MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY -------- ∞0∞-------- LE THI NGOC THIEN TED-ED AS A TOOL IN ENHANCING SPEAKING SKILLS FOR THE 11TH GRADE STUDENTS AT VINH CUU HIGH SCHOOL MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL HO CHI MINH CITY, 2022 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY -------- ∞0∞-------- LE THI NGOC THIEN TED-ED AS A TOOL IN ENHANCING SPEAKING SKILLS FOR THE 11TH GRADE STUDENTS AT VINH CUU HIGH SCHOOL Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Major code: 8 14 01 11 MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL Supervisor: NGUYEN DINH THU, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY, 2022 TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC MỞ CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc KHOA ĐÀO TẠO SAU ĐẠI HỌC GIẤY XÁC NHẬN Tôi tên là: LÊ THỊ NGỌC THIỆN Ngày sinh: 26.1994 Nơi sinh: Đồng Nai Chuyên ngành: Lý luận và Phương pháp dạy học Bộ môn Tiếng Anh. Mã học viên: 2081401112018 Tôi đồng ý cung cấp toàn văn thông tin luận văn tốt nghiệp hợp lệ về bản quyền cho Thư viện trường đại học Mở Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. Thư viện trường đại học Mở Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh sẽ kết nối toàn văn thông tin luận văn tốt nghiệp vào hệ thống thông tin khoa học của Sở Khoa học và Công nghệ Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh.
Ký tên Lê Thị Ngọc Thiện STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that the thesis ―TED-Ed as a tool in enhancing speaking for the 11th grade students at Vinh Cuu high school‖ is my own work. I truthfully declare that I have written all the content of the thesis with the kind guidance, support and encourage from my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Dinh Thu. Materials drawn from other sources have been acknowledged according to unit- specific requirements for referencing.
I confirm that this assessment item has not been submitted previously for academic credit in this or any other course. I certify that I have not given a copy or have shown a copy of this assessment item to another student enrolled in the course. Ho Chi Minh City, 2022 Le Thi Ngoc Thien ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my greatest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Dinh Thu, for his thorough instructions, professional comments, care and socio-cognitive support throughout the thesis process.
Without his guidance and support, I would not have completed this thesis. Secondly, I would like to express my special thanks to Open University for giving me a great opportunity to learn highly valuable lessons from professional and helpful lecturers during my post-graduate program. Thirdly, I would like to express my sincere acknowledgment to my workplace (Vinh Cuu high school), where I have worked for five years. This thesis could not be finished without this research site, and my colleagues.
Fourthly, I would like to thank students who actively responded to the questionnaire, participated in the course and enthusiastically took all the pre-and post-course tests. Their participation contributed to the major content of the study. Last but not least, I would like to give special thanks to my parents, my sister, and all my colleagues who have encouraged and supported me during my M. Without their encouragement, I would not have been as successful as I am today.
ABSTRACT The study aimed to find out whether there was a significant difference in the speaking ability between the eleventh-grade students of Vinh Cuu high school who were taught by using TED-Ed and those who were not, in the academic year of 2021-2022. This research adopted a quasi-experimental study which involved 80 students in two groups, Class 11A10 as the experimental group and Class 11A11 as the control group. The experimental group was taught by using TED-Ed, whereas the control group was taught by mainly using the textbook. The data were collected via a pre-test and a post-test and questionnaire.
The pre-test was given to both groups to ensure students’ equal level in speaking before the treatment and the post- test was given after 8 weeks of treatment to investigate whether there was any improvement. The test results were analyzed using SPSS program, version 26 for descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of the posttest between EG and CG showed that there was a significant difference in the speaking ability between the students who were taught by TED-Ed and those who were taught by using the textbook and following traditional techniques. Specifically, the significance value calculated 0.00 is smaller than the alpha value 0.
So, it could be concluded that the TED-Ed significantly enhanced the students’ speaking ability after 8 weeks’ treatment with TED-ED at Vinh Cuu high school. Also, the data collected from questionnaire of experimental group indicated that these participants' attitudes towards using TED-Ed were very positive. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CG: Control Group EG: Experimental Group ICT: Information and Communications Technology L2: Second Language TED: Technology, Entertainment, Design TED-Ed: TED Education TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.
iv Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION. Background to the study. Definitions of terms. Significance of the study .6 Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.
Definition of speaking skill. Significance of speaking skill. Teaching speaking with current technique in high schools. High school learners.
Definition of high school learners. High school learners’ characteristics. Definition of attitudes. Components of attitudes.
The use of Internet in teaching and learning language. Definitions of TED-Ed. Advantages and disadvantages of using TED-Ed in speaking class. Previous studies of using TED-Ed on students' speaking learning.
