MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES ======= NGUYỄN HUỲNH LÂM INCREASING STUDENTS’ TALKING TIME IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM A Case Study at Van Lang University A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS (TESOL) SUPERVISOR: NGUYỄN HOÀNG TUẤN, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY - 2006 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: INCREASING STUDENTS’ TALKING TIME IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM A Case Study at Van Lang University in terms of the statement of Requirements for Thesis in Master’s Programs issued by the High Degree Committee. Ho Chi Minh, November 2006 NGUYỄN HUỲNH LÂM i RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, NGUYỄN HUỲNH LÂM, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan or reproduction of theses.
Ho Chi Minh City, November 2006 NGUYỄN HUỲNH LÂM ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr. Nguyễn Hoàng Tuấn, for his valuable assistance, guidance, encouragement and comments during the time of implementing the thesis. Without his help, I could not have finished this thesis. I am greatly indebted to the organizers of the Master course, Dr.
Nguyễn Ngọc Dung, Head of the Department of Post Graduate Studies of Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and humanities and Mr. Nguyễn Huỳnh Đạt, M., Dean of the Department of English Linguistics and Literature, Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and humanities, their staff members, and all my teachers for their dedication and helpful instruction during the course. My sincere thanks to all teachers and students at Van Lang University who were willing to respond to my questionnaires, especially to the teachers who have offered favourable conditions for my thesis data collection. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family and friends for their love, encouragement, understanding and moral support.
iii ABSTRACT Many non-English major students of English at Van Lang University often have obstacles in speaking English after graduation. This makes the teaching of spoken English always challenging to all EFL teachers. The thesis, therefore, is to investigate obstacles and factors for learning speaking skill. In terms of the rationales such as class size, infrastructure, textbooks, etc., it also aims at seeing the consequences of increasing student- talking time through applying the CLT to help non-English major students at VLU overcome their difficulties and at seeking the best teaching methods for balancing STT and TTT to improve learners’ interaction.
In order to achieve these objectives, a survey was carried out and based on the questionnaires delivered to 593 non-English majors and 24 English teachers at this university. Based on the findings of the study, the thesis recommends that the teachers should master: (1) modern teaching techniques to build up students’ self- confidence, (2) applying flexible application of conversational techniques and strategies, (3) classroom management and (4) material selection and modification. It is hoped that the study helps non-English major students overcome their problems and improve the teaching and learning speaking skill at VLU in particular and also for those educational institutions that share the same concerns about increasing students’ talking time. iv ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS ALM: Audiolingual Method CLT: Communicative Language Teaching EFL: English as a Foreign Language ELT: English Language Teaching ESL: English as a Second Language L2: Second Language STT: Student Talking Time (the amount of time that students get to talk within a lesson) TESOL: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages TTT: Teacher Talking Time (the amount of time the teacher talks within the lesson) VLU: Van Lang University / (as in She/He) or v TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY.i RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS .iv ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS .vi Chapter One INTRODUCTION.1 Background to the Study. English teaching in Vietnam. English teaching at Van Lang University. Aim of the study.
Definition of Terminology. Limitation and Delimitation. Overview of the thesis. 8 Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Overview of some teaching methods.
The Grammar-Translation Method. The Direct Method and Audiolingualism. Communicative Language Teaching. Factors affecting English learners’ speaking skills.
Age or maturational constraints. Factors affecting classroom interaction. Influences of the teacher and classroom settings on interaction. Teacher’s influence on students’ interaction.
Peers’ interpersonal trust and its influence on classroom interaction. Promoting classroom interaction through co-operative learning. 24 Chapter Three METHODOLOGY. Subjects of the study.
Characteristics of the subjects. Questionnaire to the students. Questionnaire to the teachers. Data collection procedure.
32 Chapter Four DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS. Students’ responses to the survey questionnaire. Teachers’ responses to the survey questionnaire .2 Discussion of the findings. 58 Chapter Five CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
Techniques to build up students’ self-confidence. Projecting students’ self-esteem. Removing students’ language anxiety. Removing barrier between teacher and students.
Building up students’ motivation. Flexible application of conversational techniques and strategies .1 Conversational techniques and strategies. Application of teaching conversational techniques and strategies in spoken English class. Physical condition of classroom.
Material selection and modification. 85 viii Chapter One INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the Study Increasing students’ talking time (STT) is of paramount importance to develop learner’s proficiency in speaking. In the classroom, little practice is given to increase learner’s interaction; teacher undertakes the speaking task most of time while students sit taking notes. In the Vietnamese context, this issue is of great concern to English teachers.
