MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY ------ 00O00------ PHAM THI TH1EN THU EFL STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE IMPACT OF SHADOWING ON SPEAKING SKILLS Major: Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages Major code: 8 14 0111 MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL Supervisor: LE THI THUY NHUNG, 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 ĐẠĨ HỌC GIẤY XÁC NHẬN Tôi tên là: PHẠM THỊ THIÊN THƯ Ngày sinh: 29/11/1982 Nơi sinh: Phú Yên Chuyên ngành: TESOL, khóa 17 Mã học viên: 1781401110046 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 phổ Hồ Chí Minh. Ký tên Phạm Thị Thiên Thư CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Độc lập - Tự do - Hạnh phúc Ý KIÉN CHO PHÉP BẢO VỆ LUẬN VĂN THẠC sĩ CỦA GIẢNG VIÊN HƯỚNG DẪN Giảng viên hướng dẫn: TS.
LÊ THỊ THÙY NHƯNG Học viên thực hiện: PHẠM THỊ THIÊN THƯ Lớp: MTESOLO17A Ngày sinh: 29/11/1982 Nơi sinh: Phú Yên Tên đề tài: EFL students’ perceptions of the impact of shadowing on speaking skills Ý kiến của giáo viên hướng dẫn về việc cho phép học viên. được bảo vệ luận văn trước Hội đồng:. Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, ngày. năm 2022 Người nhận xét STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I confirm that my thesis, "EFL Students' Perceptions of the Impact of Shadowing on Speaking Skills," is all my own work.
All of the resources utilized in the thesis were documented. The work was not presented to Ho Chi Minh city Open University or anywhere else. Ho Chi Minh. Jun 18”\ 2022 —“2^x2 Pham Thi Thien Thu acknowledgements 1 would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor Dr.e Thi Thuy Nhung who was continuously giving me constructive feedback to help me improve my thesis writing.
Because of her support and direction. I became a better researcher. Lc Thi Thuy Nhung sparked my interest in investigating student's perceptions of the impact of shadowing on speaking skills. She also provided me with clear instructions on how to complete the thesis.
In the TESOL program. I am so thankful to the entire Graduate School of Ho Chi Minh City Open University for their support. I owe a debt of gratitude to the entire English faculty of Ho Chi Minh University of Transport for offering me to be a guest lecturer. They offered me a lot of freedom in teaching, so I could be creative with my methodology.
I would like to thank all of my hard-working students who took the time to complete my survey and interview. In my trip, my buddies play an important part. I would like to express my appreciation to all of the MTESOL017 members who joined me on this remarkable learning journey. I tally appreciate all my lovely friends who urged me to keep going with my writing.
I am so grateful to my family for their love and sharing. During my time in graduate school, my parents, siblings, mother-in-law. and especially my beloved husband and sons had been extremely supportive and loving. Their passionate, far- reaching love travels across oceans.
II ABSTRACT Shadowing has been known as a technique that can benefit ESL and EFL teachers and learners by potentially assisting in the development of speaking, reading, and listening at the same time. However, few studies have mentioned students' psychology of impact of shadowing on speaking. This research was aimed to examine students' perceptions of the impact of shadowing on speaking skills and their perceptions of the challenges and benefits of practicing shadowing in speaking classes. The participants were thirty-two non-English major students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Transport.
The mixed method employed was the combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. A quasi-expcriment design and structured interview were conducted in the study. After the experiment was carried out for 8 weeks, a questionnaire survey was completed by the students, and then the collected data were analyzed to examine their perceptions. To further explain the results of the questionnaire and to gain more insights of students' perceptions on the impact of shadowing on speaking skills, structured interviews were employed.
The result showed Vietnamese adult learners perceived shadowing as a helpful technique to improve their speaking skills. The benefits of shadowing were identified to develop their grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and fluency in speaking skills and reduce their anxiety of speaking. The results also showed learners were excited about shadowing like a new technique with their personal experiences of practice of shadowing. The difficulties of applying shadowing were time consumption and students less focus on intonation.
Thus, this study also suggested that students should practice shadowing more frequently and should pay more attention on the intonation as intonation is the key factor to increase their pronunciation. Based on the findings of the study, some implications were developed in order to increase students' speaking skills.2 the second language F.FL English as a Foreign Language ESL English as a Second Language TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages CEFR Common European Framework of Reference for Languages ESOL English for speakers of other languages SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences SD Standard Deviation M Mean iv LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 The categories and the items in the questionnaire.2 The categories and the items in the interview.1: Background information about the participants in the survey.2 Cronbach’s alpha of the benefits of shadowing scale (8 items).3 Cronbach’s alpha of the benefits of shadowing scale (7 items).4 Number of items and internal consistency of the sub-scales.5 Descriptive Statistics of the impact of shadowing on pronunciation.6 Descriptive Statistics of the impact of shadowing on grammar and vocabulary.7 Descriptive Statistics of the impact of shadowing on fluency.8 Descriptive Statistics of the benefits of practice of shadowing in speaking classes 45 Table 4.9 Descriptive Statistics of the challenges of practice of shadowing in speaking classes 46 Table 4.10 Background information about the groups ill the interview. 47 V TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. iv LIST OF TABLES.
