VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************************* HOÀNG LỆ THỦY A STUDY ON USING PICTURE STORIES IN SPEAKING CLASS TO MOTIVATE EIGHTH- GRADE PUPILS AT LUONG THE VINH JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL Nghiên cứu về việc sử dụng truyện tranh trong tiết học nói nhằm gây hứng thú cho học sinh lớp 8 trường THCS Lương Thế Vinh MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 Hanoi, 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************************* HOÀNG LỆ THỦY A STUDY ON USING PICTURE STORIES IN SPEAKING CLASS TO MOTIVATE EIGHTH- GRADE PUPILS AT LUONG THE VINH JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL Nghiên cứu về việc sử dụng truyện tranh trong giờ học nói nhằm gây hứng thú cho học sinh lớp 8 trường THCS Lương Thế Vinh MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 601410 Supervisor: Khoa Anh Việt, M. Hanoi, 2010 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DECLARATION. v TABLE OF CONTENTS. vi LIST OF TABLES, AND CHARTS.viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
Aims of the study. Scope of the study. Methods of the study. Organization of the study.
3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Motivate adolescent learners. Why picture stories. Questionnaire for pupils.
Questionnaire for teachers. Data collection procedures. Data analysis procedures. 15 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com vii CHAPTER 4: PRESENTATION OF RESULTS.
Students’ attitudes toward the use of picture stories in their speaking lessons. Students’ involvement in the class. Students’ confidence in class using picture stories. The atmosphere in speaking classes using picture stories.
Students’ involvement in activities exploited from picture stories. Favorite activities in speaking class using picture stories. Students’ difficulties in speaking lessons using picture stories. Teachers’ evaluation on the effectiveness of picture stories in speaking lessons.
Difficulties in teaching English using picture stories. 31 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION. Findings and discussion. Suggestion for further studies.
Appendix 1: The questionnaire for pupils. I Appendix 2: The questionnaire for teachers. II Appendix 3: Pupils’ scoring on the questionnaires. III Appendix 4: Teachers’ scoring on the questionnaires.
IV TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.school viii LIST OF TABLES, AND CHARTS I. Tables Table 1: Pupils’ profile. 13 Table 2: Pupils’ rank on the activities in accordance to their interest. 24 Table 3: Teachers’ rank on the activities according to their students’ interest.
29 Table 4: Teachers’ evaluation on the effectiveness of picture stories. Charts Chart 1: Students’ interest in picture stories reading. 17 Chart 2: Students’ attitude toward the use of picture stories in speaking lessons. 18 Chart 3: Students’ perception of picture stories in English.
19 Chart 4: Students’ ideas on learning structures and vocabulary from picture stories. 20 Chart 5: Students’ confidence. 21 Chart 6: The classroom atmosphere. 22 Chart 7: Students’ participation in activities.
22 Chart 8: Favorite topics. 23 Chart 9: Students’ difficulties in speaking lessons using picture stories. 25 Chart 10: Teachers’ information on the frequency of using picture stories. 26 Chart 11: Teachers’ purposes of using picture stories.
27 Chart 12: Teachers’ remark on students’ attitude toward the use of picture stories. 28 Chart 13: Teachers’ ideas on the advantage of the usage of picture stories. 30 Chart 14: Teachers’ difficulties in applying picture stories .school TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.school 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study Recently, although the curriculum in Vietnam has been changed a lot, the teaching of English language fail to fulfill its goals.
Even after years of English learning, the learners do not gain the confidence of using the language in and outside the class. Their output in the language is limited to writing run-of-the-mill answers for literature chapters and producing grammatically accurate, but isolated sentences while real communication involves ideas, emotions, feelings, appropriateness and adaptability. Besides, English is becoming a language of global communication. To have access to information and interaction with others over the world, the useful tool for most people is English skills.
That is why improving students‘ speaking ability should be paid more attention, even in the low grades. To achieve this goal, many teachers have applied different methods and techniques. However, it is a challenging task for language teachers to establish a successful language classroom which can develop students‘ speaking skill the best. Vietnamese students learn English in a non-English speaking environment, so the acquisition of English is not generally considered essential for the enhancement of their life in the community.
In addition, there is no oral English test in most of exams in primary and secondary schools. Consequently, many students have very low motivation of speaking English. Many studies have demonstrated that motivation has important role in the effectiveness of teaching and learning process. Learners with high motivation tend to gain more success than unmotivated ones.
Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the benefits of picture stories in promoting students‘ motivation with the hope to find good teaching material for teaching speaking English. The researcher hope findings from this study can be useful for other teachers and researchers. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Aims of the study The purpose of this study was to investigate the usage of picture stories as a teaching strategy on pupil‘s motivation.