Research site and participants. Research instruments and measurement. Pre-test and post-test. Data analysis of the pre-test and post-test.
Data analysis of the second questionnaire.40 Chapter 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS. Description of participants. Data analysis of the tests. Data analysis of the questionnaire.
Discussion of findings. Conclusion of the study. Recommendations for further research .80 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Quasi-experimental research design .2: The purposes of the instruments .3: Content of part I of questionnaire .4: Content of part II of questionnaire .5: Teaching materials for the two groups.6: Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality.7: Reliability of the Items .1: Shapiro-Wilk test of normality .2: Descriptive statistics of EG and CG on the pre-test .3: Independent Samples t-test on the pre-test of the two groups .4: Paired Samples Statistics of the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group .5: Paired Samples t-test of the CG on the pre-test and post-test .6: Paired Samples Statistics of the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group .7: Paired Samples t-test of the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group.8: Group statistics on the post-test of the experimental and control groups .9: Independent Samples t-test on the post-test of the two groups.10: Students' cognitive attitudes on using TED-Ed in speaking learning .11: Students' behavioral attitudes about using TED-Ed in speaking learning .12: Students' emotional attitudes toward speaking learning with TED-Ed. 55 1 Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION Teaching and learning English has become ubiquitous all over the world as well as in Vietnam these days.
Although speaking ability is well aware of, learning speaking is still a vexing problem for many English learners, especially for high school students because of many reasons. One of the main reasons is that students just learn English as their obligation since it becomes the final examination. Some students learn English grammar well but they cannot speak. There still exist many difficulties in learning English in general and in Vinh Cuu high school in particular.
Therefore, the researcher believes that effort should be made to help high school students improve their speaking skills. Using TED-Ed is one of the ways that can help to enhance students speaking skill. TED-Ed is described as a YouTube channel providing lecturers and professors with opportunities to covey their opinions and messages through vivid educational videos about every single topic. Speakers who deliver have deep knowledge about their major, so what they spread is trustworthy.
This makes TED- Ed a reliable source to learn not only knowledge but English language as well (Blog. With these great benefits, the researcher would like to do a research on TED-Ed to find out whether or not this tool helps to improve students’ speaking skill. The research begins with the first chapter which introduces background of the study, the problem statement, research aims, research questions, research hypothesis, definitions of terms and significance of the study and thesis structure. Background to the study There is no doubt that English has been a popular and effective communication tool, especially in the era of international integration.
Rao (2019) also states that English has become popular and essential in many fields, such as 2 education, tourism, culture, science and technology, diplomacy, and economy, etc. In Vietnam, a large majority of people are well-aware of the role of English in promoting integration in regional communities in particular and global in general (Nguyen, 2018). This is the reason why English becomes one of the compulsory subjects in the Vietnamese educational curriculum from primary school to university. Due to its significance, the teaching and learning of English are more and more appreciated.
However, learning English in many schools in Vietnam, especially in high school is not really effective as Vietnamese high school teachers have a tendency to pay much attention to grammar and lexical. They believe that being good at grammar points will lead to good communication skills (V. Teachers at many high schools often teach grammar points in mechanical ways. First, teachers show grammatical structures and then use their mother tongue to explain the grammar rules to students.
After that, the teachers give examples by putting these structures into sentences without having any context. Finally, the teachers ask the students to do exercises and then write the answers on the board. By applying this way, students do not have opportunities to communicate with each other (G. Moreover, the class size is too large leading to the fact that teachers cannot organize communication activities effectively (Hoang, 2010; G.
Also, with such a large size of the class, not all students have chances to expose to the target language. Unfortunately, when being outside the class, students do not also have English-language environment to practice (V. As a consequence of focusing much on grammatical structures, more and more students cannot reach the requirements of the Foreign Languages Project 2020 (National Foreign Languages 2020 Project, 2015). This project requires teachers of high school to reach C1 level and students graduating from high school need to reach upper-intermediate level comparable to the B1 level of the Common 3 European Framework of Reference (MOET, 2014).
To support teachers to enhance their proficiency and methodology, the project also has training programs in which teachers and students are instructed to use and to apply technology in their teaching and learning. To be more specific, teachers are required to use presentation tools, social networks and educational websites to present their lesson and students are taught to utilize ICT to improve the second language (Vietnam National Institute for Educational Sciences, 2011).The project indicates that employing technology in teaching and learning English enables students to practice more outside the classroom compensating the limited time in the class. For the above-mentioned reasons, the researcher would like to conduct a research on applying technology, specifically TED-Ed in teaching and learning speaking at Vinh Cuu high school where students do not have opportunities to practice speaking in and outside the classroom. Research problem Speaking is one of the most important macro skills that students have to master as it helps them share information, ideas and feelings (Cameron & Hybel, 2001).