V TABLE OF CONTENTS. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.1 Background of the study.2 Questions of the study.3 Scope of the study.4 Significance of the study.5 Structure of the thesis.5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.1 Definition of speaking.2 Components of speaking.1 Definition of shadowing.2 Benefits in using shadowing.2 Challenges in using shadowing.4 Review of previous research.1 Studies on the procedure of shadowing in teaching approaches:.2 Studies on the effectiveness of shadowing assisting students' speaking skills:.3 Studies on the influence of shadowing on students' psychology:.4 4 Studies on shadowing in Vietnamese context.3 Theoretical framework of the study.5 Data collection procedures.6 Reliability and Validity of theInstruments.34 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.1 Findings from the questionnaire:.1 Participants' background information and their experience of shadowing.2 Reliability of the instruments.3 Findings for Research question 1: What arc students' perceptions of the impacts of'Shadowing on their speaking skills'.1 The impacts of shadowing on pronunciation.2 The impacts of shadowing on grammar and vocabulary.3 The impacts of shadowing on fluency.4 Findings for Research question 2: What are the students' perceptions of the benefits and challenges of practice of shadowing in speaking classes'?.1 The benefits of practice of shadowing in speaking classes.2 The challenges of practice of shadowing in speaking classes.2 Findings from the interview'.1 Discussion on the findings of Research Question 1.2 Discussion on the findingsof Research Question 2. 50 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION, IMPLICATIONS LIMITATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS. Limitations anil recommendations.
A sample of structured student interview script. Objectives of each unit in the sy llabus. Shadowing exercises from third edition Solutions - pre-intermediate. Training of shadowing procedures.
Shadowing Tasks’ Teaching Plan. Some screenshots of the online version of the questionnaire. Some screenshots of the online version of the questionnaire responses. Some pictures of shadow ing practice in online meetings.
90 VÌÍÌ CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION The first chapter, introdustion. gives a general overview of the research. It begins by describing the study's context, from which the study's rationale develops. It then moves on to the presentation of the objectives as well as research questions.
The presentation of the significance of the study is followed by the presentation study scope. The chapter ends with a brief description of the structure of the thesis. The subject of how to acquire effective speaking skills in English is one of the most persistent concerns of all English learners who struggle to improve their speaking skills. English speaking is not a simple task since many essential elements such as pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary should be understood by interlocutors.
In order to interact efficiently with other individuals, learners should have adequate English speaking skills. In fact, effective English-speaking skills may be developed by hard work and attention to the speaking process. One of the most crucial abilities that teachers foster in their students is the ability to speak effectively. To accomplish this goal, teachers must update their teaching methods.
In reality, the advancement of information technology has had a significant impact on teaching and learning approaches. Good speaking in English is vital for anyone working with individuals or organizations, as well as for advancing in their careers and landing good jobs in a variety of businesses. Therefore, learners need to study well to achieve clear and efficient speaking skills. However, the researchers discover that the students had a variety of communication challenges.
Students lack adequate English foundation or prior knowledge, particularly in theoretical terms. English is quite hard and has a lot of rules, especially when it comes to sentence formation. Students struggle with linguistic information such words, grammatical structures, pronunciation, and accent, as well as context knowledge. Shadowing allows learners to recognize not only phoneme perception but also key words, which help them pay attention to the lesson more deeply.
When learners shadow content words or keywords, shadowing can help learners to improve their vocabulary. In normal shadowing, semantic and syntactic analyses of what learners heard are less likely 1 to occur, but in selective shadowing, these analyses must occur for learners to perform selective shadowing successfully (Murphey. The shadowing approach has increasingly been recognized around the world. Several studies have been carried out, and the findings of the studies that arc recommended to use in language teaching.
Recently, shadowing has gained popularity in many countries as the approach for enhancing speaking skills for second language learners (Hamada. Shadowing is considered as a useful technique in teaching and learning speaking skills such as pronunciation and fluency development (Foote & McDonough. The stated issues in teaching and learning speaking and benefits of shadow ing in speaking suggest that shadowing should be included in the training of speaking skills. These occurrences pose some concerns for the researcher to examine learners' perceptions of the impact of shadowing on spoken English as well as their awareness of the value and struggles of implementing shadowing in speaking classes.
Shadowing is one of the various tactics for teaching speaking that can be employed to tackle the students' challenge of learning to speak. Some studies related to the effects of shadowing on learners' speaking will be presented in the next sessions.1 Background of the study The topic of encouraging shadowing in education in general, and language learning speaking in particular, has stimulated the interest of researchers, practitioners, and educators. Shadowing is primarily viewed as a technique that allows students to benefit from the learning approaches (Hamada, 2019). The student is regarded as a decision maker who possesses or will acquire the ability to choose to construct what is required for the activity in question utilizing available tools.