Effects of teacher's feedback on freshmen's motivation in speaking lessons A survey research at Hanoi University of Business and Technology = Ảnh Hưởng từ phản

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
  

TRƯƠNG THỊ HƯƠNG

EFFECTS OF TEACHER'S FEEDBACK ON FRESHMEN'S
MOTIVATION IN SPEAKING LESSONS: A SURVEY
RESEARCH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND
TECHNOLOGY
(Ảnh hưởng từ phản hồi của giáo viên tới động lực học tập của sinh viên
năm thứ nhất trong giờ học nói: Một nghiên cứu tìm hiểu tại Trường Đại
học Kinh Doanh và Công Nghệ Hà Nội)

M.A. MINOR THESIS



Field : English Teaching Methodology
Code : 60 14 10





Hanoi, 2011
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
  

TRƯƠNG THỊ HƯƠNG

EFFECTS OF TEACHER'S FEEDBACK ON FRESHMEN'S
MOTIVATION IN SPEAKING LESSONS: A SURVEY
RESEARCH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND
TECHNOLOGY
(Ảnh hưởng từ phản hồi của giáo viên tới động lực học tập của sinh viên
năm thứ nhất trong giờ học nói: Một nghiên cứu tìm hiểu tại Trường Đại
học Kinh Doanh và Công Nghệ Hà Nội)

M.A. MINOR THESIS



Field : English Teaching Methodology
Code : 60 14 10
Supervisor : Phan Thị Vân Quyên, M.A




Hanoi, 2011

iii

ABSTRACT

Motivation in learning English of the freshmen in Faculty of Accountancy at Hanoi
University of Business and Technology was investigated with two main aspects: (a) types

of motivation in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic orientation, and (b) effects of the teacher's
feedbacks namely corrective feedback, evaluative feedback and strategic feedback on the
freshmen's motivation in speaking lessons. On the base of the findings, some strategies to
increase the motivation in learning English of first-year students in Faculty of Accountancy
were suggested.
Using the survey questionnaires from 286 students and semi-structured interviews
with 20 students who are studying the first year in Faculty of Accountancy, HUBT, the
findings indicated that among those students extrinsic motivation was far more important
than intrinsic motivation, of which studying English to get a good future job was the most
important motivating factor. The findings also revealed among three kinds of feedback in
the study, corrective one was used with the highest level of frequency and was considered
the most effective ways to motivate freshmen at Faculty of Accountancy because they
wanted to master their English proficiency for their future purpose especially their career
future. The teacher used the evaluative feedback very frequently; whereas, the freshmen at
did not think that it was useful. The reason is that when evaluating, their teacher normally
criticized their mistakes, which made them lose face, feel discouraged, feel ashamed, or
even did want to speak any more. In respect of strategic feedback, the teacher exploited it
with a low frequency; however, according to students, they claimed that it was effective
way to motivate their speaking because this kind of feedback could encourage their self-
study with the teacher's advice and suggestion.








iv

Table of contents
Declaration……………………………………………………………………………… i
Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………………… ii
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………….iii
Table of content………………………………………………………………………….iv
List of abbreviation terms……………………………………………………………… vi
List of tables ………… ………………………………………………………………\.vii
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of study 2
3. Research question 2
4. Scope of the study 3
5. Method of the study 3
6. Design of the study 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 4
1.1Speaking skill 4
1.1.1 Definition of speaking skill 4
1.1.2 Elements of speaking skill 4
1.1.3 Students' difficulties in English speaking lessons 5
1.2 Motivation 6
1.2.1 Definition of motivation 6
1.2.2 Kinds of motivation in the second language classroom 7
1.3 Feedback 8
1.3.1 Definition of feedback 8
1.3.2 Types of the teacher's feedback in speaking lessons 9
1.3.3 Effects of the teacher's feedback on students' motivation in speaking lessons 11
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 13
2.1 Context of the study 13
2.2 Subjects 15

2.3 Data collection instruments 15

v

2.4 Data collection procedure 17
2.5 Data analysis 17
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 21
3.1 Findings 18
3.1.1 Freshmen's motivation in learning English 18
3.1.1.1 Extrinsic motivation 19
3.1.1.2 Intrinsic motivation 21
3.1.2 Types of teacher's feedback and its effectiveness in speaking lessons 22
3.1.2.1 Use of teacher's feedback in speaking lessons 23
3.1.2.2 Effectiveness of teacher's feedback in speaking lessons 26
3.1.3 Freshmen's reaction to teacher's feedback in their speaking lessons 27
3.2 Discussions 30
3.2.1 Freshmen's motivations in learning English 30
3.2.2 Teacher's feedback and its effectiveness on freshmen's motivation in speaking
lessons 31
PART C: CONCLUSION 35
1. Summary of the findings and discussion 35
2. Recommendations 35
3. Limitations 37
4. Future Direction. 38
REFERENCES…………………… ………………………………………………… 39
Appendix 1: Questionnaire (in English)……………………………………………… I
Appendix 2: Schmidt et al. (1996) questionnaire IV

vi



LIST OF ABBREVIATION TERMS


HUBT
Hanoi University of Business and Technology
SD
Strongly Disagree
D
Disagree
U
Undecided
A
Agree
SA
Strongly Agree

vii




LIST OF TABLES


Table 1:
The structure of the students' questionnaire…………………………………………
16
Table 2:

