VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ***************** NGUYỄN THỊ THỦY AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF GROUP WORK TO TEACH SPEAKING TO LARGE ENGLISH CLASSES AT A POLICE UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng phương pháp làm việc nhóm để dạy nói cho các lớp học tiếng Anh đông người ở một trường đại học ở Việt Nam) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ***************** NGUYỄN THỊ THỦY AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF GROUP WORK TO TEACH SPEAKING TO LARGE ENGLISH CLASSES AT A POLICE UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng phương pháp làm việc nhóm để dạy nói cho các lớp học tiếng Anh đông người ở một trường đại học ở Việt Nam) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dr. Hoàng Thị Hạnh Hanoi 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I, NGUYEN THI THUY, hereby certify that the thesis entitled “An investigation into the use of group work to teach speaking skills to large English classes at a police university in Vietnam” is my own study in the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi.
Hanoi 2014 Nguyen Thi Thuy i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the assistance I received from a number of people in the course of carrying out the research paper. I highly treasure the important role they played in making the completion of this minor thesis a success. First of all, I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Hoang Thi Hanh for painstakingly reading through my work from the beginning to the end and for her constant advice and invaluable comments and suggestions.
Without her continuous support I may not have come this far. Secondly, I want to express our sincere gratitude to the Post-Graduate lecturers who supplied me with basic and useful knowledge about how I could structure a research project and what I should write in each chapter. Thirdly, I would like to extend my thanks to my colleagues and my students at the People’s Police University of Technology and Logistics for their willingness to help me complete my thesis Finally, millions of thanks go to our beloved family whose financial support and spiritual encouragement contribute a significant part to the completion of the research. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This study attempted to investigate the effects of group work on students’ participation in English speaking lessons.
Students’ attitudes towards the use of group work were identified. To achieve these objectives, 36 second-year students of a police university were involved. The data were obtained through the analysis of students’ journals; notes from the researcher and group secretaries; and interviews with students and teachers before the treatment as well as an observing teacher after the treatment. The findings show students’ positive attitude towards group work, which results in a significant increase in students’ speaking participation.
The results obtained indicate some improvements in students’ speaking. Pedagogical implications drawn from the findings and suggestions for the further cycle in the action research are presented. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration. iii Table of contents.
iv PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the research. Objectives of the study. Significance of the study.
Scope of the study. Method of the study………………………………………………. The presentation of the study……………………………………. 4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background of speaking .1 Nature of speaking skill .2 Teaching Speaking skill .3 Classroom speaking activities .4 Problems with speaking activities .2 Overview of group work .1 Definition of group work .2 Benefits of group work .3 The implementation of group work in the classroom .3 Review of the related studies .1 Why action research?.
18 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 Description of the English course .3 The Research Design .4 The procedure of the study. 20 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS 3.2 Teachers’ notes and secretaries’ notes.3 The post-treatment interview with the observing teacher .4 Some newly-arising problems and solutions for the next cycle. Summary of the study. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies.
I v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the research With my own experiences of an English teacher, I see that speaking is a problem for most of non-majored English students. My students are not an exception. Before entering their universities, they mainly come from rural areas, so they did not have a lot of chances to practice English in communication or for interaction in their daily life.
During the speaking lessons, the students seem to rather quiet and passive. Whenever I ask them to say something in English, they just say “yes” or “no” and hardly answer the open questions like “Why …?”, “What do you think…?”, etc. As a result, teacher talking time was much greater than student talking time in class. The speaking period seems to be boring and stressful not only to the students but to me as well.
Besides, I encountered quite a few problems in terms of a large number of students in my English classes. In speaking lessons, I cannot control and check individuals’ speaking performance. Speaking opportunities for each student become limited. Most of students do not have any contributions to their speaking, whereas only few students take part in speaking activities.
In order to overcome these obstacles and make my speaking lessons more interesting, I tried to search and read some studies to find some solutions to my problems. One of the strategies that reflect the principle of learner - centeredness is group work. This method was applied widely in some classrooms and showed some positive effects on students’ speaking. However, when group work is used in my own context, I do not know whether it is appropriate and helpful to my students or not.
