VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN THỊ HIỀN AN INVESTIGATION INTO ASSESSING SPEAKING OF STUDENTS LEARNING NEW ENGLISH TEXTBOOK IN A HIGH SCHOOL IN VIETNAM (Nghiên cứu việc đánh giá kỹ năng nói của học sinh đang học chương trình sách giáo khoa mới, tại một trường THPT ở Việt Nam) Major : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 HANOI – 2019 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN THỊ HIỀN AN INVESTIGATION INTO ASSESSING SPEAKING OF STUDENTS LEARNING NEW ENGLISH TEXTBOOK IN A HIGH SCHOOL IN VIETNAM (Nghiên cứu việc đánh giá kỹ năng nói của học sinh đang học chương trình sách giáo khoa mới, tại một trường THPT ở Việt Nam) Major: : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231. Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Quỳnh Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Quỳnh HANOI – 2019 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION The thesis entitled “An investigation into assessing speaking of students learning new English textbook in a high school in Vietnam” has been submitted for the Master of English teaching methodology. I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. I have fully acknowledged and referenced the ideas and work of others, whether published or unpublished, in my thesis.
My thesis does not contain work extracted from a thesis, dissertation or research paper previously presented for another degree or diploma at this or any other universities. i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply indebted to the individuals that provided support for the completion of this study. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Quynh supervised the entire study and, most importantly, read and discussed every aspect and section of this dissertation with assiduity. Her recommendations also helped to shape the form and contents of the final version.
I am equally indebted for the exceptional friendliness, kindness, and patience that she demonstrated during my study at ULIS-VNU and my research. My sincere thanks also go to the Dean - Dr. Huỳnh Anh Tuấn as well as the staff members at the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), Vietnam National University (VNU), who are always so kind and supportive during my study time. In addition, I would like to express my thankfulness to all the participating students and teachers at the high school who helped me in my research, especially the teachers who accompanied me during a long time of my data collection time.
The results I have achieved today partially belong to them. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family for their motivation for me to overcome all the difficulties and to become a better me now. Thanking you all ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Language assessment in general and oracy assessment in particular has posed language teachers high schools in Vietnam many troubles. One of the outstanding issues relate to the design of speaking activities that saw poorly, boring tasks that do not motivate learners while learning the skill.
The other issue refers to the assessing criteria that are not familiarized by language teachers at schools. This research aims at finding popular task types that teachers used when assessing speaking. Also, the study provides a framework for speaking assessment criteria that can be applicable for teachers as well as problems encountered by teachers when doing speaking assessment. The study was carried out with 5 teachers of English at a school in Hai Duong.
The results reveal a fact that most teachers are not familiar with task types neither assessment criteria. Last but not least, the researcher would like to suggest some changes in teaching English at schools so that students can balance among language skills and aspects. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS .1 PART II – DEVELOPMENT.
The nature of speaking. The nature of speaking assessments. Assessment, testing and evaluation. Principles of language assessment.
A taxonomy of oral proficiency. Designing speaking task type assessment. Criteria for speaking assessment. Types of speaking assessment.
Validity and reliability. Studies in the field of speaking assessment. Speaking assessment in the world. Speaking assessment practice in Vietnam.
Speaking in the new textbooks in Vietnam. The research design. Data collection instruments .39 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Conducting the interviews.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS. Results from interviews. Summary of the findings. Limitations of the study.
Suggestions for further research. I APPENDIX A: Questionnaires for teachers of English. I v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABBREVIATIONS ACTFL: The American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages CEFR: The Common European Framework of Reference EFL: English as a foreign language SLA: Second Language Acquisition VSTEP: Vietnamese Standardized Testing English Proficiency vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Rationale Speaking has an important role in human beings life because speaking is a productive skill in which the speaker produces to communicate among people in a society in order to keep the relationship going well.
Speaking is the thing that we use to express ideas at the same time he/she tries to get the ideas from others. Rivers (1987:162) says that through speaking, someone can express his ideas, emotions, attentions, reactions to other person and situation and influence other person. So, through speaking, everyone can communicate well or express what he/she wants from other and responds to the speaker. The teaching of speaking has been neglected for many years in foreign language teaching, including English as a foreign language (EFL), for various reasons (e., the strong influence of the grammar translation method, lack of English native speaker teachers and EFL teachers with near-native English proficiency, large class size) (Nation, 2011).
