1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS TO THE TENTH FORM STUDENTS AT VAN CANH HIGH SCHOOL (Những khó khăn trong việc dạy kĩ năng nói cho học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Vân Canh) M. MINOR THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 601410 Hanoi, 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS TO THE TENTH FORM STUDENTS AT VAN CANH HIGH SCHOOL (Những khó khăn trong việc dạy kĩ năng nói cho học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Vân Canh) M. MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 Supervisor: Prof. Hoàng Văn Vân LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 6 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Students‟ level of language learning .16 Table 2: Students‟ motivation for learning English .16 Table 3a: The frequency of using techniques .20 Table 3b: Students‟ opinions towards teachers‟ teaching speaking techniques .21 Table 4: Students‟ difficulties in speaking lessons .22 Table 5: Factors affecting students‟ participating in English classroom activities .23 Table 6: Students‟ expectation from the teachers .23 Table 7: The teachers‟ age and their teaching experience .24 Table 8: Teachers‟ difficulties in teaching English speaking skills.26 Table 9: Teachers‟ solutions to the problems .27 Table 10: Teachers‟ suggestions to overcome the difficulties .28 Figure 1: Students‟ attitudes towards English speaking skills .17 Figure 2: Students‟ opinions on the speaking topics in the textbooks .18 Figure 3: Frequency of students‟ speaking participation .18 Figure 4: Opportunities to use English outside classroom .19 Figure 5: Students‟ self-improvement of speaking skills .19 Figure 6: Teachers‟ attitude towards speaking skills .25 Figure 7: Teachers‟ techniques of teaching speaking skills .26 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 7 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT: Communication Language Teaching PW: pair work GR: group work I: interview UP: using pictures G: game D: drama De: debate RP: role play ST: story telling P: presentation N0 : number %: percentage LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration.
…iii List of tables and figures. iv List of abbreviations .v Table of contents. vi Part A: Introduction. Aims and significance of the study.
Scope of the study. Design of study .3 Part B: The study .4 Chapter 1: Literature review. Communicative approach to language teaching. What is meant by communication?.
Communicative language teaching. Nature of communicative language teaching. The techniques of communicative language teaching. Overview of speaking activities.
What is meant by speaking skills?. Theories of teaching speaking skills. Functions of spoken Language. The role of speaking skills in communication approach.
Characteristics of a successful speaking activity .7 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Principles in teaching speaking in CLT. Problems with speaking activities. Factors affecting English speaking skills .12 Chapter 2: The study.
Context of the study. An overview of the research site. Description of the students at Van Canh High School. Description of the teachers at Van Canh High School.
Description of physical setting. Presentation of statistical results. Results and discussions from the questionnaires for the students. Results and discussions from the questionnaires for the teachers.
Difficulties from the students. Lack of motivation. Anxiety or lack of confidence. Lack of vocabularies, structures.
Lack of opportunities to use English in real life. Low linguistic competence and low communicative competence. Using mother tongue problem .31 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Difficulties from the teachers.
Large class size. Lack of reference materials. Lack of facilities. Summary of the study.
Motivate students to participate in the speaking skills lessons. Create a warm class atmosphere. Vary the teaching techniques. Provide more interesting topics to motivate students‟ participation.
Encourage students to participate in the speaking activities. Equip teaching facilities. Help students to be confident. Help students overcome pronunciation problems.
Overcome time constraint problem. Improve students‟ linguistic competence. Overcome the using mother tongue problem. Create opportunities for students to use English in real life.
Limitations of the study. Suggestions for the further study. XIII LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 11 PART A INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale One of the main tasks assigned to foreign language teaching at school is that of training students to be communicatively competent.
Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998: 13). In any second language teaching and learning, speaking is always believed to be the most vital skill. Learning a target language makes no sense if you cannot communicate in it successfully. For many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues.
However, with the rapid progress of globalization, English speaking skill is thought to be the key to one‟s success in his career. The goal of teaching speaking should improve students' communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in each communicative circumstance. Classroom activities that develop learners‟ ability to express themselves through speech would therefore seem an important component of a language course. However, due to some objective and subjective reasons, teaching and learning English in general and teaching and learning speaking in particular does not come up to the study goals.
