MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES INTRINSIC MOTIVATIONS & PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS OF BENTRE COLLEGE IN STUDYING SPEAKING SKILL SUMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF TESOL TRAÀN BAÛO DUY HOCHIMINH CITY 2006 -1- CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: INTRINSIC MOTIVATIONS & PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS OF BENTRE COLLEGE IN STUDYING SPEAKING SKILL. in terms of the statement of the Requirements for Theses and Field Study Reports in Master’s Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee Ho Chi Minh City, January 2006 TRAÀN BAÛO DUY RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS -2- I hereby state that I, TRAÀN BAÛO DUY, being the candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL), accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the University library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the University library should be accessible for the purpose 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, January 2006 TRAÀN BAÛO DUY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr.
Nguyeãn Tieán Huøng, who provided valuable instructions, comments, criticisms, support and encouragement in the preparation and completion of this thesis. -3- I would like to give my special thanks to the organizers of this master course, the teaching staff, the librarians, and my friends who all gave me the knowledge, the instructions, facilities and encouragement for my thesis. Last, but not least, I would wish to thank all the teachers of English and the majored students of BTC for their help and moral support. -4- ABSTRACT Many educationalists believe that motivation is the key factor in language learning and many researches have been done to prove it.
It’s hard to say what kind of motivations we should pay much attention to in the course of teaching and learning English. This thesis begins with the definitions of motivation and describes types of motivation. Then, it focuses on the intrinsic motivation and states how important intrinsic motivation is in learning English in general and spoken English in particular. This thesis has been done to study whether the teachers and the majored students acknowledge the importance of intrinsic motivation in teaching and learning spoken English.
It also studies the problems that Bentre College majors have to face to when they lack of intrinsic motivation in learning speaking skill. Finally, it shows some possible solutions of how the teachers can motivate students in learning spoken English. Table of Contents Pages Chapter One: Introduction 1-8 -5- The background of the study 1 The purpose of the study 5 The overview of the chapters 7 Chapter Two: Literature Review 9-34 The nature of motivation 9 Motivation in speaking English 15 Problems with speaking activities 16 Summary 34 Chapter Three: Methodology 35 -37 Data hypotheses 35 Data collection 36 Chapter Four: Results and Discussion 38 -74 Data analysis and Findings 38 Discussion 51 Chapter Five: Conclusion and Implications 76 - 80 Conclusion 76 Implication 78 Appendices 81 - 100 Table 1 81 Table 2 82 Table 3 83 Table 4 84 Table 5 87 Questionnaire 1 89 Questionnaire 2 92 Questionnaire 3 94 -6- Questionnaire 4 96 Chart 1 97 Chart 2 98 Chart 3 99 Chart 4 100 Types of speaking activities 101 References 102 - 103 ABBREVIATION CBT: Bentre College CFBT: Council of British teachers EFL: English as a foreign language ELTTP: English Language Teacher Training Project DFID: Department of foreign investment and development -7- VMOET: Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training VSO: Voluntary Service Organization CHAPTER I: THE INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study: 1. English teaching and learning in Vietnam English is now considered as the most popular language in the world.
It is a means of communication in the important fields of science, technology, business and diplomacy. It is also the means to enhance mutual understanding and cooperation among different countries in the fields of culture and politics. In Vietnam, after the Resolution of renovation in 1986, especially since the United States lifted its economic embargo against Vietnam, English has become a very -8- essential language for the Vietnamese nation in foreign affairs, business cooperation, and education…. The need of mastering English is increasing and English becomes the most popular foreign language in Vietnam.
Broughton (1980:6) said “A good command of English in a second language situation is considered as a passport to social and economic advancement”. To meet the urgent social demands, VMOET puts the English language into the national syllabus and considers it as one of the main foreign languages that should be taught at schools. All Vietnamese universities and colleges are deeply involved in studying the methods of teaching and learning English. For many years, the quality of teaching and learning English has been far worse than it is desired.
It is because that English teaching and learning have paid much attention to grammar and reading. It is of the misapprehension that Vietnamese learners only need the skills of reading and writing for their academic work or further study. Nowadays, in practice, the Vietnamese people realize that listening and speaking skills are also very important for foreign communication. Although English learners’ skills of speaking and listening are more focused now, learners’ competence and performance are not good.
Lots of theories of English teaching, especially of teaching spoken English, are studied and lots of training courses and methodology workshops of English teaching have been held. As a result, the quality of English teaching and learning has been improved but it is also unsatisfactory. Thus, educationalists and teachers of English have the responsibilities to study and apply new methods in teaching and learning English to heighten the learners’ competence and performance of English, especially in speaking skill, to meet the great demand of the national industrialization and modernization. Teaching speaking at Bentre College -9- The English department was founded in 1989.
