MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI KIEU VAN A STUDY ON THE USE OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES TO ENHANCE 12 th GRADE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL IN HONG LAM UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION NGHE AN - 2014 2 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI KIEU VAN A STUDY ON THE USE OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES TO ENHANCE 12 th GRADE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL IN HONG LAM UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Code: 60.14.01.11 MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION Supervisor: Nguyen Gia Viet, Ph.D Nghe An, 2014 4 ACCEPTANCE I hereby state that I: Nguyen Thi Kieu Van, being a candidate for the degree of Master accept requirements of the College related to the retention and use of Master’s graduation Paper deposited in the library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the thesis. September, 2014 Signature Nguyen Thi Kieu Van i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study would not have been completed without the support of many people, to all of whom I am profoundly indebted. Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Nguyen Gia Viet, Ph.D for the continuous support of my M.A study and research, for his patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. His guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. I could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for my M.A study. Also, sincere thanks are due to the teachers and 12 th students at Hong Lam Upper Secondary School for allowing me to administer the test and interview schedule during their invaluable time class. Without their patience in participating in doing questionnaires as well as interviews, the study could not have been completed. Last but not least, I would love to send my gratitude to my family, especially my husband and friends for their continual encouragements during the time I conducted the study. ii ABSTRACT Although speaking is recognized as a crucial part of second language teaching, it has been undervalued by English teachers in Vietnamese classrooms. Many teachers are still using traditional techniques such as repetition drills and memorization of dialogues. The use of communicative activities, in spite of having been known to teachers in Vietnam, has been really limited due to many reasons, such as teachers’ low proficiency, class size, limited teaching facilities, and tight teaching schedules. There have been a few research studies that investigated effectiveness of communicative activities in the classroom in some part of the world. However, very few studies have been conducted in Vietnam about how teachers and students perceived about these activities in upper secondary schools. Especially, no research has been carried out in Hong Lam Upper Secondary School. This research study aims to investigate the use of communicative activities to enhance speaking skill for 12 th grade students in Hong Lam UPSS. It uses two sets of questionnaires for teachers and students in Hong Lam Upper Secondary School. A total of survey questionnaires for teachers and survey questionnaires for students were collected. The data collected were coded in charts and percentage was yielded and figures were built as to address the research questions. The data showed that the majority of the student participants were inclined to communicative activities. As for the teachers, based on the results of the study, a number of implications and suggestions have been provided for teachers, students, policy makers, and researchers. The findings of this study, being a case study, cannot be generalized, but they contribute to the academic understanding of a context where little research has been done. Generally, the students are not interested in doing speaking tasks that are given in the textbooks. Also, they are not aware of whether these tasks are effective for them or not. Nevertheless, they express their desire for some types of communicative activities that they have chances to work with. iii For the teachers, most of them admit that they often have difficulties in using communicative activities to teach speaking skill for their 12 th grade students. The study aims to serve as a useful source of reference for teachers, students and those who are interested in this subject matter. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Pages ACCEPTANCE I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II ABSTRACT III TABLE OF CONTENTS V LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES VII ABBREVIATIONS IX CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1. RATIONALE 1 1.2. AIMS OF THE STUDY 2 1.3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY 3 1.4. METHODS OF THE STUDY 3 1.5. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS 3 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 5 2.1. REVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES 5 2.2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES 7 2.2.1. DEFINITION OF THE COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES 7 2.2.2. FEATURES OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES 8 2.2.3. TYPES OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES 9 2.2.4. FACTORS AFFECTING COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES 15 2.3. SPEAKING 23 2.3.1. SPEAKING AS A SKILL 23 2.3.2. THE ROLE OF SPEAKING IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 24 2.3.3. APPROACHES TO THE TEACHING OF SPEAKING 26 2.3.4. TEACHING SPEAKING IN RURAL AREAS 29 2.3.5. TEACHING SPEAKING IN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL 29 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 31 3.1. AN OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH SITE 31 v 3.2. PARTICIPANTS 32 3.3. METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION 32 3.3.1. INSTRUMENTAL