THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES TRAN THI BINH APPLYING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS FOR STUDENTS AT LE HONG PHONG HIGH SCHOOL via PBL (Ứng dụng công nghệ thông tin trong đề án học tập để dạy kĩ năng nói học sinh trường THPT Lê Hồng Phong) M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220202 THAI NGUYEN – 2018 Acknowledgement In completion of my thesis, I have received generous advice and help from many lecturers whose lectures are very practical and useful. Firstly, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisors Dr. Hoang Thi Ngoc Diem and Dr. Nguyen Thi Minh Loan from School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University for her close guidance, criticism, and her generous help in the process of completing my thesis.
My special thanks also go to all lecturers and the staff of the Schools of Foreign Languages for their useful materials, guidance and enthusiasm during my course of study. I really wish to thank all my colleagues and my students at Le Hong Phong High school for their kind cooperation in giving valuable information. Finally, I owe my deep thanks to my dear family, specially my husband, my little children and my friends who always stand for me with their consideration and encouragement. Abstract This research was conducted to the eleventh grade students and EFL teachers of Le Hong Phong high school, Pho Yen Town, Thai Nguyen province in academic year 2017-2018.
The aim of this research was to find out how well the use of Project-based learning with the help of m-learning in improving students’ speaking skill, the trend in ICT use of the EFL teachers and attitude and motivation in learning foreign language. In conducting this research, the writer designed an experimental study that pursues to boost the students’ speaking competences. Before drawing the experiment, ten EFL teachers and both groups were carried out questionnaires to measure both the teachers’ trend in use of ICT and attitude and motivation towards learning English. The findings of this research showed that there was an improvement on students’ speaking skill through project-based learning with Aurasma app particularly in accuracy and fluency.
The results of this study suggest that the EFL teachers seemed to be aware of the benefits of ICT to their classroom instruction of the English language. They also indicated that their beliefs about ICT benefits had the biggest impact on their ICT use. Moreover, the EFL students’ English language competence improved significantly in almost all area of their speaking competence after the implementation of the PBL lesson plan with the help of m-learning. The control group only showed improvements in grammar and vocabulary because their curriculum focused mainly on those areas.
The experimental group showed positive changes in their attitudes and motivation towards learning English after the PBL lesson plan, while control group’s attitudes and motivation remained unchanged. The importance of having competence in English is well-recognized. However, high school students’ speaking level entails not only the speaking competence but competency in reading, writing and listening as well. Therefore, future studies should explore effectiveness of PBL in developing students’ reading, writing and listening skills with the help of m-learning.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION. Rationale for the study. Aims of the study. Significance of the paper.
Scope of the study .5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Influence of traditional pedagogy on language education. Role of teachers. Roles of examinations.
Roles of textbooks. Students in classroom. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Traditional language teaching methods.
Communicative Language Teaching in the current school system. English speaking skill. Speaking sub- competence. The importance of acquiring speaking skill.
Ways of developing speaking skill. Characteristics of a successful English speaking classroom. Project Based Learning (PBL). Definition of PBL.
Benefits of PBL in English speaking classroom. Mobile technology to support speaking skill. 28 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Data collection instruments.
Pre-test and post-test. Data collection procedure. Pre-test and post-test analysis. 38 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION.2 Pre-test result.
Post-test result. Pre-test and post-test comparison. Results after using PBL with m-learning. Comparisons of attitudes and motivation levels .Attitudes and motivation in the experimental group after the treatment.
The same level speaking competence of the control and experimental groups. Improvement after implementing the PBL lesson plan. Progress on attitudes and motivation after the intervention. 50 CHAPTER 5: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION.
Limitation and suggestion for further research. 54 References Appendixes List of tables Table 1 Frequency of Use of ICT Page 40 List of Figures Figure 1 The mean pre-test scores of overall speaking competences Page 41 and sub-competences of control group and experimental group Figure 2 The mean post-test score of the control group and experimental group Page in overall speaking and sub-competences 43 List of abbreviations AR Augmented Reality EFL English as a Foreign Language CLT Communication Language Teaching ICT Information and Communication Technology IT Information Technology m-learning Mobile- learning MoET Ministry of Education and Training PBL Project- Based Learning Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study English is one of the most common languages in the world, and the most popular second language of study in Vietnam (Crystal, 2012). A chain of economic reforms in 1986 and 1993 have been creating a flow in the number of people learning English (Tri, 2001).
Following Vietnam becoming a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1995 and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2006, many foreigners and investors launched business in Vietnam. Vietnam has seen rapidly economic development and an explosion in commercial cooperation, technology advancement and culture exchanges with other part of the world. This has given a rise to a pressing demand for English proficiency (Le, 2005). The recent development in the country, together with increased globalisation, has created more career opportunities for the Vietnamese people.
