Factors demotivating students to participate in English speaking lessons at Viet-Hung Industrial University = Những nhân tố làm sinh viên giảm hứng thú tham gia

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



NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG



FACTORS DEMOTIVATING STUDENTS TO
PARTICIPATE IN ENGLISH SPEAKING
LESSONS AT VIET-HUNG INDUSTRIAL
UNIVERSITY

(Những nhân tố làm sinh viên giảm hứng thú tham gia vào các giờ
học nói Tiếng Anh tại Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Việt – Hung)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field of study: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10



Hanoi – 2013

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

NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG



FACTORS DEMOTIVATING STUDENTS TO
PARTICIPATE IN ENGLISH SPEAKING
LESSONS AT VIET-HUNG INDUSTRIAL
UNIVERSITY

(Những nhân tố làm sinh viên giảm hứng thú tham gia vào các giờ
học nói Tiếng Anh tại Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Việt – Hung)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field of study: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10
Supervisor: Phùng Thị Kim Dung, M.A.


Hanoi – 2013
vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
LIST OF TABLES iv

LIST OF CHARTS v
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

PART ONE – INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationales 1
2. Objectives of the study 2
3. Scope of the study 2
4. Methods 3
5. Design of the study 3
PART TWO – DEVELOPMENT 5
CHAPTER 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW 5
1.1. Theoretical background of speaking skill 5
1.1.1. Characteristics of speaking skill 5
1.1.2. The roles of speaking in ELT 7
1.2. Theoretical background of demotivation 7
1.2.1. Conception of demotivation 7
1.2.2. The concept of demotivation as identified in previous studies 8
1.2.2.1. Demotivating factors identified by Dörnyei 8
1.2.2.2. Demotivating factors identified by Oxford 11
CHAPTER 2 – METHODOLOGY 13
2.1. Research questions 13
2.2. Data collection and analysis 13
viii

2.2.1. Data collection 13
2.2.2. Data analysis 13
2.3. Subjects 13
2.4. Instruments 14
2.5. The research context 15

CHAPTER 3 – DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 18
3.1 Data analysis of students’ response 18
3.2. Data analysis of teachers’ responses 27
3.3. Findings and recommendations 36
3.3.1. Summary of the findings 36
3.3.2. Recommendations 38
PART THREE – CONCLUSION 41
1. Summary of the study 41
2. Limitations of the study 41
3. Suggestions for further studies 42
REFERENCES 43
APPENDICES I
Appendix 1 I
Appendix 2 VI
Appendix 3 XII
Appendix 4 XVII








1

PART ONE - INTRODUCTION
This chapter works as the guideline for readers to understand what will be
discussed in the whole research. It means that this part will give the rationales, the
significance and purposes, the scope, the method and the design of the rest of the

study.
1. Rationales
It cannot be denied that English has become more and more important in
every part of the world. As a result, the need of having good ability of English also
increases. People want to communicate in English fluently, so they spend money
and time attempting to learn it. In Vietnam, English language’s role has gotten
bigger and become a compulsory subject at every level of education (school, college
and university).
Realizing the necessity of English in the development of the society in
general and of each individual in particular, every learner wants to be competent in
English and uses it to communicate with foreigners. That’s why most schools now
focus on developing students’ ability of speaking English. Indeed, different skills
(Speaking, Listening, Reading, and Writing) have certain roles in English language
learning, but the final aim of learners is to use spoken language to communicate
with other people. Communication is a basic and necessary demand for everyone
and people have to learn how to speak. Moreover, speaking is considered having
more important place than other skills. Mastering speaking skill can reinforce
learners to gain better achievement in other skills such as Listening, Reading, and
Writing.
Because of vital position of speaking, learners of English should have
motivation and positive attitude to learning English speaking. But contrary to
popular belief, in the process of teaching and learning to speak English, students
have to deal with a number of difficulties including the factors demotivating
students to speak.
2

In Viet-Hung University, speaking skill is also a focus. However, a lot of
them confide that they are not willing to take part in speaking lessons. Obviously,
there may exist certain factors that deter students from participating in speaking
classes.

