VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PEER CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS FOR YOUNG LEARNERS AT A CHAU ENGLISH CENTER A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature in partial fulfillment of the Master‟s degree in TESOL By NGO THI DUONG Supervised by DOAN HUE DUNG, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY, AUGUST 2022 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT No words can express my very great appreciation to many influential people for their support in the journey of thesis completion. I am especially indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Doan Hue Dung, who was patient and generously provided valuable feedback on my paper.
Without her timely advice and constructive instruction it would not have been possible to complete this study. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to my family, who are always by my side anytime I need, especially when I was in troubles. Thanks should also go to my beloved mother, oldest sister, who always advocate and encourage me in everything. Special thanks to my husband, who always motivate and takes care of me during the process of MA course.
Lastly, I would like to mention the permission of the research site and participants to carry the study at the center. They was so considerate and supportive when cooperating with me to accomplish this project. II STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I certify that this thesis entitled “THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PEER CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS FOR YOUNG LEARNERS AT A CHAU ENGLISH CENTER” is my own work. The thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institution.
Ho Chi Minh City, August 2022 Ngô Thị Dưỡng III RETENTION OF USE I hereby state that I, Ngô Thị Dưỡng, being the candidate for the degree of Master in TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master‟s Thesis deposited in the Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for the purpose of study and research in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of the theses. Ho Chi Minh City, August 2022 IV TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. II STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY.
III RETENTION OF USE. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS .V LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. VII LIST OF TABLES .VIII LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS. Background to the study.
Aims of the study. Statement of the problem. Rationale of the study. Significance of the study.
Scope of the study. Organization of thesis chapters. 5 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW. Defining the ages of YLs.
Defining the characteristics of YLs. Defining YLs‟ attitudes towards language learning. The concept of peer corrective feedback. Types of CF.
Peer corrective feedback (PCF). Definitions of speaking. Activities in English speaking classes (ESC) for YLs. Assessment of YLs‟ oral performances.
Previous studies on PCF. Context of the study. Participants and sampling procedures. Methods of data collection.
Data collection procedure. Data analysis approach. Data analysis process. Data analysis scheme.
36 CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Implementation of PCF in ESC. Teacher‟s implementation of CF. The students‟ use of PCF.
The students‟ attitudes towards PCF. The students‟ attitudes towards the teacher implementing PCF. The students‟ attitudes towards the classroom atmosphere with PCF. The students‟ attitudes towards giving and receiving PCF 53 4.
The students‟ attitudes towards ESC with PCF. Summary of findings. Limitations of the study. Recommendations for further study.
94 VI LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS PCF Peer corrective feedback PF Peer feedback CF Corrective feedback YLs Young learners ELT English language teaching ESS English speaking skills ESC English speaking classes EFL English as a foreign language ESL English as a second language CLT Communicative language teaching VII LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Checklist of guideline in using CF .2 A summary of types of CF .1 Levels and English speaking learning outcomes for YLs .2 Information of participants .3 Items of the questionnaires .4 A description of Pilot 1 .5 A description of Cycle 1 .6 A description of Pilot 2 .7 A description of Cycle 2 .1 Number of the teacher's CF .2 Speaking evaluation criteria .3 Number of the students' PCF.4 The students' feeling towards teacher‟s activities before speaking47 Table 4.5 The students' feelings towards teacher‟s activities while speaking49 Table 4.6 The students‟ feelings towards the teacher‟s activities after speaking .7 The students‟ feelings towards classrom atmosphere .8 The students‟ feelings towards providing and receiving PCF. 53 VIII LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS Figure 2.1 Conceptual framework of the study .3 Thematic network of the research .1 The students‟ feelings towards teacher before speaking .2 The students‟ feelings towards their teacher while speaking .3 The students‟ attitudes toward English speaking classes with PCF55 IX ABSTRACT Peer corrective feedback (PCF) is considered as one of the effective techniques to foster young learners of English to talk in class through the process of thinking, discussing, and providing feedback. Considering that, this study examined the implementation of PCF for YLs in English speaking classes (ESC). This research aims to explore the most common types of PCF in ESC and YLs‟ attitudes towards PCF.
The researcher as the head teacher employed the mixed methods approach in an action research design to understand her learners as well as reflect her own teaching for further improvement. Questionnaires and observations were the main means of data collection in the two research cycles (C1 and C2). Besides, in the two pilot cycles (P1 and P2), private documents including speaking evaluation rubric and comment sheets were applied to train the students the required criteria of speaking performances and note-taking skill which were useful when the students orally provided PCF. The analysis disclosed that regardless of the anxiety of some participants, majority of the students had positive attitudes towards the implementation of PCF because they found this technique quite useful for them to improve their speaking skills.
