VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ĐINH THỊ THÚY USING GROUP WORK ACTIVITIES TO REDUCE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ANXIETY- AN ACTION RESEARCH Sử dụng hoạt động nhóm để làm giảm bớt sự lo lắng của học sinh trong giờ học nói M. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com HANOI - 2012 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ĐINH THỊ THÚY USING GROUP WORK ACTIVITIES TO REDUCE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ANXIETY- AN ACTION RESEARCH Sử dụng hoạt động nhóm để làm giảm bớt sự lo lắng của học sinh trong giờ học nói M. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 SUPERVISOR: PHẠM MINH HIỀN, M.A HANOI - 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. ii LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS.
iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND TABLES. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS. Rationale of the study. Aims of the study.
Scope of the study. Methods of the study. Design of the study. 5 Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Speaking skills and its related concepts .1 The importance of speaking skills .2 Elements of speaking skills .2 Group work in a speaking lesson .1 Definition and description of group work .2 Advantages and disadvantages of group work .3 Teacher‟s role in carrying out group work .3 Definitions of anxiety in Speaking English in classroom (SEC) .1 Definitions of anxiety .2 Anxiety in second language (L2) and in SEC .4 Main factors causing students’ anxiety in SEC .5 Effects of anxiety on students of SEC .6 Teacher’s role to students’ anxiety in SEC.7 Teaching techniques to reduce students anxiety in SEC.
11 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 Practical grouping strategies .2 Student- selected grouping .3 Teacher- formed grouping .2 Procedures of group work .3 Common oral activities for group work .1 Opening- circle discussion .3 Information Gap Activity (IGA) .5 Other picture card activities .4 Problems and solutions in using class group work. 19 Chapter 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .2 Description of data collection instruments. The rationale for using questionnaire .1 Overview of action research .2 Procedure of the action research. 25 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.5 Data collecting procedure.
26 Chapter 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .1 The initial data. 27 Results from questionnaire 1 .2 The post data. 32 Data collected from questionnaire 2. Summary of main findings.
38 2 Limitation and recommendation for further research. 40 REFERENCES APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE 1 APPENDIX 2: QUESTIONNAIRE 2 Appendix 3: LESSON PLANS FOR 3 SPEAKING GROUP-WORK ACTIVITIES OF THE STUDY Appendix 4: The description of the second lesson during the intervention: Task 2- Unit 13: FILMS AND CINEMA –(English 10), page 134 6 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Table 2.2 Procedures of group work .4: Problems and solutions in using class group work. 17 Table 1: Students‟ evaluation on their anxiety in SEC. 27 Table 2: Students‟ feeling when speaking in group work activities.
29 Table 3: Student attitude to group work activities in speaking lessons. 29 Table 4: Student‟s attitudes toward grouping strategies. 30 Table 5: Students‟ preferences to group work activities in speaking lessons. 33 Table 6: Students‟ self- evaluated participation in speaking activities in group.
33 Chart 1: Students‟ evaluation on their anxiety in SEC. 27 Chart 2: Factors making students anxious in SEC most. 28 Chart 3: Students‟ favourite activities. 31 Chart 4: Students‟ confident participation in group work activities.
32 7 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS SEC Speaking English in classroom DHHS Dong Hy High School AR Action Research MAM Making a mistake BCM Being corrected mistakes as soon as they are made BAS Being asked to speak without preparation ADT A difficult topic SFW Speaking in front of the whole class AO Another one 8 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION I. Rationale of the study In Vietnam for some recent decades, English has taken more and more important role in almost all aspects such as: politics, economy, culture, communication, education and information technology, especially since Viet Nam adopted its open door policy and become a member of WTO. English helps Vietnamese labours to have access to latest information in the world and take part in the world labour force with English as an international means of communication in this modern age. However, it is the fact that using English for real communication in general, with limited English speaking ability is a big problem for Vietnamese learners.
The traditional teaching and learning English at high schools in Vietnam leads to the fact that students are inclined to develop reading and writing skills seem to remain a big problem to Vietnamese learners, meanwhile speaking and listening skills are almost ignored. Although students can do some tasks in English, they can‟t use English as a communicative tool. Since the teaching approach Communicative Learning Teaching (CLT) was introduced, the teaching and learning of English has changed its emphasis from “Master of language Structure” to “Master of use”. According to this theory, teachers teach students how to understand as well as how to perform.
