VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** TẠ THỊ DƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF PAIR WORK AND GROUP WORK IN SPEAKING LESSONS FOR GRADE-10 STUDENTS AT YEN LAC HIGH SCHOOL (NGHIÊN CỨU THỰC TRẠNG SỬ DỤNG HOA ̣T ĐỘNG ĐÔI VÀ NHÓM TRONG CÁC GIỜ HỌC NÓI CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG YÊN LẠC) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi – 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** TẠ THỊ DƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF PAIR WORK AND GROUP WORK IN SPEAKING LESSONS FOR GRADE-10 STUDENTS AT YEN LAC HIGH SCHOOL (NGHIÊN CỨU THỰC TRẠNG SỬ DỤNG HOA ̣T ĐỘNG ĐÔI VÀ NHÓM TRONG CÁC GIỜ HỌC NÓI CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG YÊN LẠC) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Phạm Thị Thanh Thuỷ, Ph.D Hanoi – 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I hereby state that I – Tạ Thị Dương, being an M.A candidate of the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, ULIS, VNU, certify my authorship of the study entitled An Investigation into the Use of Pair Work and Group Work in Speaking Lessons for Grade-10 Students at Yen Lac High School I certify that this thesis is entirely my own work and that all the information in this paper was presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. As required in the rules, I fully cited all the sources of the results that were not original to this work.
Hanoi, December 2014 Tạ Thị Dương i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Ms. Pham Thi Thanh Thuy, Ph.D for her guidance, comments, enthusiasm, and especially sympathy throughout the whole research process. Second, my thanks go to all the lecturers and staff of the Faculty of Post- Graduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, for their precious knowledge and guidance during my two years of studying at the Faculty. Third, I would like to thank all librarians for their helping me with the reference materials and their efforts to create the atmosphere of reading rooms as convenient as possible.
Specially, I wish to express my special thanks to the students and teachers at Yen Lac high school for their full support in completing the questionnaires and their detailed answers to questions in the interview. I also wish to send my thanks to the teachers who will take their precious time reading and commending on this thesis. And finally, I wish to send my thanks to my family who always cheer me up and support me at hard time. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This study aims at investigating how pair and group activities were used to teach English speaking skills by teachers for grade-10 classes at Yen Lac high school; the benefits students gained and the difficulties they encountered when using them; and the solutions teachers took to handle these problems.
A combination of questionnaires for students, interviews for teachers and class observations was administered to discover the answers. The findings of this research revealed that pair work and group work were used frequently and quite effectively in teaching speaking skills. Furthermore, the benefits students gained outnumbered the challenges they faced. It was found out that teachers adopted a number of strategies to improve the effectiveness of pair work and group work.
From the findings of the study, some recommendations were given to the students and teachers at Yen Lac high school for enhancing the effectiveness of pair work and group work in speaking lessons. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT: Communicative Language Teaching ESL: English as a Second Language STT: Student Talking Time iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LISTS OF FIGURES Figure 3. Students' reflections on the frequency of work organizations Figure 3. Students' reflections on how teachers form pairs and groups Figure 3.
Students' reflections on the size of a group Figure 3. Students' reflections on the activities for pair/ group work Figure 3.Students' reflections on teachers' activities before pair work and group work Figure 3. Students' reflections on teachers' activities during pair work and group work Figure 3. Students' reflections on their activities during pair work and group work Figure 3.
Students' reflections on teachers' activities after pair work and group work Figure 3. Students' justifications of the benefits they gain from pair work and group work Figure 3. Students' reflections on the difficulties they have in pair work and group work Figure 3. Students' expectations to improve the effectiveness of pair work and group work v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION.
iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. iv LIST OF FIGURES. Rationale for the study. Aims of the study.
Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Methods of the study. Design of the study.
5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Theoretical backgrounds of teaching speaking skills. Principles for Teaching Speaking. Problems in teaching speaking skills.
Theoretical backgrounds of pair and group work. Definitions of pair and group work. The organization of pair and group work. Procedures for pair and group work.
Pair and group activities in a speaking lesson. Benefits and challenges of using pair and group work in a speaking lesson. Benefits of using pair and group work. 10 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Challenges in using pair and group work. Empirical studies related to pair and group work. Background to the study. Data collection instruments.
