VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* ĐINH THỊ HỒNG HẠNH USING LEXICAL CHUNKS TO DEVELOP THE SPEAKING FLUENCY OF STUDENTS IN A CONTINUING EDUCATION CENTER IN HANOI Sử dụng cụm từ vựng để phát triển khả năng nói của học sinh tại một trung tâm giáo dục thường xuyên ở Hà Nội M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01 Hanoi, 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* ĐINH THỊ HỒNG HẠNH USING LEXICAL CHUNKS TO DEVELOP THE SPEAKING FLUENCY OF STUDENTS IN A CONTINUING EDUCATION CENTER IN HANOI Sử dụng cụm từ vựng để phát triển khả năng nói của học sinh tại một trung tâm giáo dục thường xuyên ở Hà Nội M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231. Le Van Canh Hanoi, 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION Dinh Thi Hong Hanh, hereby certify that the minor thesis entitled “Using lexical chunks to develop the speaking fluency of students in a continuing education center in Hanoi.” is the result of my own research. This thesis has not been previously submitted for any other degrees. The work was done under the guidance of Associate Professor Le Van Canh, at the University of Languages and International Studies.
Hanoi, May 2018 Student‘s signature Đinh Thị Hồng Hạnh i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am greatly indebted to University of Languages and International Studies granted me this chance to study higher education. To accomplish this study,I would like to express the deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Associate Professor Doctor Le Van Canh for his thoughtful, patient and enthusiastic guidence, supervision ,encouragement, and support all along the period of the study. Without his expert, constant and valuable guidance and criticism.I would not have been able to conduct my research. I am thankful to all my beloved students who conducted their enthusiastic participation during the process of data collection.
Lastly, special words of thanks are sent to my beloved family for their encouragement which help me overcome all obstacles during the completion of this study. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Speaking is one of the most important language skills and recently it has received more and more attention. However, of all the basic language skills, English learners still find that speaking skill is the most difficult to acquire. In addition, this obstacle has a great impact on students‘ interest and success of English learning.
Therefore, many teachers and researchers have devised and implemented various methods to enhance learners‘ speaking ability, but chunking method is rarely applied in the teaching of speaking. The prominence of multiword clusters (lexical chunks) has grown over recent years, however, there have been few case studies exploring changes in non-native speaker speech and little work done involving non-native speakers in identifying chunks in their own speech. Following some awareness-raising training on identifying lexical chunks, the Vietnamese students themselves were asked to identify chunks within their own transcripts. Despite the difficulty of the task, they were able to do this and additionally offered insights into which chunks were common for them.
These insights included an awareness of typical Vietnamese phrases and how they reacted to their speech had changed overall. A further recording and transcribing cycle suggests that this training resulted in some short-term uptake as the percentage of chunks used increased after the lessons. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration. iii Table of contents.
iv PART A: INTRODUCTION. Rational for the study. Aim of the study. Structure of the thesis.
3 Chapter 1 : Literature review .Overview of speaking. Challenges of vocabulary learning. Lexis and lexical chunks. Types of lexical chunks.
The significance of teaching lexical chunks. Promoting language fluency. Enhancing language accuracy .Facilitating creative language production .Guiding language production. Increasing learner‘s motivation.
Lexical chunks and language fluency. Lexicalchunks and accuracy of language. Lexical chunks and creative language production. 26 Chapter 2 : Methodology and Data analysis.
29 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.The continuing education context. Data collection and Analysis. How does the teaching and learning of lexical chunks change the students‘speaking fluency?.How do the students perceive of the benifits of the learning of lexical chunks to their speaking ability?. Discussion of the relationship between L2 learns‘ use of lexical chunks and language procedure.
Changes in the teacher‘s awareness of teaching vocabulary and speaking. Advantages from the process of conducting the action research. Possible limitations in the action research………………………………. Plan for the next cycle.
X v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1) Rationale for the study: Speaking serves as an indispensable part of language learning. Compared to the two basic skills—listening and reading in English learning process—speaking is the hardest for EFL learners to acquire. On the one hand, it involves a large amount of vocabulary; on the other hand, English learners need to internalize what they have learnt and at the same time produce language fluently and accurately. It is much more complex and demanding than other language competence.
Therefore, learners‘ speaking competence can reflect their English proficiency to some extent. Students‘ speaking skills are tested in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity. Therefore, developing students‘ speaking skills is always a great challenge to any EFL teachers. From my teaching experience and also through the informal conversations with my students, I realized that the main barrier to students‘ speaking fluency is their lack of vocabulary.