In an attempt to find out the causes of the situation, the author had decided to
attend some English speaking sessions. She discovered that the students, most of the
time, just like to listen and kept silent when being required to say something. Even
when the teachers tried to organize activities to stir up the atmosphere, no big
changes ever happened. Thus, it is a real challenge for them to get students to be
involved teaching. The idea of working out the factors that demotivate students to
learn speaking skills has urged the author to embark on the study entitled
“Factors demotivating students to participate in English speaking lessons at
Viet – Hung Industrial University”. This study is valuable not only for teachers of
English but also for the learners who learn English. Being aware of the factors that
make learners less interested in speaking English, teachers can work out the way to
encourage learners to enjoy learning. The author hopes that with the results of this
study, Viet-Hung University students will find English speaking lessons exciting
and are willing to take part in.
2. Objectives of the study
The study is conducted to achieve three main objectives:
+ to investigate Viet-Hung University students’ attitudes to learning English
speaking skills.
+ to explore the factors that demotivate students of Viet-Hung University to
get involved in the English speaking lessons.
+ to recommend some solutions to remove these demotivating factors from
English speaking sessions.
3. Scope of the study
Speaking skill is a large topic that consists of many aspects. However, in this
study, the author only focuses on the factors that make students of Viet-Hung
3

University uninterested in participating in English speaking lessons. In addition,
Viet-Hung Industrial University is a big university, so this minor thesis cannot get
all students involved. Instead, the author decides to randomly choose the second-

year students of Banking and Financing Faculty as participants. In addition, the
University offers both English for General Purposes (EGP) and English for Specific
Purposes (ESP) courses, but the characteristics of English in two courses are
different and the demotivating factors may not be similar. As a result, this research
only focuses on the factors appearing in EGP. She hopes that other aspects of
speaking would be conducted on other groups of students by other researchers.
4. Methods
To reach the aims of the study, quantitative and qualitative methods have
been used. Firstly, quantitative approach is used to classify features, count them,
and construct statistical models. In this research, the quantitative data are gained
form the two sets of questionnaires, one for teachers and the other for students of
Viet-Hung Industrial University. The second method of analyzing the data is
qualitative method. According to Miles and Huberman (1994), qualitative approach
is the one in which the researcher study things in their natural settings, attempting to
make sense of, or to interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to
them. Data for qualitative analysis is in the form of words, pictures or objects and
instruments are often participant observation and in-depth interviews. In this
research, in order to obtain qualitative information conducts some short interviews
with six teachers of English of the University for further information to support the
thesis.
5. Design of the study
This minor thesis consists of three parts:
 The first part presents the factors such as the rationale, objectives,
scope, methods and design of the study.
4

 The second part is the body of the study, in which a theoretical
background, research methodology and results and discussions were
presented.
 The final part gives the summary of the study, the limitations of the

study and some suggestions for further research related to English
speaking skill and demotivation.























5

PART TWO - DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW
In this part, the author would like to give short theoretical background of

motivation, demotivation and some information related to speaking skill and
speaking lessons.
1.1. Theoretical background of speaking skill
In language teaching and learning, we often talk about the four language
skills (Listening, Writing, Reading, and Speaking) in terms of their direction and
modality. Speaking is regarded as the way of measuring the language competence
of a language user. Thus, the ability of speaking fluently is more important than
being good at reading, or writing. As a result, the main aim of every system of
education is to develop speaking skill among learners. In this part, the author will
present what speaking skill is, the nature of language skills, characteristics of
speaking skill, and some theoretical information about speaking lessons.
1.1.1. Characteristics of speaking skill
Speaking has the characteristics which are as follows:
To begin with, its form and meaning depend on the context in which it
occurs. The context consists of the participants and their experiences, the
physical environment, and the purposes for speaking. In other words, spoken
language is context bound. The interlocutors share the immediate within which
the dialogue takes place; hence much information is implicit and assumed
(McCathy, 1998).
The second characteristic is that speaking relies on the speakers’
understanding of common conventional expressions for communicating specific
meanings, particularly on the language environment apart from such aspects as
grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary.
That speech has its own skills, structures, and conventions is the third
characteristic. It means that skills, structures and conventions of speech are
different from the written language. In his book, Bygate (1987) said that “The
6