DEVELOPMENT 33 3.3.2. PROCEDURES OF DATA COLLECTION 34 3.3.3. METHODS AND PROCEDURES OF DATA ANALYSIS 35 3.4. SUMMARY 36 CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 37 4.1. EVALUATION OF THE ENGLISH 12 TEXTBOOK 37 4.1.1. OVERVIEW OF THE ENGLISH 12 TEXTBOOK 37 4.1.2. EVALUATION OF SPEAKING SKILL 38 4.2. RESULTS FROM THE SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES 41 4.2.1. THE FREQUENCY AND INTEREST OF EACH KIND OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES IN CLASS 44 4.2.2. DIFFICULTIES THAT THE TEACHERS HAVE WHEN USING COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES 49 4.3. DISCUSSION 50 4.4. IMPLICATIONS 52 4.4.1. IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING EACH KIND OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES 52 4.4.2. GIVING STUDENTS INSPIRATION BY ACTIVITIES INVOLVING THE LESSON 58 4.4.3. USING THE SITUATION IN INTRODUCTION 59 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 60 5.1. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 60 5.2. LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH 62 5.3. FURTHER RESEARCH 62 REFERENCES 64 APPENDIX A 67 vi [...]... and teaching Yet no researcher has conducted investigation into the communicative activities to enhance speaking skill for 12 th grade students in rural areas such as at Hong Lam UPSS 1.2 Aims of the study According to the importance of the participation of students in speaking lessons, this study aims at investigating the use of communicative activities to enhance speaking skill for 12th grade students... students in Hong Lam UPSS With the reasons mentioned above, the specific aims of the study, accordingly, are: + To investigate the current English speaking teaching and learning situation at Hong Lam UPSS + To explore the teachers’ viewpoints in the necessity of applying the communicative activities in teaching speaking skill + To learn about the students’ attitude toward practicing their speaking skill. .. simultaneously, rather than any single one, and among grade 12 students in some selected classes in Hong Lam UPSS Therefore, the study mainly focuses on investigating on applying the communicative activities into teaching speaking English language to 12 th grade students in Hong Lam UPSS The result of the study can be the good foundation of next ones so that it could help educators multiply teaching... of graduation paper and due to the limitation of time, the study can not cover all classes in Hong lam UPSS, I just hope to concentrate on the situation of the 12th grade Moreover, although the communicative activities could be used widely in all four skills, the study is in dealing with the speaking skill only Participants in this study are students from three 12 th grade classes, Hong Lam UPSS, Hong. .. university and language centre all over the country One of the main tasks assigned to foreign language teaching at school is that of training students to be communicatively competent At Hong Lam UPSS, like at many other Upper Secondary Schools in Vietnam, English has been a compulsory subject in secondary curriculum for many years The fact is that, due to the demand of the Upper Secondary School graduation and... meaningful recycling Authentic materials can encourage reading for pleasure because they are likely to contain topics of interest to learners, especially if students are given the chance to have a say about the topics of kinds of authentic materials to be used in class As a result, learners will keep high motivation and interest in language teaching through these meaningful interactions with the materials... questions: 2 Research question 1: To what extent are speaking tasks from the textbook used by the 12th grade students in Hong Lam UPSS? Research question 2: What are the attitudes of students toward using the communicative activities in speaking skill? Research question 3: What are difficulties that teachers have in teaching speaking skill via the communicative activities? 1.3 Scope of the study Within the. .. research gap, thus rationalizing the need to carry out the study 2.1 Review of previous studies In recent years, it is seen that a large body of research has investigated into applying Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) or Communicative Approach in teaching English language aspects as well as the four language skills Among them, the issues of applying communicative activities into teaching speaking skills... learners, as well as with people in the program and community Communicative activities have real purposes: to find information, break down barriers, talk about self, and learn about the culture In speaking class, communicative activities are often employed because the use of communicative activities is a way to improve the students’ ability to use the language meaningfully 7 Also, they can alter the environment... methods and students enhance their speaking skill 2.2 Theoretical background of communicative activities 2.2.1 Definition of the communicative activities There have been so far many researches on the theory of communicative activities which have generally come to a conclusion that communicative activities include any activities that encourage and require a learner to speak with and listen to other learners, . OF SPEAKING IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 24 2.3.3. APPROACHES TO THE TEACHING OF SPEAKING 26 2.3.4. TEACHING SPEAKING IN RURAL AREAS 29 2.3.5. TEACHING SPEAKING IN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL. activities to enhance speaking skill for 12 th grade students in rural areas such as at Hong Lam UPSS. 1.2. Aims of the study According to the importance of the participation of students in speaking. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI KIEU VAN A STUDY ON THE USE OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES TO ENHANCE 12 th GRADE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL IN HONG LAM UPPER SECONDARY