STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I, Bui Thi Nga hereby certify that this thesis, entitled “A study on effects of storytelling on speaking performance among students of English at the University of Transport and communications – campus 2”, is my own work. Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contain material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma. No other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of the thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution.
Ho Chi Minh, 2016 BUI THI NGA i Tai Lieu Chat Luong ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deep gratitude to all those concerned in my thesis. The deepest gratitude I would like to send is to my supervisor, Le Hoang Dung, PhD, who gave me great care, thoughtful and insightful comments in the thesis. He also provided me with invaluable support in the preparation and completion this thesis as well as a wholehearted supervisor. Without his enthusiastic guidance and constructive critical questions, I could not have finished my study.
I specially thank my colleagues at the UTC2 for helping me with the assessment as well as sharing the happiness and difficulties with me during the study. I am also grateful to my TESOL7 classmates, who helped and supported me with the willingness and encouragement. Last but not least, my special thanks go to my family and my husband, Nguyen The Hung. I could never overcome the difficulties facing my life without their endless love.
ii ABSTRACT Recently, English has been recognized as a bridge to enhance mutual understanding and relationships among countries. Hence, there have been great efforts of schools as well as universities so as to enforce speaking English of students. As mentioned, storytelling has been considered as a teaching method that has the capacity to contribute to the enhancement of English speaking performance. Therefore, the 6-week quasi experimental study on storytelling was conducted to 38 students at the University of Transport and Communications – Campus 2 in order to investigate the effects of storytelling in learning speaking English.
Subsequent to this, learners‟ attitudes toward learning English with storytelling was found out. In this study, the majority of the students supported the use of storytelling as the best way of learning English performance as well as showed their positive attitude after the treatment, as detected by the tests, questionnaire and interview. From the research findings, several further studies as well as suggestions for teachers were made in the hope of improving the teaching and learning English performance quality in Vietnam University. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Statement of authorship.
iii Table of contents. iv List of tables and diagrams. viii List of abbreviations .1 Background of the study.2 Statement of problem .1 Aims of the study .3 Significance of the study .4 Scope of the study .5 Organization of the thesis. 5 Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .1 The nature of speaking .1 Definition of speaking .2 Components of speaking .2 Effective ways of teaching speaking .1 Considerable factors in teaching speaking.2 Knowledge of language.2 Principles of teaching speaking .3 Criteria of assessment for speaking performance .2 Characteristics of storytelling in teaching speaking .3 Types of story .4 Related studies to using storytelling in learning speaking English .1 Benefits of using storytelling in learning speaking English .2 Drawbacks of using storytelling learning speaking English .5 Hypotheses of the study .4 Lesson plans design .2 Lesson plan samples .1 Questionnaire structure for piloting .5 Data collection procedure.
50 Chapter 4 DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION .1 Non-parametric analysis of Experimental Group in Pre test and Post test .2 Questionnaire data analysis .1 Students‟ background information.2 Students‟ interest towards using storytelling in learning oral performance .3 Students‟ stimulation of imagination of storytelling .4 Students‟ encouragement of emotional development .5 Students‟ enrichment of linguistic knowledge .6 Students‟ motivation and confidence .7 Students‟ reflection upon stories‟ meanings .8 Students‟ improvement of memory .9 Balance between English and Vietnamese .0 Suitability of story.1 Students‟ suggestions of using storytelling in the class .3 Analysis of interview answers .4 Discussion of results .1 Students‟ speaking performance improvement .2 Students‟ attitudes towards learning speaking English with storytelling .5 Summary of findings .1 Main conclusions of the study .2 Suggestions for teachers .3 Limitations of the study .4 Recommendations for the study. 91 APPENDIX 1 PRE-ORAL TEST. 97 APPENDIX 4 INTERVIEW QUESTIONS .101 APPENDIX 5 A SAMPLE OF LESSON PLAN 1 .103 APPENDIX 6 A SAMPLE OF LESSON PLAN 2 .105 APPENDIX 7 A SAMPLE OF LESSON PLAN 3 .106 APPENDIX 8 A SAMPLE OF LESSON PLAN 4 .108 APPENDIX 9 GUIDE FOR LESSON PLANS TO A2 – LEVEL PARTICIPANTS .110 APPENDIX 10 MATERIALS FOR LESSON PLANS .112 APPENDIX 11 PRE TEST AND POST TEST RESULTS .115 APPENDIX 12 INTERVIEW REPORT. 116 vii LIST OF TABLES AND DIAGRAMS Table 1 The Criteria for the oral tests (1) .14 Table 2 The Criteria for oral tests (2) .16 Table 3 Benefits and drawbacks of storytelling .24 Table 4 The distribution of the EG .33 Table 5 Summary of adaptable lesson plans .36 Table 6 The Criteria for the oral tests .40 Table 7 Questionnaire items.44 Table 8 The brief summary of study procedure .48 Table 9 Descriptive statistics for Experimental Group in Pre test and Post test.51 Table 10 Descriptive statistics of aspects in Pre test and Post test .52 Table 11 Pre test and Post test of Normality .52 Table 12 Means of Paired Samples Statistics .52 Table 13 Paired Samples Correlations .53 Table 14 Paired Difference .53 Table 15 Pre test and Post test aspects of Normality .54 Table 16 Ranks of Pre test and Post test aspects.54 Table 17 Test Statisticsa .55 Table 18 Participants‟ gender.57 Table 19 Participants‟ age .57 Table 20 Participants‟ English learning time .57 Table 21 Students‟ interest towards using storytelling in learning oral performance .58 Table 22 Students‟ response to the stimulation of imagination of storytelling .59 Table 23 Students‟ response to the encouragement of emotional development .60 Table 24 Students‟ response to the enrichment of linguistic knowledge.61 Table 25 Students‟ response to the motivation and confidence .64 Table 26 Students‟ reflection upon stories‟ meanings .65 viii Table 27 Students‟ improvement of memory .66 Table 28 Balance between English and Vietnamese .67 Table 29 Suitability of story.68 Table 30 Students‟ response to their suggestions .69 Table 31 General and comprehensive view of findings .75 Table 32 Summary of agreement on questions H31 to J40 .83 Diagram 1 Overview of storytelling .25 Diagram 2 The procedure of study .50 ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ASR: Absolute Sound Recorder CEFR: Common European Framework of Reference EFL: English as a Foreign Language EG: Experimental Group ESP: English for Specific Purpose ESL: English as a Second Language KET: Key English Test SD: Standard Deviation SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences UTC2: University of Transport and Communications – Campus 2 x Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study Nowadays, with the tendency of globalization and world integration, nations all over the world have many opportunities to co-operate with one another in many fields.
