TABLE OF CONTENTS SUB-COVER PAGE STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS .4 LIST OF TABLES .5 LIST OF CHARTS .6 LIST OF FIGURES. RATIONALE AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS. METHODOLODY OF THE STUDY. STRUCTURES OF THE THESIS .17 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW.
DEFINITIONS OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS. TYPES OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS. Non-verbal communication .THE IMPORTANCE AND NECESSITY OF COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS IN ENGLISH TEACHING AND LEARNING. COMMUNICATIVE CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES .Types of communicative classroom activities .SOME FACTORS THAT PREVENT STUDENTS FROM COMMUNICATING IN ENGLISH.
Factors of Foreign Language Anxiety. Factors associated with Learner‟s own sense of “self” and “language classroom environment”. SOCIO – CULTURAL FACTORS. Social environment for L2/FL acquisition.
Errors in social setting. INTEGRATING SKILLS AND COMMUNICATION. Importance of integrating skills: .Communication through reading activities. Communication through writing activities.
Communication through listening activities.40 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY. HYPOTHESES: REMARKS ON SOME PROBLEMS OF LEARNING AND TEACHING AT NGUYEN HUE HIGH SCHOOL IN HUE CITY. DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS. DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE.
DATA ANALYSIS METHOD AND PROCEDURE .46 2 CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Survey questionnaire for teachers. Teachers‟ attitudes towards the importance and necessity of communicative skills in English teaching and learning (questions 1, 2, 3, 4). Useful communication activities which teachers often carry out in the English speaking classes (question 5,6,7,8).
Survey questionnaire for students. DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS. SUMMARY OF THE STUDY. LIMITATION OF THE STUDY.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY. SUGGESTIONS FOR APPLICATION OF CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES TO DEVELOP THE 11TH FORM NGUYEN HUE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS‟ COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS IN ENGLISH SPEAKING CLASSES. Activities in class. Practical tips for teachers .78 3 LIST OFABBREVIATIONS CA : Communication Apprehension CLT : Communicative Language Teaching EFL : English as Foreign Language ELT : English Language Teaching ESL : English as Second Language FL : Foreign Language L1 : First Language L2 : Second Language 4 LIST OF TABLES Table 4.
Results from survey questionnaire for teachers. Results from survey questionnaire for students .48 5 LIST OF CHARTS Chart 4. The fact given by teachers about the importance of communicative skills. The fact given by teachers about the frequency of having enough motivation to develop communicative skills for students in English speaking classes.
The fact given by teachers about the frequency of asking students to present the summary of speaking tasks. The fact given by teachers about the frequency of giving students corrective comments on their presentation of speaking tasks. The fact given by teachers about carrying out classroom activities in an English speaking class. The fact given by teacher about the evaluation on the effectiveness of using these classroom activities.
The fact given by teacher about organizing extra activities for the development of students‟ communicative skills in Nguyen Hue High School. The fact given by teachers of some ways of organizing these extra activities. The fact given by teachers about difficulties that they encounter when teaching the students English communication. The fact given by teacher of students- teacher interaction in English speaking tasks.
The fact given by students about the importance of communicative skills. Students‟ interest in speaking tasks in English textbook. The fact given by students about frequency of being asked to present the summary of speaking tasks. The fact given by students about frequency of giving corrective comments to their presentation in speaking tasks.
The fact given by students about frequency of classroom activities carried out in English speaking classes. Students‟ evaluation on the effectiveness of using these classroom activities. The fact given by students about the interest in using these classroom activities. The fact given by students of the frequency of organizing some extra activities in Nguyen Hue High school.
The fact given by students about useful ways of organizing these extra activities. The fact given by students about having difficulties in communication in English speaking class.64 7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. The structure of simulation .75 8 ABSTRACT One of the main necessities in the teaching and learning of a foreign language is the development of the four skills, which are listening, speaking, reading and writing. But in Vietnamese context, especially in high schools, those skills are not developed enough due to a set of factors such as the number of students in a classroom, the lack of learning resources, and the exaggerated use of grammar approach which result in lack of students‟ motivation in the learning of English.
As a consequence, learners get difficulties in learning English second language, especially they feel embarrassed in performing oral communication. When they themself try to express their ideas orally, they only pronounce isolated words and disconnected sentences, which make them unsatisfied with their poor and meaningless production. Since speaking requires academic and professional performances, lacking oral production skills are becoming more problematic. This thesis is conducted in an attempt to investigate the current situation of using typical classroom activities to develop the eleventh-form students‟ communication skills in English speaking lessons.