Freshmen's motivation in learning English………………………………………….
18
Table 3:
Kinds of teacher's feedback in speaking lessons………………… ………………
22
Table 4:
Use of teacher's feedback in speaking lessons……………… …………………….
23
Table 5:
Effectiveness of teacher's feedback in speaking lessons
25
Table 6:
Freshmen's reaction to teacher's feedback in speaking lessons….………………….
28

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PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
Speaking is "the most important aspect of learning a second language" (Nunan, 1989).
It plays a vital role because it is the first step to identify who know or does not know a
language. Pattison (1992) confirms that when people speak of knowing or learning a
language, they actually mean that they are able to speak the language. It is clear that by
mastering the speaking skills, people can carry out the conversation with other people, give
the ideas and exchange the information. Recognizing its importance, Vietnamese learners
try their utmost to master speaking skills with the hope to improve their language
competence. However, not all students have succeeded in it. Many fail because learning a
language is considered a complex process, which is often affected by many factors such as
attitude, age, intelligence, learning environment, etc. Among them, motivation is believed
to have great impact on success or failure of a language learner. As a result, motivation has
become a key issue in language learning in general and in speaking in particular and has
become the subject of many studies for a long time.
As the matter of facts, students' motivation in speaking -one of the vital aspects of
leaning a foreign language- has been the biggest challenge for Vietnamese students. A
large number of students after a long time learning speaking English have not been able to
speak it skillfully. Many researches have been carried out in attempt to find out the
reasons, the techniques to enhance students' motivation as well as factors affecting it in
speaking class. Among many studies, the researcher realizes that although teachers now
no longer play a dominant role in class, their guidance, and supports have always been of

beneficial help to students. Especially teachers' feedback provision in response to students'
performance is significantly important. Considered "an integral part of the lesson" (Nguyen
et al., 2003), the teacher's feedback is always in need or according to Fanselow (1987) "to
teach is to give feedback". In the current context of teaching and learning English, the
teacher's feedback is really necessary, which helps students find the right ways to improve
their language competence .
At HuBT, English is taught as a compulsory subject for all students of all faculties. For
freshmen who have not been familiar with the ways of studying at university, attending
two or three English classes a week make many students regard English as a burden. Even


2
though they realize that English, especially the speaking skill, is very important and
necessary now and in the future, most of them are afraid of speaking or have no habits of
speaking in the class. Hence, all the teachers of English are master at finding speaking
activities with an attempt to motivate students in speaking but few have exploited the
importance of their feedback to encourage students more involved in speaking English at
least in class. The teachers who have tried smoother ways to give the feedback claimed that
these students seem to be more active when receiving the teacher's comments.
Recently in Vietnam although teacher's feedback has been the subject of many studies,
most of them have tackled about the matter of feedback in writing lessons. Studies on
feedback in speaking lessons are quite small in number. At the Department of English-
Hanoi University of Business and Technology, there have been no attempts in
investigating this issue. Therefore, it is greatly important to research the matter intensively
in the context of teaching and learning speaking skill at this university.
The reasons above have urged the writer herself, who is the teacher of English at
Department of English at HuBT, to explore this matter in an effort to find out how the
teacher's feedback affects the freshmen's motivation and how the teacher should comment
on their speaking to encourage them to speak English. Hopefully, the researcher would
make contribution to complete the insightful understanding about teacher's feedback,

enhancing teaching and learning English, which can lay a foundation for subsequent
research.
2. Aims of study
The study is to investigate the influence of the teacher's feedback on Freshmen's
motivation in speaking lessons.
3. Research question
In order to achieve above-mentioned aim, the following research question is raised in
the study:
- What are the freshmen's motivations in learning English?
- What types of teacher's feedback are currently used in speaking lessons?
- How does the teacher's feedback affect the freshmen's motivation in speaking
lessons?




