ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, the authors would like to express the sincere thanks of gratitude to our research supervisor, Ms. Hoang Van Trang who has always offered us enthusiastic support, guidance, comments and compliments as well. Without her wholehearted assistance and encouragements in each step of the research procedure, the study would have never been accomplished. Secondly, the completion of the research could not have been achievable without the dedicating contribution of fourth-year students in Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages and International Studies.
Their devoted participation is the greatest motivation for us to accomplish the study. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to all of them. Last but not least, the researchers also wish to send the indeed gratitude to our classmates, friends and other people who gave us feedbacks, suggestions and cheers in the completion of the study. i ABSTRACT It is beyond a shadow of doubt that teamwork skills are increasingly appreciated in workplace as well as in casual society.
It is now widely acknowledged that the ability to work in a team has become an obligatory prerequisite for any professional occupation. Perceiving that fourth – year students of Faculty of English Language Teacher Education in University of Languages and International Studies are going to be the upcoming major labor forces in the marketplace, the research is conducted to equip the population in specific and students in general necessarily essential skills to outstandingly confront forthcoming job challenges. Based on the actual results and other related materials, the researchers would like to expose the common difficulties of working in a team and to propose some viable recommendation afterwards. Through this research, it is expected that Vietnamese students will take thoughtful consideration of acquiring teamwork skills to boost the job performance as well as open up more avenues of employment.
ii LIST OF PICTURES, CHARTS AND TABLES Picture 1: Informal team _____________________________________________ 9 Picture 2: Traditional team ___________________________________________10 Picture 3: Virtual team______________________________________________ 11 Chart 1: The ideal number of members in a group ________________________22 Chart 2: Common assignment delegation methods________________________24 Chart 3: Common problems when working in a team _____________________ 24 Chart 4: Effective Communication Methods ____________________________ 28 Chart 5: Increasing Engagement Methods ______________________________ 30 Chart 6: Effective Tasks Delegation ___________________________________31 Chart 7: Possibility of confronting same problems in teamwork _____________32 Table 1: Common problems when working in a team _____________________ 24 Table 2: Evaluation of problems effects ________________________________26 Table 3: The important factors to a group success ________________________ 27 Table 4: Characteristics of ideal leaders ________________________________28 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT _____________________________________________________________i ABSTRACT ________________________________________________________________________ ii LIST OF PICTURES, CHARTS AND TABLES __________________________________________iii TABLE OF CONTENTS _____________________________________________________________ iv 1.1 Rationales for the study ___________________________________________________________1 1. Aims of the study ________________________________________________________________2 1. Scope of the study________________________________________________________________3 1. Methods of the study_____________________________________________________________ 4 1.
Design of the study_______________________________________________________________5 2. CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW______________________________________________7 2. Definition of Teamwork__________________________________________________________ 7 2. Types of Teamwork _____________________________________________________________ 8 2.
Self‐directed team ____________________________________________________________10 2. The Importance of Teamwork____________________________________________________11 2. Benefits of Teamwork___________________________________________________________13 2. Difficulties arising in Teamwork__________________________________________________14 2.
Data collection instruments _____________________________________________________ 18 3. Quantitative methods _________________________________________________________18 iv 3. Data collection procedures _____________________________________________________20 3. CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS ________________________________________________22 4.
Students attitudes towards teamwork____________________________________________22 4. The ideal number of members in a group ________________________________________22 4. The preferable members to form a group________________________________________ 23 4. The favorable role in a group _________________________________________________ 23 4.
The relationship between leaders and members ___________________________________23 4. Common assignment delegation methods________________________________________23 4. Common problems when working in a team ______________________________________24 4. Common problems when working in a team______________________________________24 4.
Negative effect evaluation of the problems_______________________________________25 4. Recommendations for teamwork difficulties ______________________________________26 4. Important factors to work thoroughly in a team ___________________________________26 4. Characteristics of ideal leaders ________________________________________________27 4.
Effective Communication Methods_____________________________________________28 4. Responsibility Display Methods_______________________________________________ 29 4. Increasing Engagement Methods_______________________________________________29 4. Effective Tasks Delegation ___________________________________________________30 4.
Potential problem solvers and the solving process _________________________________31 4. Evaluation after assignments__________________________________________________31 5. Findings about students' attitudes towards teamwork _______________________________33 v 5.2 Findings about problems when working in a team _________________________________35 5. Findings about what students often do to solve teamwork problems (solutions suggested by respondents) ____________________________________________________________________37 5.
Suggestions before working in a team__________________________________________39 5. Suggestions during working in a team__________________________________________40 5. Suggestions after working in a team ___________________________________________41 5. Limitation of the study_______________________________________________________ 42 5.
Recommendations for further stud_____________________________________________ 43 APPENDIX ____________________________________________________________________44 Survey Questionnaire REFERENCES _________________________________________________________________50 vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In recent modern society, teamwork skills have become a necessary proficiency as well as essential requirement in workplace and casual society as well. Besides a wide range of researches related to the topic, this is still an alluring issue for further studies. Rationales for the study “Small teams outperform solo geniuses” (James, 2015). While Einstein or Newton does exist, they are exceedingly rare.
In real life, even brilliant people are just more effective and creative when working with others. Teamwork skills hence are becoming indispensable for a person to accomplish life achievements. Acquiring efficient teamwork skills, however, is an undoubtedly strenuous process which is obstructed by numerous obstacles. This research is conducted with the target of figuring out problems and difficulties to which fourth-year Students in Faculty of English Language Teacher Education (FELTE) at University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS) have confronted when working in a team and thenceforth proposing corresponding solutions.
