THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY GRADUATION PAPER FACTORS AFFECTING ENGLISH SPEAKING COMPETENCE FOR THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS AT THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY Supervisor: Pham Thi Phuong, M.A Student: Doan Thi Hoang Yen Class: K50N3 Student’s number: 14D170199 Hanoi - 2018 HÀ NỘI - 2016 ABSTRACT Nowadays, English plays an important role in Vietnam, especially during the period of international and global integration Because of desiring a high-paid job and good job opportunity, every student always makes effort to improve and enhance their English in four skills including listening skill, speaking skill, reading skill and writing skill However, the English speaking comprehension of students during and after graduation are still poor, and many graduates are not thoroughly equipped with necessary language skills As a result, more than half of the graduates not meet enough requirements of recruiters Spoken language production is often considered one of the most difficult aspects of language learning (Brown & Yule, 1983) Students have a number of difficulties in speaking English To find out the common obstacle for learning speaking, this study was conducted for first-year English-majored students at Thuong Mai University, Ha Noi, Vietnam to find out the factors affecting speaking English competence It is a combination of both qualitative and quatitative methods with questionnaires and interviews Based on the research findings, some recommendations and suggestions for not only the students to improve English speaking skill but also the teachers to teach effectively were made The study was expected to help students know more about the difficulties and improve their performance in speaking English ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Mrs Pham Thi Phuong, who helped, supported and encouraged me enthusiastically while I conducted this study Without her helpful comments, valuable advice and considerable assistance, this study could not have been completed Moreover,would like to thank the teachers at English Faculty of Thuong Mai University for providing me best conditions to fulfill my study I also want to express my appreciation to the first-year English-majored students at TMU who helped me to conduct collect data for the study to make my study more detailed Last but not least, I would especially thank my family, my close friends and my classmates who supported and encouraged me to conduct this study Ha Noi, 10th April, 2018 Student Doan Thi Hoang Yen TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii TABLE OF CONTENTS .iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vii CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Previous studies 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Research subjects .3 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Research methodology .4 1.7 Organization of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .6 2.1 Definition of speaking 2.1.1 Definition of speaking 2.1.2 Definition of competence for speaking 2.1.3 Components of speaking process 2.2 Types of speaking .7 2.2.1 Interactive speaking .8 2.2.2 Partially interactive speaking 2.2.3 Non-interactive speaking .8 2.3 Preparation before speaking .8 2.3.1 Be a good listener 2.3.2 Structure speaking process in mind .9 2.3.3 Manner and attitude .9 2.3.4 Micro-skill .9 2.4 Factors affecting to speaking process .10 2.4.1 Listening ability 10 2.4.2 Pronunciation and accent .11 2.4.3 Vocabulary 11 2.4.4 Grammar 12 2.4.5 Learning environment 13 2.4.6 Emotional factors 15 2.5 Summary 17 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 18 3.1 Procedures for conducting questionnaire survey and interview 18 3.1.1 Procedure for conducting questionnaire survey 18 3.1.2 Procedure for conducting interviewing 18 3.2 Analysis of research findings 19 3.2.1 Students’s real situation of learning English 19 3.2.2 Students's attitudes toward English speaking competence 20 3.2.3 Student's problem in learning speaking English process .23 3.2.4 Difficulties affecting English speaking comprehension of students .25 3.2.5 Activities for improving English speaking skill of students 28 3.3 Main findings and discussion 29 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS .32 4.1 For students 32 4.2 For teachers 34 CONCLUSION 36 REFERENCES APPENDIX LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Order numbe Abbreviations English Meaning Vietnamese Meaning r TMU Thuong Mai University Trường đại học Thương Question Questionnaire survey Mại Câu hỏi Bảng câu hỏi khảo sát Q QS LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES TABLES Table 3.1: The questionnaire results of students' years on learning English 20 Table 3.2: Figures for strengths of students in speaking English skill .23 Table 3.3: Figures for weaknesses of students in speaking English skill 24 Table 3.4 Figures for listening comprehension of students at class 26 Table 3.5 Figures for activities of students in improving speaking English .29 CHARTS Chart 3.1: Students' assessment of learning speaking English skill 21 Chart 3.2: Numbers of students who determine the degree of importance' factors affecting speaking English skill 22 Chart 3.3: Time for self-study speaking English a day at home of students 25 Chart 3.4 The percentage of students's mood when speaking in English with four kinds of listeners 27 CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale There are many reasons why the author chose this topic for studying: First, a great number of non-English speakers as well as native English speakers use English as an important standard of international communication in every part of the world English is recognized as the international language which people in many countries use to communicate with each other Listening and speaking skills are more and more essential to communicate with foreigners As a consequence, it is necessary for Vietnamese people to be able to use English effectively Without a doubt, the ability to communicate in English in real life situations will remain essential, and students are expected to be able to communicate in the English language The purpose of learning English is, thus, to communicate in English efficiently in the real world Second, speaking English skill provides learners or students with several distinct advantages It is the capacity to express one's thoughts, opinions and feelings clearly and skillfully in the form of words put together in a meaningful way It also brings back good opportunities for Vietnamese students to work in an international environment The last but not the least, speaking plays a more important role than other skills in overall communication Spoken language production is often considered as one of the most difficult aspects of language learning Students have a number of challenges in speaking English However, they not know which learning method is appropriate to follow, the efficiency and the