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4. Scope of the study
Feedback and motivation are such broad topics that cannot be wholly discussed within
the framework of this paper. Thus, this minor thesis attempts to investigate one specific
and commonly practiced aspect: the effects of teacher's feedback on students' motivation in
speaking lessons.
The subjects of the study include 286 freshmen at Department of Accountancy at HuBT
who are not English major but are learning speaking skills adopting the Communicative
language teaching approach. Therefore, it cannot be said that the results of this study are
general to all Vietnamese non-English majors.
5. Method of the study
This study employs a both quantitative and qualitative research methods in order to get
a more detailed and comprehensive picture about what is investigated.
A survey questionnaire done on 286 freshmen in the Faculty of Accountancy to collect

their opinions on the feedback they received, how types of teacher feedback effect their
motivation in speaking, and to gather their recommendations for improving teacher
feedback to help them perform successfully.
An interview conducted with the participation of 20 freshmen selected from survey
population to explore further issues being investigated.
6. Design of the study
This study is composed of three following parts:
Part A: Introduction presents the background, aims, research questions, the significance,
the scope, and the design of the study.
Part B: Development is organized around three chapters as follows.
Chapter 1- Literature review, conceptualizes the framework of the study through the
discussion of issues and ideas on theories of motivation, types of motivation and feedback.
Chapter 2 - Methodology, presents the context, the methodology used in this study
including the subject, the data collection instruments, data collection procedure, and data
analysis
Chapter 3 – Findings and Discussions consists of a comprehensive analysis of the data
and a discussion on the findings of this study.
Part C: Conclusion, offers a summary of the findings, recommendations, limitations, and
future directions for further study.


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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
Language communication is known to involve some language skills, which consists of
four-macro inter-related skills: listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Of the four skills,
speaking plays a vital role because it is the first step to identify who knows or does not
know a language. Pattison (1992) confirms that when people speak of knowing or learning
a language they actually mean that they are able to speak the language.
1.1 Speaking skill

1.1.1 Definition of speaking skill
There are many definitions for the term "speaking". According to Bygate (1987),
speaking, in many ways, is an undervalued skill. The reason given is that most of us can
speak, so we take the skill too much for granted. As a result, if teachers consider speaking
as facial, superficial, they will largely focus on the teaching of oral language itself- not in
the relationship with other skills.
Bygate (1987) mentions "speaking is a skill which deserves attention every bit as much
as literary skills, in both first and second language." To achieve something in the life such
as social solidarity, social ranking, or professional advance, and things like that, our
learners often need to be able to speak. Therefore much more attention should be paid to
the teaching of speaking.
1.1.2 Elements of speaking skill
It now clear that both fluency and accuracy are important goals to pursue in teaching
speaking skills.
Recognizably, accuracy is one of the most important criteria to measure students'
linguistic ability and to shelter language user from communication breakdown. According
to Richards (1992), accuracy concerns "the ability to produce grammatically correct
sentence." It means that accuracy means grammatical accuracy only. However, in Brown
(1994), the term "accuracy" covers more than that. Accuracy is achieved to some extent by
allowing students to focus on the elements of phonology, grammar, and discourse in their
spoken output. To support this idea, Thornbury (2000) sets the clear scale for assessment
of accuracy. First, in grammar, students use correct words order, tenses, tenses agreement,
do not leave out articles, prepositions, or difficult tenses. In addition to grammar, to


5
acquire the accuracy in speaking, students have a range of vocabulary that corresponds to
the syllabus year lists and use words that the teacher has taught.
Fluency is also used as a criterion to measure one's speaking competence. Brown
(1994) mentions fluency may in many communicative language courses be an initial goal

in language teaching. Speaking fluently means being able to communicate one's ideas
without having to stop and think too much about what one is saying. Richard (1992)
defines fluency "the features which give speech the qualities of being natural and normal."
More specifically, Thornbury (1992) points out the criteria to assess the fluency ability.
Firstly, about the speed of speaking, students speak smoothly, at a natural speech and do
not hesitate long and it is easy to follow what they are saying. Secondly, about the length,
students can put the ideas together to form a message or an argument. They can make not
only the simplest of sentence patterns but also complex one to complete the task. Finally,
students must be independent in expressing their ideas in a number of ways, keeping
talking and asking questions and keeping the conversation going.
1.1.3 Students' difficulties in English speaking lessons
As mentioned in the previous part, speaking come naturally to human. However, in fact
it is not as simple as it seems. Ur (1996) brings out four potential issues that students have
to face in the English class. Firstly, because of being worried about making mistakes,
criticism, losing face, or shyness, students are often inhibited in speaking in the English
class. Secondly, because of limited language, students cannot express their opinions. As a
result, they keep silent during the lessons. Thirdly, since students are of different levels,
better students often dominate the time of speaking while worse ones are silent. Finally,
because English is taught as the foreign language, students prefer the mother tongue to
English. They find it easy and convenient to communicate with others and feel "exposed"
in their language. It is a challenging job for the teachers if they have a less disciplined or
motivated class.
To share Ur's ideas, Davies (2000) describes some challenges in the English class.
First, many students do no like speaking in front of group of people just because of
worrying about producing utterances with many errors or oddities in them. Second,
students' strong regional accents make them disadvantageous to pronounce words correctly
and be understood. Finally, some students cannot follow the speaking lessons because
speaking takes place in "real" time, and speakers do not usually have to construct their