It also indicated that most types of PCF were used in the ESC by both teacher and the students. Prominently, while the teacher preferred to implement clarification requests for more details of PCF, the students had a desire of exercising recasts to deliver their correction. Key words: peer corrective feedback, English speaking skills, young learners X CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter establishes the background to the study, indicates the problem in the field of study in which shows a research gap. Moreover, aims, significance, and scope of the study are presented.
Finally, the structure of the writing is also provided. Background to the study Learning English at an early stage is very significant in the context of global lingua franca. As English has been using extensively in every field of life. Moreover, English is in need for communication at work and various social environments around the world.
Increasingly, parents and social governmental leaders are all aware of the importance of English productive skills in global marketplaces. To meet the current needs of proficient speaking skills, the past decade has seen the rapid development of the communicative approach in English language teaching (ELT) in most public schools as well as private organizations. One of the most significant current discussions in ELT is the communicative competence of learners. Pedagogically speaking, there is the demand for English communication skills is to maximize opportunities for student interaction and to be an expert user, or at least a confident one.
Rich (2014) reported that the huge numbers of children are now engaging in learning English from 5 to 10 years old. Another present fact is that a huge number of considerable effort and financial resources are expended in ensuring their children have as many opportunities to engage with this language as possible, including an early start. The move to introduce English at the earliest stages of primary education and its inclusion in pre- school provision enables children to achieve greater overall proficiency. Hence, using a practical technique in learning English like PCF is substantial to improve communicative ability among children.
PCF is one of the considerable techniques needed in teaching and learning English speaking skills (ESS) to upgrade qualified communicative lessons and develop the learners‟ collaboration and interaction in classrooms. In this kind of 1 activity, learners‟ opinions are produced to improve the teaching and learning quality. More to the point, PCF is one of the practical types of PF which has been becoming one of the common activities in English classes so far. Aims of the study 1.
Statement of the problem Improving students‟ English speaking skills (ESS) has been challenging English teachers recently. Particularly in ESL/EFL classes, to make progress in ESS, students need to be given 70 % to 90% of the time to speak and practice their foreign language (Kostadinovska-Stojchevska & Popovikj, 2019). Meanwhile, there the teacher often play the central role in providing language input with a high amount of time (Cardenas, 2013). Moreover, most of the students are greatly disadvantaged to practice ESS in a poor interactive classrooms.
Consequently, learners‟ utterances in English classes are often very short with a single word or a short phrase or, at most, a single clause (Ellis and Shintani, 2013). Goodwyn and Brandson (2005) have seen that pupils are unable to read, write and even speak fluently, confidently and appropriately both in school and beyond. Therefore, building a confident and fluent English speaker is necessary and convenient for students in order to shift to another higher level, specially for young learners (YLs) who are ready to acquire a new language. Peer corrective feedback (PCF) is considered as a practical and adequate technique for teaching YLs ESS.
Obviously, YLs love playing with friends and they can be easier to talk to their friends everything they imagine. In accordance with that, PCF provide YLs a lot of time to use their learnt language to interact with their classmates by discussing in pairs, in groups and in front of class, and with their teachers by questions and clarification requests. English teachers can apply PCF in the classroom to create more opportunities for YLs to practice their English language with different partners classrooms. Advantageously, when a learner speaks wrongly, his/her peer can help to correct it and make it better.
Through the interaction between learners and learners, YLs‟ confidence of speaking can be 2 developed and the understanding of different language aspects will be improved after multiple practical English speaking tasks combined with PCF. Rationale of the study Despite the advantages of PCF, questions have been raised about the safety of prolonged use of PCF for YLs in English speaking classes (ESC). Teachers may not know how to implement this technique efficiently for YLs. Moreover, YLs are not old enough to activate PCF themselves.
Chaotic classrooms can be caused if the teachers have no appropriate teaching procedure and good skills of classroom management. Therefore, the researcher need to carry out an action to implement the technique in her current classes as systematically as possible to gain YLs‟ insights towards PCF through the real practice. Concerning the research gap, so far PCF has only been applied to adolescents and adults. Therefore, it is virtual to conduct a research in an authentic context to examine the topic.
With the implementation of PCF in English speaking classes, the purpose of the research is to look into the YLs‟ attitudes towards the technique and the common types of PCF. Briefly, through the implementation, the researcher expects that the learners can understand the importance of the use of PCF in learning English speaking skills. Research questions This thesis aims to explore common types of PCF and the students‟ attitudes towards in ESS.