VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE ENHANCING STUDENTS’ ENGLISH ORAL COMMUNICATION PERFORMANCE THROUGH METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING: A MIXED-METHODS STUDY submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL By NGUYỄN THỊ THANH SUM Supervised by LÊ HOÀNG DŨNG, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY, JULY 2023 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Lê Hoàng Dũng, for his continuous support of my thesis and for his patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. His guidance and feedback inspired me throughout the research and writing of this thesis.
He has always been a great motivational figure to me. It is my pleasure to be one of his students. My sincere thanks also go to Dr. Nguyễn Đăng Nguyên, Dr.
Nguyễn Thị Hồng Thắm, Dr. Nguyễn Thị Quyên, Dr. Nguyễn Duy Mộng Hà, and Lương Thị Phương Nhi for numerous and valuable discussions and lectures on related topics that help me sharpen my research skills. My sincere thanks to Mr.
Lê Tấn Cường and Nguyễn Hoàng Khâm for supporting me in collecting data. I also acknowledge my students for their enthusiasm and active participation in this study. Last but not least, I would like to thank all my lovely family members for encouraging and supporting me. I also want to say a thank you to myself for not giving up and to thirteen BIG men for supporting my spirit whenever I needed them.
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that this thesis entitled " Enhancing Students’ English Oral Communication Performance Through Metacognitive Strategy Training: A Mixed-Methods Study” is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institution. Ho Chi Minh City, July 2023 Nguyễn Thị Thanh Sum iii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, Nguyễn Thị Thanh Sum, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirement of the University relating to the retention and use of Master's Theses deposited in the Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the originality of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan, or reproduction of theses.
Ho Chi Minh City, June 2023. Nguyễn Thị Thanh Sum iv TABLE OF CONTENT CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .1 Background to the study .2 Reasons of the study/ statement of the problem .3 Aims of the study .4 Significance of the study .5 Scope of the study.6 Organization of the study. 5 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW.1 English Oral Communication performance .1 The definition of oral communication performance.3 Teaching English oral communication .1 Teacher-related factors .2 Students’ difficulties in learning English oral communication .3 Oral communicative activities .4 First language and target language .5 Components of oral communication performance .2 Metacognitive strategy training .1 Second language knowledge .2 Definition of strategies .3 Language learning strategies .5 Metacognitive strategy training in Oral communication .7 Empirical evidence for metacognitive strategy training.8 The conceptual framework .4 Sample and sampling procedures .2 Selection of participants for the quasi-experimental .5 Teaching and learning materials .2 The experimental teaching.3 Description of teaching procedure of the EG .4 The teacher and the raters .4 Summary of the research instruments .7 Data collection procedure .8 Reliability and validity .9 Summary of the chapter. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION.
Analysis of data from pre-tests and post-tests .2 Analysis of data from questionnaire .3 Analysis of data from interview .1 The discussion of the two tests .2 The discussion of questionnaires .3 The discussion of interview .3 Summary of the chapter. 90 CHAPTER 5 FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS .1 Answer the research question 1.2 Answer the research question 2 .1 Implications for English students .1 Implications for English teachers .1 Limitations of the study .2 Recommendation for further study. 100 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CALLA Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach CG Control Group EFL English as a Foreign Language EG Experimental Group HCMC Ho Chi Minh City M Mean SD Standard Deviation SPSS Statistical Product and Services Solutions viii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: Components of communicative competence Table 3.1 The background of the participants in the research Table 3.2: The number of student participants in two groups Table 3.3 Selection of items in CALLA content and language learning strategy Table 3.4 The Internal Consistency in Cronbach’s Alpha Table 4.1 Correlation Coefficient _Inter- Rater reliability: pretests Table 4.2 Correlation Coefficient _Inter- Rater reliability: posttests Table 4.3 The results of Independent Samples T-test of the Pre-tests Table 4.4 The results of Independent Samples T-test of the Post-Tests Table 4.5 The results of Paired Samples T-test of two groups EG-CG Table 4.6 Comparing Components Scores in Students’ English Oral Communication performance of Experimental Group after the treatment Table 4.7 Reliability of questionnaire of metacognitive strategies in oral communication performance Table 4.8 Students’ opinions towards benefits of metacognitive strategy training procedure on English oral communication performance Table 4.9 Students’ opinions towards monitoring/ identifying problems strategy in metacognitive strategies on English oral communication performance Table 4.10 Students’ opinions towards monitoring/ evaluating problems strategy in metacognitive strategies on English oral communication performance ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Components of oral communication performance assessment Figure 2.2 Components of metacognition Figure 2.3 The five-phase CALLA model in training (Adapted from the model CALLA Chamot, 2005) Figure 2.4: Conceptual framework: metacognitive strategy training on students’ English oral communication performance Figure 3.1 Summary of the research instruments Figure 3.2 Data collection procedure Figure 4.1 The importance of learning English oral communication Figure 4.2 The necessity of metacognitive strategy training Figure 4.3 The overall feeling about the metacognitive strategy training x ABSTRACT In the integration trend, English oral communication has become more important than ever because it will be beneficial to students. However, in Vietnam, many language students find it difficult to express themselves in English, which may significantly impede progress toward their educational and career goals.