6
utterances carefully. They have to do many things all together: understand what the other
person is saying, say what they want to when they get the chance to speak, be prepared for
unexpected changes of topic.
Thus, for an effective speaking lesson, the teacher should be aware of these problems to
have appropriate strategies to motivate the students. According to Davies (2000), the
teacher should try to create a relaxed atmosphere in their class, creating many speaking
activities in pairs or in groups so that most students are not frightened of speaking in front
of class. Besides, the teacher should balance the activities in class to motivate worse
students and to give them chances of speaking. It is clear that the most important purpose
is how to enhance students' motivation in the lessons. Because of its vital role in speaking
lesson, the next part will deal with motivation.
1.2 Motivation
1.2.1 Definition of motivation
Since motivation is not only a vital but also a highly complex factor determining more
or less successful language learning, many researchers have tried to study motivation in
foreign and second language learning in order to bring out better insights into it.
Brown (1994) offers definition of motivation drawn from a number of different sources:
"motivation is the extent to which you make choices about (a) goals pursue and (b) the
effort you will devote to that pursuit." There are varying ways to interpret this definition,
however, the writer focuses on the theories of motivation in term of two opposing "camps".
In the first camp, the author stresses the importance of rewards and reinforcement as goals
that motivate human beings to pursue. On the other hand, in the second camp, the author
emphasizes unobservable phenomena as keys factors to motivate people. To support this
idea, Zoltan Dornyei (2001) considers motivation as a determining factor to explain why
people decide to do something, how hard they are going to pursue it and how long they are
willing to sustain the activities.
Motivation is not only an intensive desire for learning and acquiring knowledge of
English, but also an inner cause that push students forward in English learning with
enthusiasm and willingness. According to Yuan Kong (2009), motivation is something like

the engine and steering wheel of an automobile that can move students from boredom to
interest. It is an inner power to drive and preserves students in English learning. Garder
(1985b) indicates that motivation involves four factors including a goal, effortful behavior,


7
a desire to attain the goal and favorable attitudes towards the activity in question. Students
who have strong learning motivation take a correct and positive attitude towards study and
make great efforts to master English with clear goal and desire and consequently gain
better grade than those who are not motivated and thus, those students usually regard
English learning as a heavy and boring burden.
1.2.2 Kinds of motivation in the second language classroom
What kinds of motivation do students have? Are they always the same? Brown (2007)
clarifies two kinds of motivation namely intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation refers
to students who learn for their own desires demands. On the other hand, extrinsic
motivation is used to talk about ones who learn because of outside factors like prizes or
complements from others.
To support Brown's idea, in one hand Edward Deci (1975) defines "intrinsically
motivated activities are ones for which there is no apparent reward except the activity
itself". Students seem to engage in the activities for their own sake and not because they
lead to an extrinsic reward. On the other hand, he mentions that extrinsic motivation is
fueled by the anticipation of a reward from outside and beyond the self. Typical extrinsic
rewards are money, prizes, grades, and even certain types of positive feedback.
Deci and Ryan‟s (1985) theory of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation and self-determination
is one of the most influential theories in mainstream motivational psychology (Dornyei,
2001, p.58). The theory distinguishes between two main kinds of motivation: intrinsic and
extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation deals with individual‟s motivation to perform a particular
activity for its own sake in order to experience pleasure and satisfaction, such as the joy of
doing a particular activity or satisfying one‟s curiosity. Extrinsically motivated individual,
on the other hand, perform a specific activity to achieve some instrumental end such as

earning a reward (e.g. good grades) or avoiding punishment (Dornyei, 2001).
Jeremy (1991) views two types of motivation namely extrinsic and intrinsic motivation
from a different perspective. Firstly, he considers extrinsic motivation as factors which
affect students outside the classroom. It means that some students study a language
because they have an idea of something that they wish to achieve. He also suggests two
main types of the extrinsic motivation as integrative and instrumental motivation. In the
strong form of integrative motivation, students need to be attracted by the culture of the
target language community, and they wish to integrate themselves into that culture. A


8
weaker form of integrative motivation would be the desire to know as much as possible
about the culture of the target language community. For the instrumental motivation,
students believe that mastery of the target language will be instrumental in getting them a
better job, position or status. The language is an instrument in their attainment of such a
goal. Secondly, he relates intrinsic motivation to what takes place inside the classroom.
He says that intrinsic motivation plays a vital part in most students' success or failure as
language learners. For them what happens in the classroom will be of vital importance in
determining their attitude to the language, and in supplying motivation, which we have
suggested is a vital component in successful language
A question raised here is that which form of motivation more powerful is. Many
researchers agree that to be successful in language learning students need intrinsic
motivation rather than extrinsic one. Maslow (1970) claims that intrinsic motivation is
clearly superior to extrinsic. Motivation is dependent on the satisfaction of fundamental
physical necessities. It is also true in learning a language. Students study hard to satisfy
their own desire such as achieving some goals in language learning. Jerome Bruner
(1996b), praising the "autonomy of self-reward", claimed that one of the most effective
ways to help both children and adults think and learn is to free them from the control of
rewards and punishments. As a result, in language teaching, the teacher should help the
students to increase their intrinsic motivation. Dorneyei and Csizerv (1998), for example,

