Rationale: Throughout the world, English has become necessary for a lot of people in different social positions. It is regarded as the link between people and people, countries and countries. Indeed, it is considered the most common means of communication in the world today. Realizing that English plays an important role in the development of the country, Vietnam like any other countries, has paid much attention to the popularity of teaching English to its people.
The economic open-door policy in Vietnam has offered new conditions for the flourishment of foreign languages in general and of English in particular within its borders. To keep pace with neighboring countries in the process of cooperation and development, Vietnamese government has considered English as a key to open the door to the whole world. In Vietnam, English has become one of the compulsory subjects in all stages of education from primary schools to secondary schools, universities and greater efforts have been made to search for better teaching and learning methods. A number of methods and techniques have recently been applied to the teaching of English in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning English.
The Communicative Approach has proved its superity through communicative activities: more languages are used and student's initiatives and active involvement are developed. It can be said that the CA is designed to change the traditional way of presenting and practicing language and helps to shift the teacher-led class culture to the student-centered classroom atmosphere. Although there have been considerable changes in language teaching in college, the dominant way of teaching, unfortunately, seems not to follow the Communicative Approach. Thanh (2008) has found that less than 51.7% of the Vietnamese non-English graduates at tertiary level do not meet the demand for English language skills.
This 1 evidence shows a disappointing reality dominant in Vietnam at the present time: university and college graduates may be very good at grammar, but always feel embarrassed and confused in using English to communicate in daily situations. They do not know when and how to use the appropriate language forms in particular circumstances. In short, their mastery of the structure of English is good but they do not have the same mastery of socio-linguistics rules of appropriateness. This reality is the consequence of the traditional way of teaching and learning in most Vietnamese non-English tertiary classes.
Secondly, at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques, the demand of teaching and learning English is not only for conforming to the national policy but also for satisfying practical requirements. In recent years, the Government has paid more attention to invest in and develop economy in Nghe An. Many projects and industrial zones are set up, which attracts a mass of foreign investors. They rush into applying for studying at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques with the hope that they can get a job more easily.
Besides learning their specialized subjects, these students also focus on developing English competence. They are expected to have not only General English but also ESP to communicate effectively with their boss and partners or to read materials. Therefore, teaching English at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques aims to meet the requirements of Administrators, students’ expectations as well as regional economic and social development. Nghe An college of economics and techniques is not an exception to the above situation of non-English tertiary programs.
To many teachers in this college, communicative activities are still very unfamiliar. They only teach their students' speaking skills based mainly on the text book through mechanical drills. Teachers still place a great emphasis on teaching language knowledge such as grammar, vocabulary, and phonology but not on teaching language use. Although most of teachers 2 acknowledge the usefulness of information gap activities in teaching speaking but the number of them who has applied these activities is very small.
If the proposition of CA is that learning a language is learning how to use the language to communicate successfully, mastering a language is not only the ability to remember the knowledge such as structures, grammar but also the ability to apply it in real life communication. Therefore, the teaching methods must focus on both linguistic competence and communicative competence. That is the way CA deals with language teaching. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) proposes that the goal of language teaching is learner’s ability to communicate.
All classroom activities should be reflecting as much real life communication as possible. “Speaking in a second or foreign language has been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills". Bailey and Savage suggest that speaking is an activity requiring the integration of many subsystems as these factors continue to make speaking a second language a formidable task for language learners etc.yet for many people, speaking is seen as the central skill. Nunan (1991:39) states that to most people “Mastering the art of speaking is the single most important aspects of learning a second or foreign language”.
For that reason, the author would like to carry out this particular study to help teachers to develop their students’ speaking skills. All students at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques come from different backgrounds. Most of them come from the mountainous districts of Nghe An such as Thanh chuong, Quy hop, Nghia Dan. Some of them have already learnt other foreign languages such as French or Russian.
According to the recent result of the speaking test of level A for the first year students, 40% of participants have 5 marks, 25% get 6 marks. Only 3% get 7 marks. This is a disappointing result for speaking skills. 3 In addition, most of the teachers made complaints about the big size of class and constrained time of the course.
