MINISTRY OF EDUCATIONAND AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY HOANG THI CHUNG SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL TO THE NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT VINH UNIVERSITY MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION Nghệ An, 2014 MINISTRY OF EDUCATIONAND AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY HOANG THI CHUNG SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL TO THE NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT VINH UNIVERSITY Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Code: 60 14 01 11 MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION Supervisor: Phan Thi Huong, M.A Nghệ An, 2014 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I declare that this dissertation represents my own work, and that it has not been previously submitted to this University or to any other institutions for a degree, diploma or other qualifications. Hoang Thi Chung i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest thanks to M.A Phan Thi Huong, my supervisor for her immense encouragement as well as her detailed guidance she gave me while I was doing my research, without which the study could not have been completed. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to FLD’s Dean, Dr Tran Ba Tien, without his support, motivation and consideration, it would not have been possible for me to complete the course. I would also like to express my thanks to the teachers of English at Vinh University who helped me in providing the materials, answering the survey questionnaire, taking part in the interviews actively and making constructive comments in the process of writing this thesis, without their help the thesis would not have been successful. I am also thankful to my first-year students of K53 from two classes NN1-111: NN1-112 for their whole-heated participation in the study. Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my friends and my family for their understanding, patience and support during the entire period of my study. Hoang Thi Chung ii ABSTRACT This study is aimed at investigating the reality of teaching the speaking skill to non-major students of English at Vinh University but only focuses on difficulties experienced by the teachers of English and some recommendations and classroom techniques and activities for them to minimize those difficulties. Specifically, some classroom activities are made with the hope that they would be helpful for teachers in their teaching English speaking skill to non- English major students of English at VU. The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction to the thesis. Chapter 2 includes the review of related literature, methodology used in the research study. The findings and discussion of relevant difficulties in teaching speaking skill caused by teachers themselves, students and objective factors are all presented in the chapter 4. The final chapter is the conclusion of the study, which discusses the overview that can be drawn from the study, concurrently suggests some classroom techniques and activities with the hope that they can add interest to each lesson and serve different learning styles. Teachers can find sample games and activities in this part for getting their students more involved in speaking in class and can feel free to change their content or degree of difficulty to suit their needs, or use them as a springboard to create specific activities. It is hoped that this thesis will be useful for teachers at VU in teaching the speaking skill to their non-English major students. iii LIST OF TABLES CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY xxxiii CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION xlii Table 4.4: Teachers’ English communicative competence xlv CHAPTER 5: SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUSION lviii REFERENCES lxxx APPENDICES I iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ELT: English Language Teaching EFL: English as a Foreign Language ESL: English as Second Language CLT: Communicative Language Teaching STT: Student talking time TTT: Teacher talking time TM: Translation Method ESP: English for Specific Purposes No of Students: Number of Students No of Teachers: Number of Teachers VU: Vinh University v LIST OF TABLES CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY xxxiii CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION xlii Table 4.4: Teachers’ English communicative competence xlv CHAPTER 5: SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUSION lviii REFERENCES lxxx APPENDICES I CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale We are living in the global world in which English language has rapidly become an international language. To meet this requirement, English has been taught almost everywhere in Vietnam, especially in schools, colleges, universities, English is a compulsory subject. However, how to speak English well is a problem for many Vietnamese learners of English, especially for the students of colleges and universities. Despite the fact that most of the students have been learning English since they were at secondary or high school, they can not speak English fluently, or some cannot speak any English at all. As a teacher of English at Vinh University, from our observation and our own teaching experience, we see that during a speaking lesson students can hardly use English for communicative objectives even in the simple form. Some explain that they want to talk but they do not know what to say. Some are in poor participation in speaking activities in the classroom. In fact, there is a large number of non-English major students who may be good at reading, writing but find it difficult to speak in English. I often encourage my students to talk in English in class but they keep silent during the lessons. Perhaps, there is a variety of reasons for their poor participation, including such large classes, lack of ideas, lack of motivation, lack of confidence when communicating or poor knowledge of English language. In addition to those vi mentioned above, equipment and teaching methods of teachers can make the situation worse. There have been numerous studies on this situation and various solutions, recommendations and suggestions have been proposed, including innovating teaching methods, changing syllabus or textbooks, upgrading teachers’ qualifications, changing formats of speaking tests and so on. At Vinh University, however, no research on suggesting communicative activities for teaching speaking skill to non- English majors has been done before. The author, as a teacher of English at VU, is more than aware of the situation and she herself has encountered a number of difficulties in helping her students improve their speaking skill. This actually drives her to this research, entitled “Some suggestions for teaching English speaking skill to the non-English major students at Vinh University”. 1. 