In this context, an international language is required. Therefore, the role of English becomes more and more important, as it is a bridge to enhance mutual understandings and relationships among countries. In Vietnam, English has become a compulsory subject in all schools and universities to “provide students with a new tool of communication to absorb scientific knowledge, advanced technology and diversified cultures in the world for the world facilitation of the globalization” (Le, 2008). In the case, it is really essential for learners to develop four skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing.
However, in Vietnamese educational context, the reality of teaching and learning English is problematic. According to Tran (2005) in the article “Factors affecting teaching and learning English in Vietnamese universities” published by Vietnam National University – Hanoi, she defined several problems affecting English language teaching and learning in Vietnam in terms of too large class size, lack of authentic context for language study, traditional form-focused instruction rather than interactive teaching approaches and low English levels of the majority students when entering university. Because of such reasons, the ability of communicating in English of students is very low, even in simple English sentences. According to Nunan et al (2003) (cited in the article in Tran 2005), the proficiency of English of the majority of university students is currently disappointing although there have been great efforts of universities in terms of increasing the qualifications of teachers of English, applying new teaching methods as well as supporting from foreigners.
The fact leading to students‟ difficulty in learning to speak English is that English is rarely used outside the classroom. In addition, in Vietnam, teaching English communicatively has been ignored mostly in their real-world classrooms. Instead, they spend most of their lesson time explaining abstract grammar rules and 1 guiding their students in choral readings (Le, 2002). In the article by Anh (2012), she mentioned one of the causes of the problem was teaching and learning English in Vietnam which emphasized traditional pedagogy, the acquisition of grammar, vocabulary rather than communicative competence”.
Apart from the positive factors affecting teaching quality, in the article by Hong et all (2015), they admitted the factors negatively affect quality of teaching in terms of insufficient time for English subjects; lack of speaking component in tests and examinations; unequal students‟ English abilities; large class sizes; limited support from university leaders; and students‟ limited efforts and motivation. The students, therefore, receive limited target language input as well as limited language learning time. Some students showed that they did not like the teaching method used by their teachers during their speaking classes, which is a factor leading to their reluctance or refusal from joining to speak English in class. Based on the problems mentioned above, in teaching English as a foreign language, the English teachers are required to apply the effective teaching techniques that have more progressive and dynamic approaches in teaching and learning process to bring the students‟ motivation in learning to speak English.
That is, the teacher is strongly expected to provide meaningful input, appropriate communicative teaching methods, and authentic materials to develop learners‟ communicative competence in the target language in specific contexts. These techniques also help the English teachers in achieving the goals for language teaching, especially teaching speaking. Also, the author read numerous studies about using storytelling to improve students‟ speaking performance and she discovered that storytelling techniques were used very effectively in helping students improve their speaking performance. As proved by Rachmawaty & Hermagustiana (2010), it is clearly seen that telling stories is one of the recommended techniques which can help language learners in improving his knowledge of vocabulary, grammatical structures, and pronunciation.
Apart from all of the benefits of storytelling clearly mentioned in chapter 2, several studies showed 2 that storytelling did not help too much in improving students‟ English speaking. In addition, the author has not applied storytelling technique in her teaching before. Hopefully, she decided to explore effects of storytelling in enhancing students‟ speaking in order to fullfill her aims as well as her hypothesis which will be set up as follows. Moreover, teaching English non-majored students for the second semester for two different classes for the academic year 2015 at the University of Transport and Communications – Campus 2 (UTC2) as well as the observations in other teachers‟ classes, the author recognized that almost all teachers spent most of their time explaining about the language, translating word by word in the textbook, giving written tasks, and asking the students to look for the meaning of new words.
Most teachers used the traditional methods in teaching the students how to speak English at UTC2 in general.