Unfortunately, there are not many studies on this matter. Even though learners spend a great deal of time learning English they cannot speak the language fluently. Complaints on the learners’ problems are often voiced in the media. This study attempts at finding possible solutions to the above mentioned problem.
A case study at Van Lang University (VLU) is to be conducted in order to contextualize the situation and at the same time, limit the scope of the study. At VLU, a non-major student is required to study at least 210 periods of English during the four years at the university, but after graduation not many of them can use English effectively, even the English majors cannot speak English fluently. The question is whether students have favorable conditions when learning speaking skills and whether teachers of English at VLU have enough time in teaching, particularly those who are in charge of the subject. In order to answer the above question the writer would like to mention briefly the role of English teaching in Vietnam in recent years, and particularly, at VLU.
English teaching in Vietnam Foreign languages have been taught in Vietnam for a very long time and foreign language teaching can be divided into three periods. Before 1954, French 1 was taught in most schools and all tertiary institutions in Vietnam. All educated people tried to have a good command of French because it was a prerequisite to employment and promotion. English was then, taught only in a few schools for children of privileged families and only the grammar-translation teaching method was applied (Tran, 2004).
After the liberation in 1954, Vietnamese replaced French and became the medium of education at all levels of education throughout the country. However, in secondary and high schools, Russian and Chinese were introduced. Some years later, English and French were taught in the Teacher Training College and the Hanoi Foreign Languages College. It was in 1971 that English became widespread in schools, colleges and universities in the North.
In the South of Vietnam, English was the most important and popular foreign language. The grammar-translation method remained the predominant method in foreign language teaching in the North, while in the South, the direct method and audio-lingual method were used instead. Since 1975, the year of the reunification of the country, foreign languages have been a compulsory subject in most schools, and the large proportion of this has been the English language. In the 1980s learning English received a serious setback when the number of learners of Russian increased incredibly.
From the end of the 1980s until now, however, English has been studied throughout the country with an increasing number of learners, in diversified forms and levels of training. In recent years, the impact of foreign languages, especially the emergence of English, has contributed to the development in many aspects of Vietnamese society. It is due to an ever greater influx of foreign investment that more and more government officials, scientists, specialists and tourists come to our country every year. As a result, more and more people desire to learn English for various reasons.
Further, a lot of Vietnamese go to English speaking countries for international conferences, formal visits, study tours and further education. 2 Therefore, people with English proficiency in general and qualified teachers and interpreters in English in particular are in great demand (Tran, 1004). In addition to this needs, English is also the key to gain access to the modern scientific and technological achievements in a developing country like Vietnam. English has occupied so imperative a position that even who have no opportunity to go abroad or to get in touch with native speakers of English in Vietnam are eager to learn English.
The great English learning demand of society to communicate is undeniable, but to say exactly what teaching method is most practised now, particularly in teaching speaking skills, is very difficult as the method utilized are various and different from teachers to teachers, form places to places. Many older teachers go on teaching speaking skills in the way they were taught at colleges many years ago. In their speaking classes, the teachers are the actors, and their students are the audience. The teachers talks and talks most of the time and students do some writing, reading and a little speaking.
Some others apply only one method for all language skills without considering whether it is suitable for their students or not. They often give their students grammar structure rules, ask them to learn by heart some conversations and then practise them in pairs or groups in the form of drills. Others become aware of the ineffectiveness of their method and of the importance of new language teaching methods, but without many chances to approach the principles and guidance of the new method, their efforts to put them into practice effectively are often unsuccessful (Tran, 2004). Fortunately, during the past few years, many teachers of English have been given scholarships for teacher training courses in the United States of America, Australia and Great Britain.
And a great number of teachers of English are taking M. courses in TESOL at some state universities or foreign universities in the country. These courses are of great value for them and enable them to improve their knowledge of both English language and teaching methodology. In addition to that, up-to-date materials and modern language laboratory equipment have been 3 sent to Vietnam under different international projects to help teachers put their knowledge gained from the courses to successful and practical use.
However, how to spread their knowledge, adjust the approaches, and use new materials properly in the Vietnamese context is not a simple job. Only a few researches of this field have been done and they are not widespread so far. English teaching at Van Lang University This section gives a brief description of VLU, and its non-English majors’ curriculum framework, allocation of the four learning skills, the main textbooks and syllabus.