Data collection procedures. Data analysis procedures. 20 CHAPTER 3: MAIN FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. The use of pair work and group work in teaching speaking skills for grade-10 students at Yen Lac High School.
The benefits and challenges of the practice of speaking skills in pairs and groups at Yen Lac High School. The solutions to improve the effectiveness of the practice of speaking skills in pairs and groups at Yen Lac High School. Pedagogical Implications of the Study. Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research.
42 Appendices vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study In recent decades, it is undeniable that English has become a primary medium of international communication in commerce, transportation, banking, tourism, technology, aviation, diplomacy, and scientific research. As a result, Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training has been adopting English as a compulsory subject at secondary schools, colleges and universities, and even in several primary schools since the 1990s. However, most of the students have still been confused with the demand of communicative competence after graduation from the university, which derives basically from the lack of the opportunities to practice, the limited exposure to the real language, the native language interferences, and especially the lack of suitable teaching and learning methods.
They are mainly taught with the traditional teaching method- Grammar Translation Method which focuses on academic study of grammar; subsequently, students are discouraged from promoting their overall communicative competence. With regards to this situation, a new approach – Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been applied instead in order to foster students‟ fluency and accuracy of English in real communications. One of the techniques commonly used in CLT is pair and group work, the importance of which has been long emphasized as it can create a comfortable and low-pressure learning environment in the second language classroom. It is commonly believed that the less anxious and more relaxed the learner is, the better his language acquisition proceeds.
Moreover, this technique enables students to maximize their own learning and also offers promising possibilities for promoting active learning and student-reliance in community college classrooms (Foote, 2009). In addition, many studies have reported that, regardless of the subject matter, students working in small groups tend to learn more of what is taught and retain it longer than when the same content is presented in other instructional formats. 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com As can be observed at Yen Lac High school, both teachers and students once did not take speaking skills serious. Speaking skills were almost confined to the classroom while the study of grammar was the overriding concern on the grounds that students had to pass the exams.
In the very rare speaking lessons, speaking skills were taught in the traditional version of teacher- student interaction that is illustrated by the model of teacher initiation, student response, and teacher‟s evaluation. Students only demonstrated what they had learnt, not having the adequate frequency of opportunities to interact in and out of the classroom. Consequently, students could not communicate and express in English as the courses expected and they had many difficulties in keeping pace with the requirements of oral English skills at universities and in future jobs. This situation has called for a change in the teachers‟ perception of the importance of teaching speaking skills.
Before carrying out the study, the researcher asked English teachers at this school about the importance of teaching speaking skills. All of them agreed that speaking skills are very important and teaching spoken English for their students should become a lifetime endeavor. They have adopted less controlled activities in the classroom to give students more opportunities to practice, communicate, and interact in real life situations in the form of pair work and group work. These activities not only increase students‟ talking time (STT) but also create an embracing affective classroom atmosphere which motivates students freely express themselves.
Furthermore, many values can be learnt during the process as solidarity, responsibility, and team spirit. For the above benefits, all surveyed teachers say that they use pair and group work in every English speaking lesson. Nevertheless, both teachers and students have dealt with some challenges in applying pair and group work in speaking lessons. Teachers, for instance, sometimes lose control of the class or lack time to finish the lesson.
Students tend to switch to their mother tongue or even talk some outside topics given. Noticing the above mentioned facts, the researcher would like to conduct a study on “An Investigation into the Use of Pair Work and Group Work in Speaking Lessons for Grade-10 Students at Yen Lac High School” in the hope of exploring how pair and group work are used to teach English speaking skills by teachers, what are the 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com benefits students gain and what challenges they cope with when pair and group work are adopted, and what solutions teachers take to handle these problems. Aims of the study The study is carried out with three aims. Firstly, the study is expected to investigate how pair and group activities are used to teach English speaking skills for grade-10 classes by Yen Lac high school teachers.
Added to this, it aims to explore the benefits students gain and the difficulties they encounter when pair and group work are adopted. Finally, the solutions teachers take to handle these problems are also carefully identified. In brief, all the aims of this study could be summarized into the following research questions: (1) How are pair and group work used in teaching speaking skills by English teachers of grade-10 classes at Yen Lac High School? (2) What are the benefits and challenges of using pairs and groups in learning speaking skills at Yen Lac High School? (3) What are some suggestions to improve the effectiveness of using pairs and groups in teaching speaking skills at Yen Lac High School?