words are being spoken as they are being decided and as they are being
understood.” The fact that the words are spoken and decided at the same time

has big effect on the speaker’s ability to plan and organize the message and to
control the language being used. Indeed, the length and complexity of spoken
sentences cannot be the same as the ones in written ones because the speakers do
not have as much time to plan and prepare as the writers. Moreover, speakers
often make more mistakes in their utterances than the writers in terms of both
the message and the words. We may forget what we intend to say and repeat
what we have already mentioned. The words are also being spoken as they are
being understood. When the sentences are uttered, they go immediately. They
cannot be reread like in writing, which can lead to misunderstanding when the
listeners miss some part of what the speakers have said because of the noise, or a
moment’s distraction.
The last characteristic is that speaking is considered an undervalued skill in
many ways (Bygate 1987). The reason is that almost all people can speak and try
to speak. He also states that speaking should get as much attention as literacy
skills. Learners often need to be able to speak with confidence in order to carry
out the basic transactions. Moreover, in most speaking, the person to whom we are
speaking is in front of us and be able to put us right if we make mistakes. He is the
speaker’s listener who generally shows agreement and understanding, or
incomprehension. Thus, speakers need to have patience and imagination, too. He
has to take notice of the way the listeners feel and behave by giving them chance
to speak. At the same time they can play the role of the listeners and the speaker.
By this way a listener can help the speaker be more improved and competent
because a listener can give learners models to utilize when acting a speaker. In
addition, being a hearer first helps the learner appreciate the difficulties inherent
in the task. It is clear that giving a speaker experience in a hearer’s role is more
helpful than simple practice in tasks in which a speaker is having real difficulties
in appreciating what a particular task requires.
7

In short, speaking is the key to communication. In order to help the learners

to be competent in speaking skills, teachers should be good at how to conduct the
speaking activities, what task to use in the class.
1.1.2. The roles of speaking in ELT
Speaking is a productive skill which is more complicated than it seems at
first and involves more than just pronouncing words. In fact, the ability to operate in
a second language can be measured by the ability to speak that language. Thus, as
mentioned before, of our skills, speaking is considered the most important for the
following reasons:
Firstly, the final aim of learning a language is to use it to communicate with
the others. Communication is regarded as the basic demand of human. Thus, to talk
with other people, we should learn how to speak. Learners need this skill to be
competent so that they can establish and maintain relationship, negotiate and
influence other people as well.
Another reason is that, on the one hand, in order for every language learner
to speak a foreign language, it’s necessary for them to know certain amount of
grammar and vocabulary which help build the form of the ideas. In fact, on the
other hand, a lot of language learners are quite competent in grammar and have
good knowledge of vocabulary, but they do not know how to produce good
utterances or speech. In this case, speaking skill plays its role.
In short, to master English speaking skill successfully needs the attempts of
both teacher and student themselves. While it is considered to be the final aim of
English teaching and learning process, it should be put among three other skills and
the aspects of language (grammar and vocabulary).
1.2. Theoretical background of demotivation
1.2.1. Conception of demotivation
In foreign language learning, motivation has been considered an intricate
construct which encourages learners to act to achieve one or some certain goals.
Although the competence in using L2 is the final target of the learning process, the
8