Increasing use of communicative language teaching methods in classroom settings for the past several decades have probably helped English teaching professionals to rediscover the value and importance of speaking in foreign language teaching and learning. These issues have long been concerned the heart of communicative teaching approach. Our personality, our self-image, our knowledge of the world and our ability to reason and express our thought are all reflected through speaking performance. In the English language teaching context, speaking ability takes a long time to develop and requires masteries of many sub-competence such as sound system, appropriate vocabulary, clear thinking and most importantly the understanding of cultural settings of the target language.
Besides, the interlocutor needs to understand what is being said to them and be able to respond appropriately in order to maintain amicable relations or to achieve their communication goals. Alongside with the focus on teaching and learning of speaking skill, the assessment of this skill raises 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com great issues in English language teaching context. It is a fact that the assessment of speaking must weigh as much as important as the teaching and learning in order to avoid the negative washback from learners. In other words, the assessment of speaking therefore requires complicated and thoroughly designed rubrics.
A person's speaking ability is usually judged during a face-to-face interaction, in real time between interlocutor and candidates. The statement of problem The move from teacher-centred to learner-centred teaching styles brings along many changes in assessment format. That is from discrete points testing to communicative testing. However, it is seemingly that in Vietnam there are incongruities between the teaching practice and testing activities.
Inbar-Lourie (2008: 289) notes that: The move from an atomized view of language knowledge to what is known as communicative competence, and to communicative and task-based approaches to language teaching has accentuated the incongruity of existing assessment measures. Calls for matching language learning and evaluation have been repeatedly made since Morrow (1979) urged language testers over three decades ago, to bridge the gap between communicatively focused teaching goals and the testing procedures used to gauge them. That also means that the most active productive skill and the most common focus of communicative-oriented language teaching and the hallmark par excellence of communicative language teaching, is not tested at all. While most teachers confess to make their teaching draw on the principles developed in the literature of communicative language teaching, however, in practice they tend to be much more traditional and structural to the extent that they measure their progression in the programme in purely grammatical terms instead of notional-functional categories, an easy way to spot their way on the teaching/testing continuum.
This reflects that there is somewhere some form of resistance to change that is deliberately expressed and manifested by teachers, not least long experienced teachers, let alone many novice teachers whose pre-service training leaves a lot to be desired. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Textbooks include of speaking sections, but the types of assessment as well as criteria for assessment of speaking is not mentioned in any teaching materials at this level. In addition, the final exam is paper-based not oral-based so the assessment of oral English has not received sufficient considerations. There have been many attempts to bridge the gap between teaching and testing, especially with the approval of the National Project 2020 and the development of VSTEP.
However, the assessment of speaking skill at high schools is still a limitation for many teachers of English at this level in Vietnam. With these backdrops, the main purpose of the paper is to give a brief overview of theories and practice of EFL speaking assessment, with a particular emphasis on the assessment criteria, task design, and rating scales, validity, reliability, practicality and related issues. More specifically, the paper will: (a) first discuss criteria to be assessed during speaking performance, (b) then describe the major components of the assessment development process (including test/task design, rating scale development/validation, rater training), (c) and finally identify some problems that teachers encounter when they conduct speaking assessment as well as some suggested solutions for the problems. The scope of the study The study will focus on the application of speaking assessment at high school level whose learners are studying the new national textbooks namely; English 10, English 11, and English 12 written by Prof.
Hoang Van Van and co-authors in 2015.4 Research questions With this expectation in mind, we may allow ourselves to formulate the following questions: 1. What task types do teachers use when assessing speaking skill of students who are learning the new textbook? 2. What criteria do teachers use when assessing speaking performance? 3. What problems do teachers encounter when assessing students’ speaking performance? 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
The significance of the study The study on completion provide teachers at high schools guidelines for speaking assessment including marking criteria, and validity of a speaking test/task. More importantly, the study raises an issue of language assessment in the high school final exam format. By which we mean that the exam formats will motivate or demotivate learners from studying English language. It is a matter of fact that syllabi consist of four macro skills, namely writing, reading, listening and speaking but the final exam is paper-based.
The pseudo-communicative approaches in testing do not stimulate speaking ability. The design of the thesis The thesis was designed in three parts. Part I is the Introduction. It provides a brief overview of the study with more details of the rationale, the aims, the scope, the research methodology as well as the design of the study.
Part II, the Development, consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 reviews the literature in the field of assessment. This chapter presents the theoretical background of the thesis which contains three main points: language assessment in general, speaking assessment in particular and some of the previous researches on assessments of English speaking skill.