Therefore, it is necessary for me to do a small action research on “the use of group work to teach speaking skills to large English classes at a police university.” 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Objectives of the study With the attempts to find out the extent which the use of group work can help my students enhance their speaking skills and also know how my students perceive this learning technique. Specifically, this study is carried out with two main objectives as following: - To investigate the effects of group work on students’ participation in English speaking lessons. - To examine students’ attitudes towards the use of group work in the classroom 3.
Research questions In order to achieve the set goals in the previous section, the research seeks to answer the following research questions: 1. How does the use of group work influence students’ speaking? 2. What are students’ attitudes towards the use of group work in English speaking lessons? 4. The significance of the study After finding out the impacts of group work in oral performance, this study is hoped to be valuable to both teachers and students at my university.
Firstly, it helps me to understand whether the use of group work increases students’ participations in speaking activities or not. Moreover, this research is also expected to raise the teachers’ awareness of students’ motivation in language learning in general, and in speaking in particular. From these findings, it will be useful for my colleagues to select the suitable methods in their future lesson planning. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Besides, for my students, they may have one more chance to practice their speaking skills in another way in comparison to previous methods.
Their teacher’s transformation in group work implementation will be able to be beneficial to the students. The scope of the study This study mainly focuses on the impacts of group work on students’ speaking in English lessons. Besides, their attitudes towards the use of group work in speaking activities are also one of the concerns of the study. The participants in this study are 36 second year non English-majored students at my university.
Method of the study In consideration of the research’s purposes, this study employs three data collection instruments including interviews with teachers and students; students’ journals; notes from the researcher and the groups’ secretaries. The interview with students and teachers: this instrument is employed to find out the problems students encountered in previous speaking lessons. Students’ journals: These journals are collected at the end of each lesson during the experiment to investigate what students like and dislike about the use of group work in speaking lessons. The interview with the observing teacher: This method is carried out to investigate her opinions about the use of group work to teach speaking skills and its appropriateness after she observed some speaking lessons in the process of experiment.
3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com The notes from the researcher and the groups’ secretaries: These notes are collected to identify whether there is any progress or not after the actions. The presentation of the study This study is organized in three main parts. Part A is the INTRODUCTION which presents the rationales, the objectives, the research questions, the significance, the scope, the methods and the presentation of the study. Part B is the DEVELOPMENT of the research including in three chapters.
The first chapter reviews the literature relating to the use of group work to teach speaking. The second chapter describes the situation where the research was conducted and the informants involved in the research. It also includes the description of English course, research design, the teaching cycle in the study. The method of data collection and its procedures.
The third chapter comes up with the results of the effects of group work on students’ speaking performance and students’ attitudes towards group work. Part C is the CONCLUSION which includes the major findings, their implications and plan for the next research cycle. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART B : DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW This study investigates the use of group work (GW) to teach speaking skills. It aims at finding out how this implementation influence on students’ speaking and what their attitudes towards this method are.
This chapter reviews the literature on theoretical background of speaking including nature of speaking skill, teaching speaking skill, classroom speaking activities, problems with speaking activities. In addition, some theories about GW such as the definition of GW, benefits of GW, some problems and suggested solutions in using GW, the implementation of GW in the class room are also addressed in this chapter. Besides, some reviews of related studies are mentioned at the end of the chapter. Theoretical background of speaking 1.
Nature of speaking skill In the process of teaching and learning English, speaking skill plays an important role in mastering this language. Therefore, there are many different studies about this field. Each scholar has their own views about it.40) says that “speaking is the same as oral interaction which are conventional ways of speaking information, expressing our idea, and thought in our mind. Sharing the same opinion, speaking can be considered to be “an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information” (Brown, 1994b; Burns & Joyce, 1997).
These definitions can be understood that the interaction of learners is the vital factor in speaking activities.