in a survey of Hungarian teachers of English, proposed taxonomy of factors by which
teachers could motivate their learners. They cited factors such as developing relationship
with learners, building learners' self-confidence and autonomy, personalizing the learning
process, and increasing learners' goal-orientation. These all fall into the intrinsic side of
motivation.
There are many aspects which influence the students ' motivation in learning. Among
them feedback plays an important part. The following part will discuss the teacher's
feedback and how it effects students' motivation in speaking lessons.
1.3 Feedback
1.3.1 Definition of feedback
In the context of teaching and learning language, there have been various studies to
look at the roles of feedback. Most of them share the idea that the purpose of providing
feedback is to tell the students about their progress and show them their errors to guide


9
them to areas for improving their English competence. According to Ur(1996), feedback is
"information that is given to the learners about his or her performance of a learning task,
usually with the objective of improving this performance." To support this idea, Ellis
(1985) defines the feedback as "response to efforts by the learners to communicate.
Feedback can involve such functions as corrections, acknowledgement, requests for
clarification, and backchannel cues such as "Mmm"". Written in Ferris (1999), feedback is
viewed as "any response a teacher may give his or her students."
Traditionally, Ypsilandis (2002) considers the feedback as the "reaction, a response that
is usually triggered and received by the learners and provided by teacher" and as an
"assistance mechanism, a key factor for successful learning, offering support to the
learning process."
Accordingly, from the views of different researchers, there are two matters. First, the
question of quality feedback comes into considerable concerns. Second, there is the
distinction between feedback and criticism. Robert (2003) proposes "feedback should only

ever be used as a basis for improvement. It should not be mistaken for negative criticism
and vice verse." It is clear that to help student improve their learning, the teacher's
feedback should based on the facts given without personal opinion.
In short, feedback should be used for more than correction, also be a motivating factor.
Feedback provision can be among peers or between teachers and students; however, in this
study, the research just focus on the notion of teaching-learning between the teacher and
students.
1.3.2 Types of the teacher's feedback in speaking lessons
From the studies, the writer could find the various ways of classifying the teacher's
feedback.
Gattullo (2000) and Harmer (2001) decide feedback into corrective, evaluative and
strategic. Corrective feedback focuses on helping learners notice and correct errors. This
type of feedback explains why responses are correct or wrong. In learning speaking,
corrective feedback will primarily concern with accuracy. Evaluative feedback aims to
provide a judgment on the students' performance. Gattullo (2000) suggests that evaluate
feedback is dominant in second and foreign language classroom. In giving evaluative
feedback, teachers use words and phrases to indicate the extent to which students'
performance is good or not. Finally, strategic feedback usually aims to offer students


10
advice on what to do to improve their performance. In other word, the teachers try to
suggest ways of helping students to overcome their mistakes.
Hattie and Timperley (2007) distinguish four levels of feedback: feedback about the
task, about the processing of the task, about self-regulation, and about the self as a person.
Firstly, feedback about the task includes information about errors, about the depth or
quality of the work, about a need for more information, or about neatness or format.
Secondly, Feedback about process gives students information about how they approached
the task, information about the relationship between what they did and the quality of their
performance, and information about possible alternative strategies that would also be

useful. Thirdly, self-regulation is the process students use to monitor and control their own
learning. Self-regulation can lead to students seeking, accepting, and acting on feedback
information—or not. Finally, feedback about the person is generally not a good idea
because it is not formative. The feedback about the person can contribute to students'
belief that intelligence is fixed. This implies that achievement is something beyond the
students' control. The belief that intelligence is fixed removes the connection between
student effort and achievement (Dweck, 2007).
Schachter "(1991) considers corrective feedback, negative feedback and positive
feedback three terms used in the field of language teaching, language acquisition and
cognitive psychology. Corrective feedback is used to correct the students' mistake. Positive
feedback shows learners that the teacher is interested in what they say and at the same time
encourage them. Though, negative feedback expresses the teacher's displeasure, frustration
or involves some kinds of punishment towards the students' bad performance.
According to Bichener et al (2005), the feedback can be explicit or implicit. The
explicit feedback includes grammatical explanation or overt error correction. The implicit
feedback refers to the situation when teachers point out an error without correct form
provision containing confirmation checks, repetition, recasts, classification request, silence
and even facial expression that express confusion.
Personally, among many ways of categorizing teacher feedback in speaking, the
researcher is interested in the classification of the feedback into three types as corrective,
evaluative and strategic by Gattullo (2000) and Harmer (2001) because it is considered the
most appropriate for the situation of this study. Through questionnaire and interview, this


11
study aims to find out how these types of teacher feedback influence the students‟
motivation in speaking.
Thus, the use of appropriate types of feedback can be viewed as a significant in
enhancing students learning. The following part will mention how the teacher's feedback
affects the students motivation in the speaking lessons.