This study is an attempt to fill this gap. By using a mixed-methods study, especially a quasi-experimental design, the aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of explicit instruction of metacognitive strategies and metacognitive knowledge through the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) on students’ English oral communication performance. The findings showed that metacognitive strategy training positively impacted students’ oral communication performance, favored their interaction, and produced a favorable change in their attitudes towards the training as well. This implies that metacognitive strategies should be incorporated into metacognitive knowledge to help students become autonomous learners.
Key words: oral communication, CALLA, metacognitive strategies, metacognitive knowledge xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In this chapter, some initial information concerning the background of the current study is introduced. It is followed by the reasons and objectives the study aims to achieve. The significance of the study, together with the research questions, is also found in this chapter. Finally, the scope of the study is mentioned.1 Background to the study According to Harmer (2007), English is recognized as a language spoken by at least a quarter of the world's population.
It is true that, in communication, we use English to articulate our ideas, express thoughts and opinions, and maintain personal and interpersonal relationships. In the integration trend, English oral communication has become more important than ever because it will be beneficial to students in all academic courses as well as for their careers (Meloni & Thompson, 1980). In education, oral communication has been addressed by many language teaching and learning approaches in order to help learners to become independent proficient learners of the English language. However, many language students find it difficult to express themselves in the target spoken language right in the classroom (Leong & Ahmadi, 2017).
One concern is the lack of learning strategies which may greatly hamper effective English oral communication. In reality, learning strategies is not inherited, nor does it happen naturally and overnight, as such, students need to give specific instructions on skills or strategies. Without sufficient training strategies, students find it hard to reach the effectiveness of oral communication. Hence, one way to foster the strategic role is to instruct students in the use of metacognitive strategies (Jaramillo, 2021), which are considered an indispensable approach to language learners (Mahdavi, 2014).
In recent years, metacognitive strategy training has received considerable scholarly attention because it places great emphasis on strategies in many fields. As such, metacognitive strategy training should be used to enhance students’ oral communication.2 Reasons of the study/ statement of the problem Recently, there have been a number of studies proving the effectiveness of metacognitive strategy training on English oral communication (Farzam, 2018; Panggabean & Triassanti, 2018; Jaramillo, 2021). From these studies and others involving metacognitive strategy training, students gain a variety of benefits for the following reasons. This indicates the importance of metacognitive strategy training in making learning more effective.
Metacognitive strategy training can help learners regulate their learning. Metacognitive strategies can be sub-categorized into higher-order strategies connected with the planning, monitoring, and evaluation of learning (Cohen, 2011). The strategies they know are to establish their clear intent, plan strategies, monitor their own oral communication performance on an ongoing basis, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and find solutions to the problems encountered (Donna and Marcus, 2016). In some research, critical thinking must involve a certain amount of metacognition (Flavell, 1979).
A critical thinker takes careful steps to ensure that his or her reasoning is correct (Lau, 2015). Metacognitive strategy training helps students be more self- aware of their reasons, which also helps them think more critically about the information they are presenting. According to Nunan (1999), he points out teaching language should focus not only on teaching language content but learning strategies as well. Competing with today's technology like AI and chat GPT, it is not only focused on what to say but how to say; 2 hence, it does not matter if students have ideas to express or not.
It puts great emphasis on how students think for themselves, how to arrange ideas, and how to make sense. From the previous benefits above, we—teachers and students—cannot make use of all the advantages of metacognitive strategy training. Pham (2020) supposes that many Vietnamese students are good at grammar and vocabulary but not at oral communication skills. English oral presentation has been common for students, including EFL, but they fail to make effective use of it.
The gap is due to a lack of awareness of learning strategies. Little was known about the relationships between English oral communication performance and metacognitive strategy training. Despite the theory about a positive relationship between English oral communication performance and metacognitive strategies, the studies conducted in Vietnam are so limited. It is such a big challenge for the researcher to find the source of studies related to the application of metacognitive strategies in teaching oral communication in Vietnam.
As a matter of fact, in Vietnam, metacognitive strategies have still not received enough attention, which is not equivalent to their roles in the picture of scientific studies around the world. Studies published and related to metacognitive strategies in reading conducted in Vietnam just offered an overview of learners’ awareness of metacognitive strategies in reading but not oral communication. Accordingly, the purpose of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of metacognitive strategy training on English oral communication. This is beneficial in that it explores a new intervention—metacognitive strategy training—in the Vietnamese communication context.
In the event that there are many drawbacks to the training, the study may pave the way for future Vietnamese studies to apply the same approach. Thus, the conduct of the study is reasonably necessary.3 Aims of the study In this study, metacognitive strategy training was employed to investigate its enhancement of students’ oral communication performance in English.