2 Scope of the study To improve speaking skill for non- English major students at VU, various methods can be made used of. However, within the framework of this thesis, the author only intends to give an overview of the current situation of teaching and learning speaking skill for non-English major students at VU and suggest communicative activities to help teachers improve their students’ speaking skill and achieve the objectives of each unit of the course book as well. The suggested activities will serve as a reference for teachers to teach effectively speaking topics in New Headway Pre-intermidiate the third edition. 1.3 Aims of the study Within the framework of a thesis, the study aims at suggesting classroom activities with the hope that they would be helpful for teachers in their teaching English speaking skill to non- English major students at VU. To achieve this aim, the objectives are (i) to investigate the current situations of learning and teaching of speaking skill to non- English major students at VU in order to find out the reasons for students’ unwillingness to speak English as well as vii difficulties experienced by the teachers of English in teaching speaking skill; (ii) to suggest some classroom activities to be used in speaking class for non-English majors. 1.4 Research questions of the study The researcher wish to raise the questions as follows: 1. What difficulties do the teachers at VU encounter in teaching the skill of speaking to non-English major students? 2. What should be done to minimize the difficulties in teaching the skill of speaking to non-English major students experienced by the teachers of English at VU? 1.5 Organization of the study The study consists of the following parts: Chapter 1: Introduction This part will introduce the problem leading to the study, rationale, purpose, scope, and organization of the study. Chapter 2: Literature review and theoretical background Presented in this chapter are the concepts relevant to the study: Review of previous studies ; The Nature of Language skills; The nature of speaking skill; What is speaking?; What are components of speaking?; What skills and knowledge does a good speaker need?; What is speaking Skills; Characteristics of Speaking Skills; Teaching Speaking Skills; Aims of Teaching Speaking Skills; Development approach of speaking skills; How speaking skill has been taught to adult ESL learners. Chapter 3: Methodology This part presents the detailed procedure of the study: the methodology, population selection, data collection and analysis. viii [...]... influence on the effect of teaching Some students think that English is not a major subject and not useful for their future job So the students have born in their mind that the final goal is to pass the exams In addition, the majority of the students do not have appropriate learning strategies or the habit to learn independently or creatively As a result, they never prepare the lesson at home or review the. .. by them In addition, the results of a recent study carried out by the researcher show that non -English major teachers at VU confront a lot of difficulties in teaching English, especially speaking skill to non -English major students They claimed about many problems in teaching speaking skills in English classes According to them, these problems were originated from themselves-teachers of English, students. .. 3.1.1 Students The study took place at Vinh University, where English is a compulsory subject and learnt as a foreign language For non -English major students, they have to complete 7 credits of English (equivalent to 105 periods of 50 minutes each) at University But before that, students have to pass the entrance exam at A2 level as a requisition to enroll in classes If they get score 5 (50%), they... concludes that the vast majority of the research indicates that the younger the learner the more native like the pronunciation” (p 11) To conclude, it can be seen from the Pyramid that all the levels of language operate when we speak, and conversation is not really simple at all It is impotant for language teachers to understand these units of language and how they work together 2.4 Characteristics of Speaking. .. effect on the students learning attitudes They can hardly communicate in English as they often feel shy The students are incapable of using their English to talk in class due to their lack of social knowledge as well as their poor English knowledge, so they keep silent during the lesson Moreover, the traditional methods of teaching of teachers can be the other causes Also, the students attitudes towards... communicative competence which probably considered as the most elaborate Area The aims for learners - to achieve accuracy in the grammatical forms of the language - to pronounce the forms accurately Linguistic - to use stress, rhythm and intonation to express meaning competence - to build a range of vocabulary - to learn the script and spelling rules - to achieve accuracy in syntax and word formation - to. .. teachers if they are committed to communicative methods” or “… .the obstacle to the implementation of the communicative approach is the class size and the teaching schedule.” The author affirmed that the teacher is always under pressure to cover the allocated syllabus in the time allowed To conclude, this chapter has reviewed a theoretical framework of difficulties in teaching English speaking skill including... to learn the relationship between grammatical forms and functions - to use stress and intonation to express attitude and emotion Pragmatic - to learn a scale of formality competence - to understand and use emotive tone - to use the pragmatic rules of language - to select language forms appropriate to topic, listener, etc - to take longer turns, use discourse markers, and open and close conversations... time limitation, types of learners and materials in use The phases can be overlapped or run into one another provided that we keep our aim to get the learners to communicate However, teachers ought to pay attention to what has been spoken by the students during the Practice and Production phases so that they can see how far students have improved their speaking ability and what mistakes they might... score 5 (50%), they can choose to attend any English class they want In general, the non -English major students do not have the same level of English language proficiency Some of them have learned English for 7 years; some have 3 years of learning English at high school where only written English is taught and some has never learnt English because at secondary and high school, they learnt French or Russian . EDUCATIONAND AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY HOANG THI CHUNG SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL TO THE NON -ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT VINH UNIVERSITY Major: Teaching English to. to this research, entitled Some suggestions for teaching English speaking skill to the non -English major students at Vinh University . 1. 2 Scope of the study To improve speaking skill for non- . teaching the skill of speaking to non -English major students? 2. What should be done to minimize the difficulties in teaching the skill of speaking to non -English major students experienced by the