In great detail, the research is undertaken based on the ground of three main reasons. The first reason is determined to be the fact that the prerequisite for working in a team does increase currently, not only among academic milieu but also in a social environment because teamwork has been recognized to be the great solution to accomplish mutual tasks. Teamwork may happen roughly in every single activity, from as simple as cooking to as complicated as doing an intellectual research, all of which highlight the significance of attaining teamwork skills to succeed. This leads to the necessity to find out difficulties in working in a team and corresponding measures to increase the level of proficiency regarding teamwork among the population.
1 Secondly, the research is conducted due to the obligation of working in a team given in undergraduate curriculum. It is currently witnessing the popularity of teamwork becoming a compulsory task in relatively any intellectual courses. Students are required to work in a group for mutual assignments on an excessively regular basis. A substantial number of students are detected to suffer from teamwork failures due to the shortage of teamwork skills such as leadership skills, communication skills, or coordination skills.
To help ULIS students in specific and undergraduate students in general acquire efficient teamwork competencies to enhance academic performance, this research will locate underlying problems causing disruption and obstacles on teamwork as well as corresponding suggestions to assist them on utilizing teamwork in many upper-level courses. The final reason why researchers chose this subject matter is that its results can be in the long term used to optimize one’s teamwork skills in further professional careers. Everyone in the workforce works as a team member at some points in their career (Lawler, Mohrman, Cohen, & Ledford, 1998; Nielsen, Sundstrom, & Halfhill, 2005). Teamwork plays an even more important role in workplaces than it does in schools as from small startups to large corporations, teamwork decreases burnout and increases company's overall productivity.
There observes a high possibility of the fact that a small lack of teamwork skills in professional workplaces can lead to extremely serious consequences. Hence, to properly acquire teamwork skills, this research will be carried out to provide sufficient knowledge and solving methods to teamwork problems to prevent unexpected consequences in professional careers. In brief, the increasing demand for teamwork in life, in academic performance and in professional careers are regarded as three major rationales stimulating the authors to choose the research title; and surmounting difficulties as well as feasible 2 solutions for FELTE students at ULIS in particular and graduates in general to facilitate teamwork competence in any environment is mandatory. Aims of the study Several researches have been carried out on the concept of teamwork.
This research work is not a right derivation from all other works as it focuses on the fourth-year students in FELTE of ULIS to figure out and examine several specific objectives. The research is momentous to identify some background teamwork-related information, which enables the authors to grasp considerable knowledge and even profound understanding of functioning in a team. Secondly, the research will reveal the students’ attitude towards working in a team and reckoning their teamwork efficiency Last but not least, the impacts of working in team among the last year student at FELTE of ULIS especially on negative aspects will be clarified. In other words, the study is to scrutinize underlying problems that FELTE fourth-year students have confronted on a frequent basis and to propose certain excellent suggestions.
Due to these prime objectives, hopefully, the researchers would like to provide a more comprehensive view of teamwork, prevailing issues and feasible solutions in particular in order to encourage teamwork efficiently, and increase academic performance as well as practical soft skills for life. Scope of the study Due to the lack of time to collect the adequate data and in-depth knowledge of the objects on a large scale, the research is conducted on the range of 100 FELTE students from ULIS in the academic year 2014 - 2018. 3 This scope is chosen based on the ground that the population is identified as last- year undergraduates who have four-year experiences in working in groups, hence they possess a deeper understanding about teamwork issues more than the first, second and third-year students. The survey results will be captured accurately and reliably for data analysis.
Moreover, the final-year students are potential members of the upcoming labor forces so enhancing teamwork skills is one of the most critical competencies in their preference to improve and be qualified to the professional career afterward. Accordingly, these are the objects that need to be surveyed, interviewed and investigated so that the paper gives an overview of experiences, benefits, challenges and solutions about the most effective teamwork. Due to these two core reasons, the fourth-year FELTE students at ULIS are utterly promising participants for this subject matter. Methods of the study The research will be defined and analyzed by the method of quantitative in which the data is gathered using structured research instruments to rapidly reach the research aims.
Basically, quantitative research is the systematic empirical investigation of observable phenomena via objective statistical, mathematical or computational techniques. It is to develop and employ mathematical models, theories, and hypotheses pertaining to phenomena. Quantitative research is used to test hypotheses in experiments because of its ability to measure data using statistics in a fast and precise way. Moreover, analyzing the data with the assistance of automatic and precise IT systems will yield unbiased results that can wholly generalize and describe a population which is too large to observe directly.
4 A questionnaire was designed to find out students’ perspectives on teamwork, all their comments and suggestions were noted and assessed. The questionnaire was put online and e-mailed to all the current final-year FELTE students in February 2018. Approximately two minutes is calculated to be enough for participants to complete the survey. The fact that all students were encouraged to answer the questionnaire online is highly convenient and preferable.
Due to the limited time and inadequate facilities, the authors choose the quantitative method to carry out their survey, which makes the results more objective and valid. Hopefully, the accurate and comprehensive data will be acquired, which encourages the researchers to in-depth analyze the information, and then encounter as well as surmount grave difficulties faced by all fourth-year FELTE students at ULIS, VNU in particular and all graduates. Design of the study This research covers five chapters with the main following content: Chapter 1: Introduction: The study’s rationale, aims of the study, the scope of the study, method of the study and design of the study will be covered.