Needless to say the needs of Vietnamese people to use English in their work and daily lives have been dramatically increasing. Therefore, teaching and learning English have a vital role in raising the English competence. However, Vietnamese students especially in the schools in rural areas have difficulties in learning and practising speaking skill because of limited access to authentic materials, out of date teaching methods and over- sized classes with multi- level. Consequently, the so- called “deaf and dumb English” users are ironically referred to many learner generations with in complete English competence.
Another reason for the inconsistencies between the numbers of the expected and actual fluent English speakers in the country might be due to the teacher- centred model of teaching and the ways that Vietnamese students study and are evaluated. In this model, the focus is on the teacher only, while the students sit quietly and listen as the teacher instructs the whole class. The teacher’s responsibility is observed as being the contents delivery, where as the students’ role is swallowing the content (Pratt et al. Furthermore, Vietnamese students believe that learning is memorizing books or information provided by teachers in class (Kennedy, 2002).
The teacher is usually the 1 sole source of verbal English input for the students. Thus, the students normally do not participate in classroom activities, are unwilling to give answers or ask questions and are reliant on the teacher (Braddock et al. The teacher- centred model results in a passive learning style on the almost part of the students, and a situation where the students are uncomfortably speaking English outside the classroom. In addition, the education system and examinations focus almost entirely on grammar and vocabulary (Peterson, 2014).
Since Vietnamese students study English to pass the examinations and to move to further study (Denham,1992), they tend to overlook the verbal communication parts such as pronunciation, speaking and listening. The grammar and vocabulary-heavy curriculum and examinations means that the students rarely have chances to practice communicating with each other in English in the classroom. According to Kayi (2006), foreign language teachers should pay much attention to teaching speaking because “the ability to communicate in a foreign language clearly and efficiently contributes to success of the learners in school and success later in every phase of life”. Instead of leading students to purely learn by memorization, English teachers should provide a rich environment for the students, where meaningful communication can take place.
The term to denote one’s competency in speaking a language is named speaking competence. Speaking competence is one’s skills, knowledge, and motivation to speak to anyone in any context. To develop these speaking competences, it is essential to teach and encourage verbal communication. To improve speaking competences of students in English, and to increase their experience of speaking the language, this paper uses a well-established methodology, known as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT).
CLT is “a set of principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and learners in classroom” (Richard, 2006). The purpose of the communicative approach is to communicative with 2 other people in a classroom and later in a society. Among the CLT method, Project Based Learning (PBL) is the one that has received much attention and is seen as the effective in improving speaking competence (Barron et al, 1998; Markham, 2011). Obviously, Project Based Learning (PBL) has been consider as a powerful approach in content instruction and it was adapted into other disciplines.
Two decades ago, PBL has been incorporating into language classroom (Di & Nattaya, 2016). “PBL can help a teacher create a high- performing classroom in which the teacher and students form a powerful learning community focused on achievement, self- mastery, and contribution to the community” (Barron et al, 1998; Markham, 2011). Moreover, in recent times, ICT applications from Learning Management System to Web 4.0 technologies have increasingly been applied in education, so that ICT is seen as the means to support innovative teaching and learning (Peeaer and Petegem, 2001). In spite of that, the role of technology in teaching and learning is not received much attention in high schools, especially ones in mountainous areas.
The major obstacles to achieve English speaking competency is the method used in teaching and testing. Most students learn English to pass the national examinations in which listening and speaking English are not components. To pass the national grammar- based and norm- referenced examination requires the students to have a sufficiently good knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary of the target language, thus communicative needs are not their obvious motivation (Canh,2001). Even under a new national education program, many teachers continue to apply the traditional grammar- translation method, which focuses on reading and writing.
The Ministry of Education and Training’s curriculum is also exam-based, meaning it tests grammar, reading and translation, all of which can be easily done on written exams. However, how to meet both the aims of the Project 2020 and the aims of the National Examination is a big question. There are few researches on the benefits of applying PBL with m-learning in teaching speaking for high school students. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out study to make suitable revision and suggestion to meet the need of the learning and teaching requirement.
3 With all the reasons mentioned above, this study aim to explore whether or not PBL combining ICT can develop the speaking competence of students. Aims of the study Given the aim above, the research set for itself the following objectives: 1. To evaluate the current situation of using technology in teaching and learning at Le Hong Phong high school 2. To investigate the effect of a specific mobile application for PBL among students at Le Hong Phong High school 3.
To explore the attitudes of the teachers and students towards the adoption of m-learning in PBL. To achieve the aims of the study, the following research questions are found.