In order to achieve the aims of the study, the researcher has conducted a survey research using survey questionnaires and giving speaking tasks in English 11 textbook. The findings from survey questionnaires and textbook‟s evaluation provide the researcher with a comprehensive understanding of using classroom activities in English speaking classes. Specifically, a survey was taken on by teachers of English and eleventh-form students at Nguyen Hue High school in Hue City to consider how English speaking lessons are conducted and how students respond to English speaking lessons. The thesis also makes a study of students‟ difficulties when participating in English oral communication in speaking lessons and recommends some practical tips and typical classroom activities which were applied by the researcher and were suggested by teachers of English at Nguyen Hue high school to 9 improve their quality of teaching and learning English communication skills.
Generally, students are interested in joining some communicative activities and taking the opportunities to do tasks in speaking lessons. However, they express their their desire clearly to speak English through some extra activities because they find it difficult to communicate with each other smoothly when they want to present some topics in the classroom. In part of the teachers, they admit that they encounter some difficulties when using activities in teaching speaking for the development communication skills of the eleventh-grade students. With the careful and detailed investigation, this study will serve as a useful source of reference for teachers, students and the people who are concerned about this subject matter.
10 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION In this chapter, I will describe in details the rationale of the research in the relation to students‟ communicative skills in English. Especially, the researcher would like to focus on improving oral communication in English teaching and learning at Nguyen Hue High School in Hue city, the aims and objectives of the research, the scope of the research, the significance of the research and the organization of the research. RATIONALE AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS Nowadays, with the wide spread of globalization and international integration, English plays a significant role in the new Vietnamese social context. It is regarded as the key to innovation, development and global integration after Vietnamese government pursued the economic open door policy.
The increasing needs to use English to communicate verbally are more and more essential. In Vietnam, learning English language is interested by young people especially students at universities and high schools for a plenty of reasons such as academic work, job interviews, studying abroad and so on. English is considered an important language to master and since 1993, it has been obliged as a compulsory subject at schools and in the examination to get the Secondary School Education Certificate during the past years. In Vietnamese schools today this language is officially taught as a foreign language from the lower secondary schools and even earlier.
It means that high schools‟ students have had at least a period of a four-year learning English. Besides, it is the primary language of global communication, trade, diplomacy and foreign policy. Learning English in school will open up numerous opportunities and avenues to students in Vietnam as well as the international marketplace. However, it cannot be said that ELT has succeeded in response to the requirements of training competent English speaking people.
Traditional pedagogy, emphasizing the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary rather than communicative 11 competence, is still applied in most classrooms. Teachers are still the controllers of students‟ activities, which leads to the reason in the interruption, arguing, asking for clarification hardly happen in the classroom. Students may have a throughout grasp of theoretical knowledge but might fail to express their ability in real world. Therefore, learning to use a language as well as mastering English communication skills fully is an effortful process.
Moreover, in reality, many students at high school can memorize hundreds of words and many grammar rules, but they still cannot speak well (as cited in Dang, 2007). High school students‟ level of English speaking is estimated upper- intermediate. Downs (2000) claimed that Vietnamese students as well as Chinese students are self-conscious when being asked to express their views in public. This is true even if their language abilities are comparatively good.
For a long time, the traditional way of teaching focused mainly on teaching and learning grammar points, reading and writing skills. As a result, students lack the ability of speaking English to communicate with each other. Moreover, speaking is “the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts” (Chaney, 1998, p. To summarize, there are many reasons to realize that speaking is a crucial part of second language learning and teaching.
Realizing the importance of speaking skill in learning a language and the out of date of the old text books, the Ministry of Education and Training has published a new series of textbooks in which communicative activities are more concentrated. Speaking skill is now brought into the curriculum as an independent part with many interesting activities like the other three skills: listening, reading and writing. This situation results in the need for applying a new method of teaching English that can encourage students to promote high school students‟ communicative competence. Therefore, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is the most appropriate because it emphasizes primarily on developing the learners‟ communicative competence through using most of the activities that engages learners in authentic communication.
It means that students are motivated to participate in the meaningful interactions actively. Those 12 interactions of students through various activities learning will be both fun and effective. In addition, communicative tasks in CLT are considered to stimulate students‟ maximum participants. For English teaching and learning at some high schools, communicative competence is always a challenge which needs overcoming and it has been more focused in English speaking lessons.
The students have already spent most of their time speaking and listening comprehension activities and sometimes they feel that it is so difficult for them to express their ideas quickly. Actually, communication skills are essential in all aspects of life, especially when high school students are preparing to take part in classroom activities which communication skills are always play an important role in learning speaking. Whatever subjects they study, effective communication skills will help the students get success not only in English lessons but also in other aspects. Up to now, a number of people feel like learning English perfectly so that they can meet their private purposes in life.
They always wish that they can use English to practice communication skills as well as native speakers because most of English learners want to obtain the dream of speaking and listening to English fluently and accurately. Nevertheless, it is certain to show that all of the learners cannot understand English well and lack confidence in communicating.