However, it takes a long time to develop the students‘ lexical competence because they tend to learn few single words in one lesson, then they forget them. During my MA course, I learned that one solution to this challenge is the use of the lexical approach with the focus on helping students to use lexical chunks. This thesis reports my action research in which I experimented the lexical approach with my students. 2) Aim of the study: This studyis an attempt to investigate the use of lexical chunks in an empirical way and to track changes in elementary-level Vietnamese students‘ spoken usage of lexical chunks over a period of five months in Vietnam.
It tries to probe into the possible relationship between L2 learners‘ competence of lexical chunks and their language production through analysing results from two speaking tests, one multiple-choice chunk, and an interview. 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3) Structure of the thesis: Apart from declaration, acknowledgement, abstract, table of content and appendixes, this thesis is structured in three main parts, namely: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion. Part A, INTRODUCTION, presents the rationale, the aims of the study, research questions, structure of the thesis. Part B, DEVELOPMENT, is composed of two chapters: Chapter 1: Theoretical Background, begins with the literature on overview of speaking, vocabulary acquisition, challenges of vocabulary learning, lexis and lexical chunks, types of lexical chunks, significance of teaching lexical chunks, lexical chunks and language fluency, accuracy of language and creative language production.
Chapter 2: Methodology and Data analysis focuses on the continuing education context, participants, research procedure, data collection and analysis, findings, and discussion. Part C, Conclusion, represents the key ideas in the study, expresses the reflection of the researcher after the study, including changes in the teacher‘s awareness of teaching vocabulary and speaking, advantages from the process of conducting the action research and plan for the next cycle. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Literature Review 1. Overview of Speaking: Speaking is one of the four language skills used for many purposes, for example, when we are having a causal conversation, the purpose might be to have social contact with the other people; or when we discuss over a subject, we may aim to express our opinion (Richard &Renandya, 2002).
The context is essential to be understood and accounted for. Levinson(1983) argued that the term context has two aspects: social and interpersonal. Social context is important in studies that focus on socio-linguistic aspects of language. However,interpersonal context should be studied in sub-disciplines such as pragmatics, conversational analysis, and discourse analysis.
In the present study the conversational analysis plays critical role. In the process of communication, the speakers of a language should have knowledge of the forms of language they use. They must know how to use this knowledge to negotiate meaning. In order to clarify meaning, the speakers and hearers or writers and readers should be able to interact.
The quality of interaction influences many aspects of the speakers` life.One factor that increases the quality of interaction among nonnative speakers is fluency. Speaking activities in language classroom have various goals including learning for the content matter and language items from other participants, learning communicative activities,developing skill in discourse, and finally developing fluency (Nation, 1989). In the test, students are tested in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity. Therefore, it is a great challenge for the students to achieve the required level in all these three areas.
Thus, it seems that increasing students‘ fluency requires a lot of practice and the development of a rich lexical repertoire. 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Native speakers tend to use a great deal of prefabricated chunks of language which are not composed each time by the rules of syntax(Pawley & Syder, 1983; as cited in Conklin & Schmitt, 2008). McCarthy and Carter highlight the fact that ''many chunks are as frequent as or more frequent than the single word items which appear in core vocabulary'' (2006, p 46). If clusters are so important to language use and are so widespread in discourse, they should be paid special attention.The reason why chunks are so widespread is because they can be processed more quickly and the mind can store these ready- made chunks in the long term memory to be used in language production(Conklin & Schmitt, 2008).
Chunks could be used in a wide variety of ways. Some are used to show pragmatic integrity (e. one of the …), some have discourse- making function (e.you know), some may be used to keep face and politeness (e. I don‘t know if…), and some mark vagueness and approximation (e.
and things like that) (McCarthy and Carter, 2002).Research on chunks is based on the assumption that native speakers use plenty of chunks in their everyday language and they are considered as fluent speakers of language (Foster, 2001;cited in Leedham, 2006; McCarthy& Carter, 2002; Boers et al. Most researches works conducted in the field of chunks have focused on native speakers(Foster, 2001; cited in Leedham, 2006; McCarthy& Carter, 2002; Boers et al. Unfortunately, little is known about the use of chunks by nonnative speakers. Further investigation is needed to be conducted on non-native speakers and in EFL context.
Therefore, the main aim of conducting this study was to assess the extent to which teaching ready-made chunks to learners might affect speaking fluency of intermediate learners. Moreover, the participants` usage of chunks in their speech was studied to see if the chunks had appropriately been used and the relationship between listeners`judgments on the participants` level of fluency and the frequency of chunks was also examined. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.Vocabulary Acquistion Traditionally, language has been divided into two categories: vocabulary and grammar. Vocabulary is regarded as the stock of fixed non-generative words.
However, grammar is considered to be more fundamental and creative,and to consist of elements of the generative system of language. Therefore, many people consider that the focus of language teaching should be concentrated on grammatical competence. Although more and more attention has been paid to vocabulary teaching in English classes, most teachers remain accustomed to gluing on the acquisition of grammar.