result are not clear With the three main reasons presented above, it is reasonable to say that English speaking is an important skill that learner needs to improve besides their mother tongue However, there are many problems that learners have to encounter when learning and many factors which affect speaking English competence Therefore, the author conducted this study with the objective of first-year English-majored students at Thuong Mai University, helping them first improve their speaking English skill 1.2 Previous studies There are many studies about factors affecting competence for speaking English However, the author would like to study whether those are suitable for the first-year English-majored students at Thuong Mai University or not The research conducted by Tanveer (2007) is a widely-known one which examined the factors caused anxiety for learners in learning speaking ability and the impact of anxiety on target language communication The obtained results indicated that learners’ feeling of stress and anxiety stop their language learning and performance abilities The researcher emphasized that the high anxiety lowers the learners’ speaking performance Ali Dincer & Savas Yesilyurt (2013) in their study Pre-Service English Teachers’ Beliefs on Speaking Skills Based on Motivational Orientations They showed that “Students’ ideas about the importance of speaking skills among the four language skills are diverse; this diversity is associated with the students’ motivational orientations and students’ feeling competent/ incompetent in speaking Also, students’ self-assessment about their speaking ability was generally negative and they expressed themselves as incompetent speakers Few of them said that, "compared to other students, they had a better position both in participating in speaking activities and speaking English", (p.25) Lukitasari (2008) conducted a study focusing on the students’ strategies in overcoming speaking problems in speaking class The population of her study was the first semester students of Muhammadiyah University of Malang in Indonesia The findings revealed that students often feel not confident enough when speaking or presenting before class because they are shy and afraid of their wrong or bad pronunciation Feyten (1991) conducted a study to examine whether there is a relationship between listening ability and speaking ability The results show that there is a significant relationship between listening and speaking, they support each other and affect directedly each other because communication need both listeners and speakers Boonkit (2010) carried out a study on the factors increasing the development of learners’ speaking skill The results represented that the use of appropriate activities for speaking skill can be a good strategy to decrease speakers’ anxiety The results also revealed that the freedom of topic choice urged the participants to feel comfortable, persuaded to speak English, and increased the speaking confidence among EFL learners 1.3 Aims of the study Realizing the importance of speaking English skill besides natural language and the difficulties that first-year students have to face when learning speaking, the researcher decided to research to find out which factors affecting to their English competence The researcher would like to give some suggestions and recommendations to help them improve their speaking comprehension and develop themselves The study was carried out in order to answer and solve some following questions: What are the problems that the first-year English-majored students at Thuong Mai University encounter when they learn to speak English? What are the factors that affect their speaking performance? What are effective methods of studying English, especially speaking skill? What first-year English-majored students have to to improve speaking English skill? 1.4 Research subjects both the teachers and the students showed that when the students learn speaking, they encountered many problems By carefully categorizing and summarizing, the author showed the main findings after analysis of datas from the questionnaires and interviews Generally, opinions of first-year English-majored students at TMU about English speaking competence are very clear from the above data analysis that students have plenty of difficulties in learning speaking Most of the first-year English-majored students at Thuongmai University say that speaking English is difficult and quite difficult for them to learn and develop, this made them feel discouraged in learning process According to the survey, there was a consistent among data from teachers’ interview, students’ questionnaire The author could summarize and categorize into different groups of factors affecting to English speaking competence of the firstyear English-majored at TMU The results indicated that there were a variety of factors that affect the students’ speaking performance Firstly, majority students said that the students’ speaking performance was affected by listening ability Listening stage is the time for students to listen to the speech and understand it It is not necessary for students to understand all about the content They not need to memorize the exact words or sentences that are said They just need to catch the major ideas There are various kinds of techniques which can be used to lead the students to focus on the general idea and the subject matter of the text they are listening to Secondly, emotions are considered to be factors that had influence on students’ speaking performance It includes self-confidence, attitude, motivation to learn and anxiety which have much effect on the quality of speaking process Students often thought that they needed to be enough confident to perform well The results from student questionnaire were quite similar to those of the teachers, most of the students thought that their speaking performance was affected by emotion, especially self-confidence Confidence was considered to be a factor that had much 29 influence on students’ performance In addition, keeping good opinion helps students have motivation to continue and enhance their language learning process in general and English speaking skill in particular Thirdly, the results indicated that a majority of the teachers said that the students’ speaking performance was affected by topical knowledge and linguistic components of language It includes knowledge of related topical information, a variety of vocabulary and grammar Besides, the teachers’ feedback during speaking activities also was also reported to affect the students’ speaking performance because feedback or comments helped students realize their mistakes or shortcomings and stimulate their spirit of learning English speaking In brief, students encountered many problems and difficulties when learning English speaking and they affected directly English speaking competence for students Therefore, in order to get better results and improvements in speaking English