Hanoi College of Hlectronics and Flectro-Refrigeralory Tecturics.
They all have basic English knowledge and skills, Second, the study only focuses on enhancing input to improve the students’ speaking performance. Einaly, as the time allowed for the study is limited, it concentrates only on idenlifying the effet = of input cntunecd in terms of vocabulary and knowledge of the world through collaborative activities and extensive reading on the students’ speaking performance. Research questions of the study The two main researeh questions corresponding to the two major aims are (1) What are the factors affecting the students’ speaking performance? ) How does the enkanced input improve the studenils’ speaking performance? 5. Methods of the study The study was carried out on the basis of relevant document analysis, material collection and survey questionnaire.
The data collected for the study came from the first year non-English major students at Hanoi College of Electronics and Electro- Reftigeratory ‘lechnies. Kor the practical basis, survey research is chosen with questiormaire and interview with the first year non-English major sludenls at the college. All comments, remarks, conclusions and recommendations provided in the study were based on the data analysis. LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Students’ opinion about speaking skill Table 2: Students’ diflicultics in spcaking performance ‘Table 3: Students’ expectation for what to he done ta improve their speaking skill Table 4: Students’ opinions about the activities intented to improve their vocabulary Table §: Students’ opinions about extensive readings Table 6: Students’ assessment of the activities and extensive readings’ effectiveness Figure 1: Krashen’s combined model of acquisition and production PART C: CONCLUSION 1.
Limilalions and suggestions for further study References Appendixes PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTERI: LITERATURE REVIEW As any study should be based on certain theories, the following is a review of Televant-Lo-(he-aims-oF-the-sludy hileralure to form the theoretical basis for the study.1 Comnranicative conypetence and oral communication Popular views of communicative competence It is well-known that communicative competence underlies language performance; therefore the ultimate goal of language teaching is to build and develop the leamer’s communicative compolenee. In order to do this, the tearner should be provided with sufficient input, comprehensible input In the history of Linglish language teaching, communicative competence is currently considered the primary goa! of language teaching. Many methodologists and linguislics who work on foreign language teaching tend to define communicative competence simply as interaction in the target language as definitions of Savignon, 1983. However, others who work in EST.
tend to be in favor af Hymes’ theory of communicative compslones.