1.3.3 Effects of the teacher's feedback on students' motivation in speaking
lessons
Within L2/foreign language learning research, there is a tendency to conceive the
teacher‟s feedback as positive effects in speaking lessons. Specifically, Nugrahenny‟s
study (2007) aims to explore students' attitudes towards teacher feedback. A total of 100
students participated in filling in the questionnaires and 21 of them were interviewed using
a semi-structured format. In addition, there were 20 teachers who completed the
questionnaires and 10 of them were interviewed using the same semi-structured format.
The finding shows that generally teachers and students have a marked preference for
teacher feedback. Interestingly, student preferences for teacher feedback also stemmed
from their awareness that teachers control grades.
In correspondence with Nurgrahenny's result (2007), most of the students participating
in Salle (2011) and Chan (2008) recent studies show their preference to the teacher‟s
feedback. Both Salle (2011) and Chan (2008) share the idea that their students are
motivated when being given feedback by the teacher not by peer. In addition, students in
Terese‟s study (2005) reflect that they are satisfied because their teachers always
remember to give feedback during the lessons especially corrective and positive ones.
Furthermore, they express the satisfaction when receiving positive feedback and their
expectation that even when it is not positive one, it should be delivered in positive way.
Since teachers play a crucial role in teaching and learning process, their behaviors have
great influence on students‟ motivation. According to Dornyei (2001), almost everything a
teacher does in the classroom has a motivational influence on students, which makes
teacher behavior a powerful „motivational tool‟. To be more detailed, Stipek (1996)
mentions the effect of feedback on the students' motivation. In his study, a reward, a
positive and extremely evaluative type of feedback has had a great impact on intrinsic
motivation. Based on the studies reviewed, he summarizes that the effect of rewards is not


12
straightforward. Rewards undermine intrinsic interest to the degree that they are perceived

to be controlling, and the controlling functions can be conveyed in variable and stable
ways. It means that when the information value of rewards is salient- when rewards are
interpreted as conveying positive information about competence- they can actually increase
intrinsic motivation.
Schunk (1983) conducts an experiment to examine the effects of ability and effort
attributional feedback on children. The result shows that children who receive ability
feedback only had the highest self-efficacy and perform best. Actually, this study was
particularly focused on one type of positive and evaluative feedback: encouragement. It
demonstrates the value of attribution theory in understanding the effect of this type of
feedback on motivation. However, the study is so focused; it does not examine the effects
of other types of feedback, and how the effects of this type of feedback differ from the
effects of other types.
Hattie and Kimberly (2007) assert in their revision that "the teachers' feedback is one of
the most powerful influences on learning achievement". Frienmuth (1998) states that the
teacher's feedback helps to "improve learners' accuracy and acquisition." To the researcher,
the indispensable role of teachers' feedback can be shown in the fact that teacher's feedback
reflects to students what and how they perform, showing them their strong points to
strengthen as well as the weak points to improve. Noticeably, when students have mistakes
untreated, the defective language might serve as an input model and acquired by other
students in the class. In short, students without the teachers' feedback, run a high risk of
losing their way. Added to this, Moss (2002) proposes that teachers' feedback can speed up
the process of language learning by providing information about rules and the limits of
language use, which would otherwise take students a long time to deduce their own.
In brief, teachers' feedback is considered "a prime requirement for process in learning"
as proposed in Tunstall and Gipps (1996). Therefore, "giving feedback is one of the role
key that teachers play in class" (Al Fahdis, 2005). However, not every teacher is successful
in doing this job. It demands teachers' flexibility in applying appropriate types of feedback
in the particular situation.

13
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
In this chapter, the context and the subject of the study, the data collection instruments, the
data collection procedure, and the data analysis procedure will be presented.
2.1 Context of the study
This study is conducted at Hanoi University of Business and Technology (HUBT), a
private university in Hoang Mai District, Hanoi, Vietnam. HUBT is rather famous for
providing good training in two main fields: business and technology. Business involves
several different majors such as Banking and Finance, Accounting, Business
Administration and Commerce. Of all, Accounting is the most chosen majors of HUBT.
Every year there are approximately 1,000 new students enrolling in Faculty of
Accountancy; this faculty hence receives a lot of attention of the university.
At HUBT, English is considered an extremely important subject to all students
regardless the majors they are learning; the students hence have to study English during
three and a half years at HUBT and to complete 72 credits of English (equivalent to 1080
periods) before taking the Graduation examination by the end of the fourth year. In
addition, HUBT always looks for new ways to improve the quality of teaching and
learning English. Hence, in the school year 2010-2011, HUBT plans to pilot a new English
course called DynEd with the freshmen (K15). DynEd is an English-learning software that
allows students to learn English online so that they can practice English more at home, and
teachers can easily manage their study records via the Internet. With this program,
hopefully, by the end of the first year, students can obtain 1.2- 1.5 in the placement test,
which is equivalent to 550-650 TOEIC or A2-B1 in the Common European Framework.
Specifically, students should be able to:
 understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most
immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping,
local geography, employment).

 communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of
information on familiar and routine matters.
 describe in simple terms aspects of his/her background, immediate environment
and matters in areas of immediate need.
 understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly
encountered in work, school, leisure, etc.