A great deal of researches has shown that students are often hesitant and anxious about speaking the target language in class. Despite teachers‟ efforts to provide students with opportunities to develop their communicative skills, how to teach and learn speaking skills effectively is still a challenging question to both teachers and students to many high schools in Vietnam. At Van Canh High School, the situation is the same. For most students, they find speaking especially important yet challenging one.
What can we, as teachers, do to help our learners overcome their problems and take advantage of opportunities to practice speaking? For me, as a teacher, mastering methodology is very important. Especially, I am interested in teaching speaking skills. But how to conduct an effective speaking lesson is very difficult. Therefore, I hope that the study will help to facilitate my teaching.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 12 All the above mentioned reasons have inspired the writer to conduct a research titled “Difficulties in teaching English speaking skills to the tenth form students at Van Canh High School. Aims and significance of the study This study is aimed at finding out the difficulties in teaching and learning English speaking skills that 10th form students and English teachers at Van Canh High School have encountered. Also it is expected to investigate the causes of those difficulties. Through this some solutions to solve these problems will be suggested.
The study is carried out with the hope to be of some help to improve the effectiveness of English learning and teaching at van Canh High School. Scope of the study The study only focuses on the difficulties that 10th form students and English teachers at Van Canh High school have encountered in speaking skills. What are the difficulties encountered by the English teachers and the 10th form students in teaching and learning English speaking skills at Van Canh High School? (2). What are the causes of those difficulties and how to solve them? 5.
Research methods In order to meet the aims of the study, quantitative method was used. Two survey questionnaires were used to collect data for the study. - The first survey questionnaire was carried out on 107 tenth form students from 3 classes at Van Canh High School. - The second one is carried out on 9 English teachers of Van Canh High School.
All comments, remarks, recommendations, assumptions and conclusions provided in the study based on the analysis of the statistics from the survey questionnaires conducted with the 10th form students and English teachers of Van Canh High School. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Design of study This study consists of 3 parts: Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, the aims, scope, the method and design of the study. The research questions are also mentioned in this part.
Part B: The study consists of 3 chapters: Chapter 1: Literature Review reviews the theory about CLT and speaking skills. Chapter 2: The study – The study setting is presented in this chapter. Data collection and analysis are also presented in this chapter Chapter 3: Findings focuses on the difficulties facing the English teachers at Van Canh High School and their students in teaching English speaking skills. Part C: Conclusion summarizes all the key issues of the study and suggests some techniques for the English teachers to teach speaking skills more effectively.
The limitations of the study and some suggestions for further study are also mentioned in this part. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 14 PART B THE STUDY CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Communicative approach to language teaching 1. What is meant by communication? In Thompson‟s book (2003: 9) “Communication and Language”, he considers that “Communication is such a well-integrated part of our day- to- day existence that we tend to take it for granted rarely pausing to consider what it involves or just how important it is to us”.
Before he expressed to his own ideas about communication, he mentioned some of Fiske‟s ideas: “Communication is one of those human activities that everyone recognizes but few can definite satisfactorily.” (Fiske, 1990: 1) “Communication is too often taken for granted when it should be taken to pieces.” (Fiske, 1994: 8) Thompson noticed “I quickly recognized that communication is used in a number of senses and at a number of levels to indicate the transmission of information or even, as in the transport networks example, the transmission of goods and people. However, he completely agreed with Fiske‟s ideas that “the most relevant definition of communication for present purposes is social interaction through messages” (Thompson, 2003: 10). There are two related aspects that we should consider when talking about definition of communication is “social” and “interaction”. Communicative language teaching 1.
Nature of communicative language teaching Communicative language teaching means little more than an integration of grammatical and functional teaching. Littlewood (1981: 1) states, “One of the most characteristic features of communicative language teaching is that it pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language”. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 15 Communicative language teaching stresses the importance of providing the learners with opportunities to use English for communicative purposes and attempts to integrate such activities into a wider program of language teaching. The techniques of communicative language teaching The techniques of communicative language teaching are described by features.
Nunan (1991a: 279) gives five features to characterize CLT: + An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language. + The introduction of authentic texts in to the learning situation + The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the learning process itself. + 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 activation outside the classroom.
According to Richards and Rodgers (1986: 170), communicative principles can be applied to the teaching of any skills and at any levels.