In order to achieve the aim of the study, the research questions below will be addressed: - What are the attitudes of eighth grade pupils at Luong The Vinh Junior Secondary School toward the use of picture stories in their speaking lessons? - Does pupils‘ involvement increase in the class using picture stories? - How do teachers evaluate the effectiveness of picture stories in motivating students speaking? - What are the difficulties of using picture stories to teach speaking skill for the 8th grade pupils in Luong The Vinh Junior Secondary School? 1. Scope of the study The study limits its scope to speaking skills and to its participants of eighth grade students at Luong The Vinh Junior Secondary School. Methods of the study The study used questionnaires to gather data and describe the current situation of using picture stories to motivate the 8th grade pupils in speaking class. Survey questionnaire was used in data collection of the study due to its unprecedented efficiency in terms of researcher time, researcher effort and financial resources according to Jo and Steve (1997, cited by Nunan, 1998).
Thanks to a questionnaire, the researcher could collect a huge amount of information in a short period of time and ―if the questionnaire is well – constructed, processing the data can also be fast and relatively straightforward‖ (Gillham, 2000). Moreover, three types of data including ―behavioral‖, ―factual‖ and ―attitudinal‖ which can be easily yielded through using questionnaire can provide the researcher with the information to answer the research questions about the current situation of using communicative task to enhance the speaking competence of the 10th grade students. In brief, due to its great effectiveness, the researcher chose survey questionnaire as an effective method of data collecting in this study. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
Organization of the study The thesis is divided into six parts: Chapter 1 introduces the research problem and rationale of the study. It also states the significance, aims, scope, and methods of the study. Chapter 2 not only provides an overview of background of the study, including key concepts and theories relating to the research topic but also discusses previous studies of this field to reveal the research gap which needs filling. Chapter 3 defines the methodology applied in the study including features of the participants, context, research instruments, data collection and data analysis procedure.
Chapter 4 presents the results of the research and data analysis which gives comprehensive answers to the research questions. It also offers suggestions to involved participants to solve all the diagnosed problems for a higher effectiveness of elicitation. Chapter 5 summarizes significant findings, highlights contributions of the research, puts forward practical suggestions for further future research as well as addresses notable limitations. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.school 4 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter provides a detailed insight into theoretical background knowledge underlying the issues including definitions and relevant knowledge around key concepts, followed by a review of related studies in the same field.MOTIVATION Many studies have revealed that motivation is one of the major factors contributing to one‘s success in learning foreign languages.
According to Gardner (1985), learners with a positive attitude and high motivation towards the subject are more likely to succeed in second language learning. Labonde (1982) also claimed that motivation is one of important factors which help to determine the proficiency achieve by different learners and the most successful learners will be those who have both talent and a high level of motivation for learning. In educational psychology, the definition of what it is to be motivated is quite simple: ―to be motivated is to be moved to do something‖ (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. However, further breakdowns of the term tend to become rather complicated, especially when considering the variable facets of motivation involved in a task as complex as the socially- and culturally-bound, long-term endeavor of foreign language learning.
Gardner (1985), in his landmark account of a socio-educational model of language acquisition, wrote that motivation to learn a foreign language can be described as a complex of constructs, involving both effort and desire, as well as a favorable attitude toward learning the language at hand. This model promoted the notion that self- identify and identification with the foreign language community is important to the language-learning process. For example, a pupil may feel he or she does not ―fit in‖ with the target language speakers (a de-motivating factor), or may want to ―fully integrate‖ and become, perhaps, completely passable as a native speaker of the language (a highly motivating factor). Where one is along this continuum is described as one‘s integrative motivation, or how much one wants to integrate with the target language community.
TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.school 5 According to Gardner, another motivation pupils may posses is instrumental: they may want to learn the foreign language to achieve a practical goal, such as a job promotion or to obtain course credit (Gardner & MacIntyre, 1991). Another set of definitions stemming from research is intrinsic and extrinsic motivation — intrinsic motivation comes from the joy or pleasure derived through language learning itself, while extrinsic motivation results from the desire to obtain some particular outcome, reminiscent of Gardner‘s notion of instrumental motivation. Dörnyei and Ottó (1998) described how motivation changes over time for any given learner, and described how the flux in motivation may be related to temporal components as small as a task in the language learning classroom or as large as the flow of a foreign language course over an entire academic year. According to this dynamic, process-oriented approach to motivation, in either small- or large-scale time frames, pupils‘ motivation consists of three stages: pre-actional, actional, and post-actional (Dörnyei, 2003): Pre-actional Stage First, motivation needs to be generated.
According to Dörnyei (2005), the generated motivation helps the pupil select the goal or task to pursue and launches the pupil into action. The pupil‘s own initial goals, values and attitudes associated with the learning process, perceived likelihood of success, and the support the pupil gets (both mental and physical) can all influence this stage of motivation. Actional Stage Next, Dörnyei (2005) wrote that at the actional stage, the motivation needs to be ―maintained and protected‖ (p.