14
 deal with most situations likely to arise whilst traveling in an area where the
language is spoken.
 produce simple connected text on topics that are familiar or of personal interest.
 describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes & ambitions and briefly give
reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.
Learning English has still some difficulties in general and in speaking in particular.
For freshmen, English is taught three lessons per week. Each lesson is divided into 2 parts:
working with computers in the lab and learning 3 kills namely reading, speaking, writing in
the normal classroom. To be more detailed, in the lab, the direct interaction between
students-students and teacher-students is limited because most of the time students spend
time practicing with computers: listen and answer the questions shown in the video, and
then shadow and record their own voice to compare with the native speakers. As a result,
students hardly receive the teacher's feedback except for listening to the instruction and the
knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. In classroom, the most common activities in
speaking lessons are individual and pairs work with the same frame activities for all weeks
during the semester. Therefore, they feel demotivated because they have to follow the same
steps, to perform the same activities and to do the same tasks given in the handouts.
What is more, to prepare for students to learn English well, about 20 multi-media
classrooms are settled. In each of these classrooms, there are computers, projectors, and
screens. In addition, high quality equipment (e.g. CD-players, tape players, and reference
books) is also available. Each week, students will have one video lesson that focuses on

practicing listening skills and pronunciation. Moreover, on average, there are about 30
students in each English class, which is a good size for a language class.
The assessment is based on two examinations per each semester namely End-of-
semester exam and Computer-based Multiple-choice Test. At the End-of-semester exam,
students‟ four English skills, Speaking-Listening-Writing-Reading are assessed. After that,
students will take Computer-based Multiple-choice test consisting of 120 multiple-choice
questions in 90 minutes. All multiple-choice questions are based on what students have
learnt in the course books.
English teachers at HUBT graduated from different universities in Vietnam. Moreover,
most of them are very young, enthusiastic, and dynamic. Nevertheless, some of the


15
teachers were not trained to be teachers. For those teachers classroom management is
difficult, especially when some pedagogical situations happen.
2.2 Subjects
Initially all 300 first- year students (equivalent with 30 classes) who are studying the
first year in Faculty of Accountancy at HUBT were invited to participate in this study. All
of those students were born in 1990 or 1991. They come from different parts of Vietnam
(from rural/mountainous areas to big cities). That explains why they have experienced
different methods of instructions and achieved different levels of English proficiency.
These students have studied English for at least eight years, and are going to finish the first
year of studying business English at HUBT at the time of the study (4 weeks before the
end of the school year); thus, they are supposed to be familiar with the teaching and
learning methods at HUBT. However, all of them use Vietnamese in their daily
conversations, and they rarely have chances to use English as a means of communication,
except for some time in the classroom with teachers and classmates.
300 freshmen at Faculty of Accountancy participating in the study are assumed by the
researcher as more motivated to learn English and more proficient than those of other
disciplines such as Architecture or Electricity because of present academic and future

career requirements. Therefore, this sample does not necessary present the whole
population of the university. Because of the scope of the study, the researcher tries to
sketch one small aspect of teaching and learning speaking English of the freshmen at this
department: effects of the teacher's feedback on their motivation.
2.3 Data collection instruments
This study employs both quantitative and qualitative research methods in order to get a
more detailed and comprehensive picture about what is investigated.
In this study, qualitative data is gained from semi-structured interviews and quantitative
data is achieved from self-report questionnaire. Self-report questionnaire is used in this
study since motivation, as Dornyei (2001) states, is “an abstract term that refers to various
internal processes and states. It is therefore not subject to direct observation but must be
inferred from some indirect indicator, such as the individual‟s self-report accounts”. In
order to ensure that the participants can understand correctly the content of the
questionnaire and the interview, both of them are conducted in Vietnamese.