Tu (personal communication, April 20, 2010) said” we only have 75 periods for 14 units and mid test so it is too difficult to teach speaking skills.” Moreover, most classes at Nghe An college of economics and techniques have an average class size of between 60 and 80 students. Most teachers cannot use information gap activities in teaching speaking skills. There are many communicative activities which are used in class to develop students’ speaking skills. Among them, information gap activities are very efficient and useful.
The information gap activities have played a very important role in the communicative language teaching in recent years. ”Information gap is an ingredient in most real life communication” (Hammer 1989: 95). The use of information gap activities in teaching provides an opportunity for intensive language practice, offers a context in which language is meaningfully used as a means to an end and acts as a tool for the teachers. Information gap exercises can create communication.
That is why information gap exercises seem to be the most useful and effective tool for the teacher to bring feature of real life communication into classroom context. As a teacher at the Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques, the researcher observes that using information gap activities, is in fact not an easy task for those language teachers who are on the point of applying a new way of teaching different from their traditional one. The use of information gap activities in speaking classes and their effectiveness have been of great concern for practitioners in Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques. The first year students at Nghe An college of Economics and Techniques have a basic knowledge of English.
The knowledge at this stage is the foundation for learning ESP and professional development. Therefore, the improvements in teaching and learning English in general and in this stage in particular are urgent and necessary. 4 As a teacher of English for 4 years, I find it quite essential to have more insights into the effective teaching strategies used by the teachers in Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques that may help the English teachers of our school to make the teaching and learning process more effective and practical in this particular context through the use of information gap activities. The knowledge of this study could provide teachers of English with a lot of ideas of how to choose appropriate teaching methods and helps students become more efficient and successful.
For the reasons above, I have decided to choose the topic “An investigation into how information gap activities can be used to teach speaking to first year students at Nghe An college of economics and techniques “as the study of my proposal. Aims of the study: - To gain an insight into how information gap activities are used in teaching the speaking skills at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques. - To clarify the teachers and students' opinion on information gap activities in teaching the speaking skills to first year students at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques. - To find out the students’ and teachers' difficulties in using information gap activities in speaking class.
- To provide some practical teaching implications as well as professional advice on improving quality of using information gap activities in speaking class. Scope of the study: For speaking skills are important to all learners of English at all levels, and each level has its own characteristics that require the teachers to apply different methods in teaching, it is impossible for the author to conduct a research on all levels. The scope of my study is limited to the application of information gap activities to improve the speaking ability for the first year students effectively at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques. Research questions: In order to fulfill the objectives, the study will be conducted to address the following questions: 1.
What are students and teachers’ attitudes and beliefs towards the use of information gap activities to teach speaking to the first year students at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques? 2. In what ways do teachers use information gap activities to teach speaking to the first year students at Nghe An college of Economics and Techniques? 3. What are the difficulties faced by teachers in the use of the information gap activities to teaching speaking to first year students at Nghe An College of Economics and Techniques?. What are some suggestions to enhance the practice of information gap activities? 1.
Significance of the study: The four research questions raised are worth studying for the following reasons: The findings will indicate the importance of information gap activities and its roles in developing speaking skills and communicative competence. The findings will indicate the problems facing teachers in using information gap activities. From these findings, some suggestions are made for teachers as regards the real situation of using information gap activities in teaching speaking. Design of the study; The thesis includes five chapters Chapter one: Introduction Chapter two: Literature review Chapter three: Methodology Chapter four: Findings and discussion Chapter five: Conclusion and Implications 6 Chapter II: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.
Definition and nature of communication Communication between human being is an extremely complex and ever changing phenomenon and it is impossible to examine all variables that are involved. Communication process is defined in many ways. Sandral and Weaver (1992:5) clearly indicate that, “ Communication is any process in which people share information, ideas and feeling that involve not only the spoken and written words but also body language, personal mannerism and style, the surrounding anything that adds meaning to a message.” Richards & Platt & Weber (1985:48) defined communication as “ the exchange of ideas, information, between two or more persons.” Communication "is understood as the exchange and negotiation of information between at least two individuals through the use of verbal or non verbal symbols and written/visual modes” ( Richards and Schmidt 1983:4). Almost methodologists, especially, theorists of Communicative Approach have taken these above mentioned characteristics into consideration.
Many communicative activities have been efficiently designed for practicing speaking skills in language learning and teaching.