But due to the strong effect of the traditional way of ELT in schools in Vietnam, the panorama of ELT, particularly including speaking skill remains dull. Like in most of schools in the north of Vietnam, the majority of the students in Dong Hy high school (DHHS) where I work, have no ample opportunity to study the English language because they have few English lessons per week (three English lessons per week). Though they are encouraged to take few courses in school in the use of English, the content of these English courses are grossly inadequate for the students to acquire requisite skills in effective use of language for communication and for the give and take of social experience. In order to study English as a foreign language and be successful with it, the students must be helped by the teacher to acquire skills in the four language art skills, namely: speaking, 9 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com listening, writing, and reading.
Of the four skills mentioned above, speaking is the skills secondary school students need great support. Recently, teachers in my school have introduced activities through which they can help students go beyond the mastery of structures to the points and use them to communicate more meaningfully in real situations. Also, group work approach has also been applied in all kinds of lessons and has shown its effectiveness. It is said that using group work is one of good ways to motivate students in learning English.
By grouping students, teachers enables students to help one another study. Using group work has many advantages such as more language practice in classroom, more purposeful communication, more students‟ involvement and motivation, more chances for students to help each other, more chances for students to foster responsibility, autonomy and independence. (Underwood, 1987; Hyland, 1991; Ur, 1996) Therefore, simply putting students together in a group is no guarantee that it is beneficial. Without careful planning and facilitation, group work can frustrate students and instructors and will be a waste of time.
In DHHS during the group work there, the better students contribute a lot whereas some weaker ones become passive. I realized that there were much more students who were anxious than those confident in speaking English in class. Moreover, the anxious students have differently certain manifestations, for example giving frequent communicative feedback such as (uh- huh) and playing with the hair, clothes, or other manipulability objects. It seemed that studying on students‟ anxiety was really meaningfully important.
As we all see “Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power.” --- said by Tyron Edwards, a famous American theologian of “New Dictionary of Thoughts”. The wish to help her students to overcome the obstacles in speaking English encouraged the researcher to carry out this study, entitled the use of group work to reduce grade ten students‟ anxiety in speaking lessons at Dong Hy High School. 10 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Aims and objectives of the study The study aims to: - gain understanding of factors that cause students‟ anxiety in speaking English lessons in one tenth form class of Dong Hy high school - experiementing solutions that can address anxiety-causing factors so as to help the students to feel less anxious in speaking English in the speaking lessons.
Those aims are specified into the following objectives: - to find out what students say about factors that make them anxious in speaking English in the classroom; - to find out effective classroom techniques that can create a low-anxiety classroom atmostphere so that students can be more active in speaking English in the lessons. Research questions: In order to achieve the above-mentioned aims and objectives, the study is to seek answers to the following research questions: 1. What factors do a group of grade 10th students in Dong Hy high school think cause their anxiety in speaking English? 2. What classroom techniques that help to reduce the students‟ stated anxiety in speaking English? III.
Scope of the study As an action research project, the study was conducted with the researcher‟s own students in her own class. The study is, therefore, limited itself to just one „problem‟ the researcher was encountered with in her teaching, i. students‟ speaking anxiety. On the basis of the analysis of the factors the students, who were in one grade-10th form, stated, the researcher experiemented with some interventions to address the problem.
11 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Methods of the study - A quantitative method was used in this study with the questionnaire being used as the only instrument of data collection. To be more specific, a pre-action questionnaire and a post-action questionnaire were employed. Design of the study The thesis consists of three parts: Part A – INTRODUCTION- presents the rationale, the aim, scope, significance, methods, design of the study.
Part B – DEVELOPMENT- consists of three chapters. Chapter one- Literature Review- deals with the theories related to the study: speaking skill and its related concepts, concept of students‟ participation, group works in a speaking lesson. definitions of anxiety in speaking English in classroom (SEC), main factors causing students‟ anxiety in SEC, teacher‟s role to students‟ anxiety in SEC. Chapter two- Research methodologies- presents the methodology performed in the study.
It provides information about the participants, the instrumentation. Data collection and findings are also presented in this chapter. Chapter three- Results and discussion- discuss the data of the study and propose discussion for using group work activities to reduce grade ten students‟ anxiety in speaking lessons at Dong Hy High School. Part C: CONCLUSION- summarizes all the key issues as well as the limitations of the study and suggestions for further study.
12 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter deals with the theories related to the study: Speaking skill and its related concepts, concept of group works in a speaking lesson, definitions of anxiety in Speaking English in classroom (SEC), main factors causing students‟ anxiety in SEC, effect of anxiety on students SEC, teacher‟s role to students‟ anxiety in SEC, teaching techniques to reduce students‟ anxiety in SEC.1 Speaking skills and its related concepts 1.1 The importance of speaking skills Speaking skills are essential in both professional and personal setting, in both public and private sectors. Speaking helps us communicate with each other more easily and less misunderstanding. Burn- Joyce (1997: 15) says that speaking is more than just a way or making conversation.