16
The questionnaire consists of three parts. The table 2 displays the structure of the
questionnaire.
Part I: Motivational Questionnaire. The Motivational Questionnaire (Question 1)
includes two compositions: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic
motivation consist of 5 items (statements 2,4,6,8,10) and extrinsic motivation includes 5
items (statements 1,3,5,7,9). The Intrinsic-Extrinsic Motivational Questionnaire designed
by Schmidt et al. (1996) (see Appendix 4) is used as the base for the researcher to develop
this questionnaire since Schmidt et al. (1996) study focuses on intrinsic-extrinsic
motivation of EFL adult learners in Egypt, which seems to be similar to the participants
and context of this study. However, it is too long to apply all the 20 items of Schmidt et al.
(1996); hence, the writer only chose 10 items which most obviously indicate intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation factors and also are most appropriate with Vietnamese students.
Part II: Feedback questionnaire. This part includes three questions (from question 2 to

question 4). Question 2 (10 statements) is about the frequency of using three kinds of the
teacher's feedback namely corrective feedback (statement 1,3,5,7), evaluative feedback
(statement 6,8,9,10 ),and strategic feedback (statement 2,4 ). Questions 3 focuses on the
effectiveness of three kinds of feedback mentioned above. Specifically, the effectiveness of
corrective feedback is mentioned in 4 statements (1,3,5,7), the effectiveness of evaluative
includes 4 items (statement 6,8,9,10), and the effectiveness of strategic consists 2 items
(statement 2,4 ). Question 4 is designed to find out the students' reaction to teacher's
feedback on their speaking.

Table 1: Structure of the students' questionnaire
Content
Category
Question (Q) and
Statement (S)
Part I
Type of motivation
Extrinsic motivation
Q1(S2,S4,S6, S8,S10)
Intrinsic motivation
Q1 (S1,S3, S5, S7,S9)



Part III
Teacher's Feedback
Frequency of Corrective feedback
Q2 (S1,S3,S5,S7)
Frequency of Evaluative feedback
Q2 (S6,S8,S9,S10)
Frequency of Strategic feedback

Q2 (S2,S4)
Effectiveness of Corrective
feedback
Q3 (S1,S3,S5,S7)


17
Effectiveness of evaluative
feedback
Q3 (S6,S8,S9,S10)
Effectiveness of strategic
feedback
Q3 (S2,S4)
Freshmen's reaction to teacher's
feedback on their speaking
Q4

The semi-structured interviews with 20 students who participated in doing the
questionnaire are aimed to obtain more detailed and comprehensive information about
freshmen's motivation in learning English and the effects of teacher's feedback on their
motivation in speaking lessons.
2.4 Data collection procedure
The questionnaire was first piloted to a small sample of 30 students to check its validity
and reality. The piloted questionnaire then was re-edited, and administered to 300 students
four weeks before the end of school- year (2010-2011). Fortunately, 286 out of 300
questionnaires were returned.
After the researcher analyzed the questionnaires, 20 student infromants were chosen to
be interviewed, 10 of them were identified as extrinsically motivated learners and the
other were intrinsically motivated. These interviews were also conducted directly. All the
content of the interviews were typed into Words for analyzing.

2.5 Data analysis
After all the questionnaires were returned, the researcher printed them out to check,
sort, and number. For each part of the questionnaire, the total number of respondents was
counted and compared using the functions DCOUNT, AVERAGE, and SUM.
All the content of the interviews with 20 students were typed. The writer read each
response of each student to sort out the reasons for their English learning, and frequency of
the use of their teacher's using feedback as well as its effects on their motivation in
speaking lessons.
Thus, so far, this chapter has presented in detail the context, the subject, the two sets of
instruments, and the procedure of collecting data and analyzing data of the study. The
following chapter will deal with the findings and discussions.



18
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
In this chapter, the students’ motivation in learning English in terms of extrinsic and
intrinsic motivation, as well the teacher's feedback affecting the students’ motivation in
speaking English classes, which are reflected through the data of the conducted
questionnaire and the semi-structured interviews, will be in focus. This comprehensive
analysis leads to a better understanding of the type of motivation and the kinds of
feedbacks that affect the students' motivation to speak English, in turn, will lay a firm
foundation for a discussion and further recommendations in the following part of the study.
3.1 Findings
3.1.1 Freshmen's motivation in learning English
The questionnaire items were divided into two different categories, namely Intrinsic
Motivation and Extrinsic Motivation. The function DCOUNT was used to count the
frequency of each answer choice, namely 1-Strongly Disagree (SD), 2-Disagree (D), 3-
Undecided (U), 4-Agree (A), and 5-Strongly Agree (SA) of all the respondents to each
item (1,2,3,4,etc.) in each category of the questionnaire. The functions SUM and

AVERAGE were applied to calculate the total number and the average number of
participants choosing the choice SD, D, SD and D, U, A, SA, and A and SA. Then the total
number of SD and D and the total number of A and SA were compared.
Table 2: Freshmen's motivations in learning English
Statements
SD
D
U
A
SA
%
%
%
%
%
Extrinsic motivation
1. I learn English because it is a compulsory
subject at HUBT.
10.4
17
0
46.5
26.2
3. I learn English in order to get a better job in the
future.
0
0
0
17.5
82.5

5. The main reason I am taking this class is that my
parents/my teachers want me to improve my
English.
47.2
21
0
27.3
4.5
7. I need to learn English only to pass the exams at
10.5
16.8
3.5
65.7
3.5