process, both students and teachers ought to find out effective ways and methods of enhancing and increasing ability to learn and teach 30 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS After finding out the problems and factors affecting English speaking competence for the first-year English-majored students at Thuong Mai University, the author realized that those factors will have much effect on the quality of learning English speaking skill of students if they not know how to solve it Therefore, the author would like to give some recommendations and suggestion which may help students at Thuong Mai University in particular and students at other university in general in improving and building up their English speaking comprehension 4.1 For students  Think and arranging idea in Vietnamese when speaking English The students who want to learn the speaking skill better, they themselves had better try their best to change their bad habits of keeping idea in mind by Vietnamese If they only think in English, it takes less time to produce, respond or express in everyday conversations No translation needed One of the best way the author suppose is to start rethinking is to keep a diary where students express their daily thoughts only in English It does not have to be too perfect, it is more about getting out thoughts in English with less and less effort The more times they try and practice, the better results they get  Expanding vocabulary and topical knowledge It is advisable that students should learn new words every day Gleaning new words day in, day out is a good way to widen your vocabulary Learners also can commit to a suitable target for themseves For example, it can be ten daily words or it can be twenty daily words Even if they only have time to learn one new word per day, it is still worth trying By learning one word every day, after one year students will have learned 365 new English words Write the number down to remind themselves frequently It is suitable that if students have a learning partner, share it with her or him so that she or he can check on students' progress Some good resources for words are the news, songs and TV shows, depending on leanrer's daily habits If 31 others love listening to music, pay attention to the lyrics and take note of the words they not know Songs often contain a lot of useful words, phrases and expressions, therefore, they are great for learning English Learn words in phrases and chunks It is very important that students learn words in groups For example, one refers to beverages as a glass of wine, a pint of beer, a cup of tea, a pot of coffee, etc It is better to learn those phrases than merely wine, beer, tea and so on Learners can also benefit from learning words that are related It is more efficient to learn all four words at the same time It is encouraged that students also improve their background knowledge by reading more, watching more, studying more and observe more Only when they have a good background and much experience and knowledge that they can speak fluently and show their self-confident Much knowledge helps students feel not confused when speaking, especially be more confident  Improving pronunciation and learning the natural flow of English The students might know a lot of words, but if they not succeed in saying them correctly, they will not be understood That seems like a waste of the time spent on remembering words When using online dictionaries such as Macmillan or Oxford, studenrs ought to make use of the little speaker symbol to check the correct pronunciation of any word that they are not sure about There are many English pronunciation tutorials on YouTube or other online sources to teach them the many aspects of American or England pronunciation When the learners are ready for something more challenging, it had better try out tongue twisters Besides, being able to say individual words correctly is great, but the secret of speaking fluently lies in the flow of sentences Whenever they read a piece of poetry, listen to a melodic song or watch a hilarious sitcom, it is advisable to pay attention to the following factors The first is linking Students should notice how native speakers link words together such as joining two sounds, making a sound to disappear or changing a sound for a better flow The second one is contractions, which are shortened forms of two words If students can practice frequently, their accent will improve very much and from that point, the accent and 32 natural flow of English be developed too  Practicing with English music and movies Students should listen to music in English and sing along Music is one of the best tools for learning intonation pronunciation It is one of the most effective way of improving their listening comprehension as well because listening skill affects directly learner's speaking process Listening to music or singing some songs everyday might also help students remember vocabulary and phrases (in case the song is enough easy to understand), and it will help them learn to pronounce English rhythm in a more natural way By unconsciously imitating the singer, students will learn to pronounce phrases the way native speakers Movies are a much better choice for learning English process Learners will learn many vocabularies, idioms, slang or pronunciation, and listening skill by watching movies Moreover, outside the speaking class, students have to practice regularly such as listening to English songs, listening in VOA, watching foreign channels such as hbo, cinemax, they can watch the American films of any kinds they are excited about to improve their English listening comprehension so as to get acquainted with the native accent in normal speech  Finding an English speaking partner It is very fantastic to find native speakers to practice with Students who are living around many English speakers may be able to find informal opportunities to chat with neighbors and local business people Joining a club or a volunteer organization can be a very great way to get to know people informally If that is not an option, consider about hiring a private tutor A lot of students find and meet with tutors online via tools like social apps 4.2 For teachers It is recognized that teachers play a crucial part in improving learners's speaking skill Teaching methods was the most considered factor that the learners mentioned 33 ... Thuongmai University too These domains may reflect the factors that negatively affect speaking skills at Thuong Mai University for first- year English- majored students 1.7 Organization of the study... affect speaking English competence Therefore, the author conducted this study with the objective of first- year English- majored students at Thuong Mai University, helping them first improve their speaking. .. problems that the first- year English- majored students at Thuong Mai University encounter when they learn to speak English? What are the factors that affect their speaking performance? What are effective