MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY Lê thị hờng Difficulties in English speaking skill Encountered By 10TH GRADE Students at Con Cuong ethnic Boarding High School and some suggested solutions (Những khó khăn học kỹ nói học sinh lớp 10 trờng THPT-DTNT Con Cuông số giải pháp đề xuất) Field: Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching Code: 60.14.10 Master thesis in Education Supervisor: Ngô Hữu Hoàng,DR Vinh, 2011 DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis is my own work and effort and that it has not been submitted anywhere for any award Where other sources of information have been used, they have been acknowledged Vinh, 10/2011 Lê Thị Hờng ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the assistance I received from a number of people in the course of carrying out the research paper I highly treasure the important role they played in making the completion of this thesis a success First of all, I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Ngô Hữu Hoàng, Dr, for painstakingly reading through my work from the beginning to the end and for his constant advice and invaluable comments and suggestions Without his continuous support I may not have come this far Secondly, I want to express our sincere gratitude to the Post-Graduate lecturers who supplied me with basic and useful knowledge about how I could structure a research project and what I should write in each chapter Thirdly, I wish to extend my special thanks to the students from grade 10 for their help and cooperation during my research at their class I am also grateful to my colleagues from Con Cuong Ethnic Boarding High school who helped and encouraged me a lot when I was conducting our research, but whom I cannot all mention here due to the inconvenience of space Finally, millions of thanks go to our beloved family whose financial support and spiritual encouragement contribute a significant part to the completion of the research Vinh, October 10th 2011 ABSTRACT In Vietnam, English is one of the foreign languages that are compulsory from primary school to university However, teaching English to ethnic minority students has long been a controversial issue This research investigates the difficulties in English speaking skill encountered by 10 th grade students at Con Cuong Ethnic Boarding High school in Nghe An province with the hope to find out some suggested solutions to the problems The thesis is divided into chapters: chapter presents the rationale, aims, methods, scope and organization of the paper Chapter presents the theoretical background of speaking, teaching and learning, and communicative language teaching approach; Chapter describes the methodology of the thesis Specifically, the data for this research was collected in the forms of survey questionnaires and interviews The participants of the survey questionnaires were 10 English teachers and 100 grade - 10 - students After the results of the survey questionnaires had been clarified, the interviews with teachers and 20 students were conducted to make the survey questionnaire results clearer; Chapter analyses and discusses the results from the survey questionnaires and interviews A lot of difficulties when teaching English speaking skill to ethnic minority students such as lack of time in using the new textbook, the poor teaching and learning conditions, students' limited triangular language environment, low level of background knowledge, low level of English proficiency, etc.; Chapter mentions conclusions of this paper, some limitations, recommendations for further study and some pedagogical recommendations for both subjective and objective problems For example, the teachers should plan the speaking lessons more carefully, improving the students’ Vietnamese competence, The teacher’s self-improvement of speaking skill, educating ethnic minority teachers to teach English for their students in their communities, Motivating students to learn, adapting the textbooks These recommendations are expected to be beneficial to both teachers and ethnic minority students in mountainous high schools LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Table 1: The Nationality of students Table 2: The time students spend learning speaking English everyday Table 3: Students’ motivation in learning English Table 4: students’ opinions towards the speaking tasks of the new textbook Table 5: Students’ difficulties when learning English speaking skill Table 6: Students’ difficulties when learning English speaking skill Table 7: Students’ suggested solutions to improve their speaking skill in the text book Table 8: Teachers’ opinions to the speaking sections of the new textbook for grade Table 9: Teachers’ difficulties when teaching speaking skill with the new textbook Table 10: Teachers’ solutions to improve the speaking lessons Table 11: Teachers’ opinions to overcome the difficulties Chart 1: Students’ attitudes towards speaking skill LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT: Communicative Language Teaching L1: the first language L2: the second language L3: the third language Table of contents DECLARATION………………………………………………………….