Up to now, 17 courses have been held and more than 600 English majors have been trained. Most of the graduates became English teachers and a few of them became interpreters, tourist guides, officials of foreign affaires…Now most of them can do their jobs well but they also think that English speaking is still their weak point. For nearly ten years, spoken English was taught in insufficient and ineffective ways: the teacher read the conversations, the students listened and repeated. The students sometimes played the roles or had some small discussions.
Although the course book was of spoken English (Streamlines English - Departures and Connections for the three years of English major training course), the teacher taught the lessons in the same way of teaching reading and grammar. In addition, the facilities for English teaching and learning were poor. There were no cassettes, video recorders, computers, projectors… There were also no English speaking clubs, no native speakers…As a result, most of the students felt difficult to speak English when necessary. The students couldn’t have a chance to make full use the authentic English and they didn’t like the spoken English subject either.
In 1986, when there was a great demand of having a renovation in teaching and learning English, the college sent some teachers to many workshops and short-term training courses of methodology to upgrade their teaching abilities. In 1998, two teachers participated in the two-year course of English teaching held by ELTTP-a project signed by DFID-The United Kingdom and VMOET. They became trainers afterwards in their school and they did the training for the teachers of junior high schools in Bentre province as well. The quality of teaching and learning English has greatly been improved.
New methods of teaching have been applied in combination with new course books such as: Headway, New Interchange, Interaction, Speaking - 10 - Extra, Speaking naturally… have been used. Speaking subject has become more interesting and the language learned becomes more authentic. a- Description of the speaking courses at the English Section of the Department of Social sciences and Humanities in 20051. English is taught as the major subject for four classes of the three grades: -Grade 1: two classes (54students) -Grade 2: one class (24 students) -Grade 3: one class (35 students) Speaking is the official subject in the school syllabus, together with Listening, Reading, Writing, Semantics, Syntax, English literature, Translation.
The total time for learning spoken English is about 225 periods for the time of a three-year course (180 periods for the 1st and 2nd year students and 45periods for the 3rd year students). In the past ten years, Streamlines English was the main course book. The students used to play their roles given in the dialogues or conversations. They sometimes discussed on some familiar topics like family, traffic problems, likes and dislikes, rural and urban areas….
In some recent years, owing to the improvement in teaching methods and newly published course books and materials, speaking activities are more exciting and effective. In one period of speaking practice, the students can practice speaking with their teachers and friends in pairs or groups on different grammatical points, idioms, sentence patterns, or topics from the easiest to the most difficult such as: From Likes and Dislikes, Daily Routines… to Social Issues. To most of the students, speaking is the most exciting subject now. They like practicing spoken English because they know it benefits their future life.
Unfortunately, there are still many students who can’t speak English fluently. 1 The new department was founded in 2004 and English Department became one section of the new department, Department of Social sciences and Humanities. - 11 - b- Characteristics of the English majors at BTC. • The students’ background of English is low because they come from some districts in which English has not been taught or only taught for three years.
This is due to lacking of teachers of English in the rural areas for many years in the past. In addition, speaking has been ignored because this skill is not tested in the exams and teachers are afraid of teaching this skill. It is due to their lack of speaking practice and their limited teaching time. • The entrance examinations are often easy with low standards and they always focus on testing reading and grammar.
This leads to the situation that the background of the students are not even (the 2nd year students’ background is lower than the first and the third year students2’) • The physical setting for English teaching and learning is not good. There is only one lab with 48 cabins but most of them are out of order. There are some cassettes and televisions but they are not modern. The students have no chance to practice speaking with foreigners (there’s no VSO in Bentre).
In Bentre, English reference books and newspapers are rare. c- The teaching staff: All of the teachers in BTC are young and most of them are inexperienced (most of them are under 40 and half of them are newly graduated) but all of them are active and devoted. d- Current methods of teaching speaking at BTC: Now modern methods of teaching English are used by the teachers of English in BTC such as: Communicative approach, Functional Approach, Audio-lingual method… 1. The purpose of the thesis: 2 This comment is from the teaching staff’s remarks and the results in the exams.
The reason of the choice: It can be said that a strong motivation for learning a particular language will determine the success of the learning process, as Littlewood (1984:53) stated: “Motivation is the crucial factor which determines whether a learner embarks on a task at all, how much energy he devotes to it and how long he preserves”.