……… I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………… ii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………… iii LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS………………………………………… iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………… v Table of contents .6 Introduction .10 1.1 Rationale of the study 10 1.2 Aims of the study 11 1.3 The research questions 11 1.4 Scope of the study 12 1.5 The method and procedure of the research 13 1.6 Organization of the study 13 CHAPTER 14 Literature review 14 2.1 Theoretical background of speaking in second language .14 2.1.1 Definition of speaking 14 2.1.2 The nature of speaking .15 2.1.3 Aspects of Speaking 17 2.2 Theoretical background of learning and teaching speaking skill 20 2.2.1 Definition of teaching and learning .20 2.2.2 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Approach .22 2.2.2.1 Introduction .22 2.2.2.2 Characteristics of CLT: 23 2.2.2.3 Advantages of Communicative Language Teaching .24 2.2.2.4 Disadvantages of Communicative Language Teaching 25 2.2.3 Communicative Competence – The desired goal of CLT 26 2.2.4 The necessity of Teaching and Learning Speaking Skill in a 27 2.2.5 Problems in teaching and learning speaking skill 28 2.3 Proficiency in the native language and the second language and the 29 acquisition of a third language 29 29 Chapter 31 3.1 The Teaching and Learning Situation in Con Cuong Ethnic Boarding High School 32 3.1.1 An overview of Con Cuong Ethnic Boarding High School 32 3.1.2 Introduction of the students at Con Cuong Ethnic Boarding High 32 school .32 32 3.1.3 Introduction of the teachers at Con Cuong Ethnic Boarding High 33 school 33 3.2 Introduction of the English Textbook for Grade 10 .34 3.2.1 The overall layout of English textbook 10 34 34 3.2.2 The general features of the English textbook 10 35 3.2.3 Description of the Speaking Section 36 .36 3.3 Description of the study 38 3.3.1 Kind of the research 38 3.3.2 Participants 39 3.3.3 The research questions .40 DATA ANALYSIS 40 4.1 Results of the survey questionnaires .41 4.1.1 Questionnaire for students 41 .41 4.1.2 Questionnaire for teachers 47 .47 4.2 Results and discussion from the interview 53 4.2.1 Students’ interview .53 4.2.2 Teachers’ interview .54 4.3 Findings and discussions .56 4.3.1 Subjective difficulties 56 4.3.1.1 Students’ difficulties 56 4.3.1.2 Difficulties of teachers 59 4.3.2 Objective difficulties: 60 4.3.2.1 Large class 60 4.3.2.2 Time pressure 61 4.3.2.3 The constraints brought by the innovations on the curriculum and 61 teaching method 61 4.3.2.4 The testing system 62 4.3.2.5 Lack of teaching and learning facilities 63 4.3.3 Teachers’ and students’ solutions 63 4.3.3.1 Students’ solutions 63 4.3.3.2 Teachers’ solutions 64 CHAPTER 66 PEDAGOGICAL RECOMMENDATIONS and Conclusion 66 5.1 Pedagogical recommendation 66 5.1.1 A careful plan of the speaking lesson 67 5.1.2 Various ways of testing speaking skill 68 5.1.3 Adapting the textbooks 68 5.1.4 The change in students’ speaking habits 69 * Motivating students to learn 70 5.1.5 Improving teaching conditions 71 5.2 Conclusion .72 5.3 Limitations of the study 73 5.4 Suggestion for further study 73 REFERENCES 74 Introduction 1.1 Rationale of the study In Con Cuong mountainous district, where the author has been working for years, English is a compulsory subject in the curriculum and it is considered one of the major subjects for the high school final examination English is taught with the purpose to give students some basic knowledge of English in order to communicate and use it as a key to science and technology However, there still exist many difficulties facing teachers in teaching speaking skill to students, especially those from ethnic minorities It can be observed that ethnic minority students’ scores are very low in English As result in every year, it is only per cent earn good marks, even in the national graduation exams Furthermore, according to one high school teacher of English, the majority of ethnic minority students can understand forty percent of teachers’ lectures in Vietnamese In some remote areas, lower level students understand less than 20 per cent of what teachers say in Vietnamese (“Minority Students Need”, 2008) Ethnic minority students mainly use their mother tongues – Muong, Thai, Hmong, Tay, Dan Lai, etc… and other languages - to communicate inside their families and small communities From first grade onward, at school and in public places, ethnic minority students have to struggle with 10 ... Teaching and Learning Situation in Con Cuong Ethnic Boarding High School 32 3.1.1 An overview of Con Cuong Ethnic Boarding High School 32 3.1.2 Introduction of the students at Con Cuong. .. teaching English to ethnic minority students has long been a controversial issue This research investigates the difficulties in English speaking skill encountered by 10 th grade students at Con Cuong. .. 2.1.1 Definition of speaking 14 Florez (1991:1) defines speaking as “an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information” (cited in Bailey,