nature of motivation is not simple at all. The terms motivation is quite familiar and
has been studied by many researchers. When discussing about motivation, people
often think of the term “demotivation” to which not much attention has been paid
up to now. There are, however, researchers who are interested in the term. Dörnyei
(2001:143) defined demotivation as “concerns specific external forces that reduce
or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or an ongoing action”.
So to him demotivation could be understood as the negative counterpart of
motivation. Deci and Ryan (1985) use a similar term “amotivation”, which means
“the relative absence of motivation that is not caused by a lack of initial interest but
rather by the individual’s experiencing feelings of incompetence and helplessness
when faced with the activity.” Both of these terms means lack of motivation, but a-
motivation is related to general outcomes expectations which, to some extent, are
unrealistic for some reason whereas de-motivation concerns specific external
causes.
Dörnyei points out that de-motivation does not mean that all the positive
influences that originally made up the motivational basis of a behavior have been
got rid of. It only means that a strong negative factor restrains the present
motivation with some other positive motives still remain ready to be activated.
1.2.2. The concept of demotivation as identified in previous studies
Up to now, there have been studies of linguists about demotivating factors to
students’ learning English. In this study, however, the author just introduces two of
them, by Dörnyei and Oxford.
1.2.2.1. Demotivating factors identified by Dörnyei
Unlike other studies about demotivation, Dörnyei’s focused on learners who
had been identified as being particularly demotivated by their teachers and friends.
To collect the data, Dörnyei (1998b, as cited in Dörnyei, 2001) conducted structured
long interviews (10-13 minutes) with 50 pupils of various secondary schools who
study either German or English as foreign language. These were one-to-one
interviews and the interviewers were to ask at any time during the interviews and
9

the interviewees could use as much free speech as possible. The data collected from
the recorded interviews were analyzed, following a theme-based processing
procedure. Based on this procedure, nine demotivating factors were identified as
follows:
1. The teacher (personality, commitment, competence, teaching method);
2. Inadequate school facilities (group is too big or not the right level, frequent
change of teachers);
3. Reduced self-confidence (experience of failure or lack of success);
4. Negative attitude towards the L2;
5. Compulsory nature of L2 study;
6. Interference of another foreign language being studied;
7. Negative attitude towards L2 community;
8. Attitudes of group members;
9. Course-book
Among the nine categories of demotivation, teacher was the most frequent
source which included teacher’s personality, commitment to teaching, his or her
competence in language and teaching methods. In the study, it is reported that the
teacher shouted in every lesson. In addition, the teacher was not enthusiastic
enough because he or she didn’t go to class when it rained. More importantly, the
teacher built up in learners the negative attitude to learning which was that learning
in just one or two lessons a week was not enough and that they did not need to try
hard. Moreover, the teacher paid more attention on the students he or she liked.
The second source was the inadequate school facilities which indicated that
in that the class was too big and the students were not of the same level. Some were
the beginners; the others knew some German already. In addition, learners were
demotivated by the changing of teachers frequently and each of them tried out new
methods, which made them tired.
Reduced self-confidence was the third source of demotivation. Learners were
confident at the beginning, but this reduced because they were not satisfied with the

10

grades they got. One learner reported that he/she frequently received marks C or D,
and just some As. Moreover, his/her self-confidence was reduced due to the
teacher’s behaviour as he/she was often “picked on” by the teacher.
The fourth source of demotivation was that learners did not have positive
attitude towards the L2, which was illustrated by the extract of one learner “At the
beginning I studied quite hard but I realized that I did not like the whole structure of
the German language, the grammar…” He/She felt that this language was
incomprehensive because of its sound and structure.
Compulsory nature of L2 study was at the fifth place. It means that learners
had to choose a language to study even when they preferred the others. In the
extract, one learner confided that he/she was asked to learn German because it was
popular and used by many people.
The sixth source was the interference of another foreign language being
learned. This caused demotivation in two ways. Firstly, English and German are
similar and there were mixing up between two languages. The evident was that “I
keep saying German words instead of English”. Secondly, German was not as
popular as English and it was learned when students could speak English already.
Thus, learners felt like using English to communicate more than the other.
The negative attitude towards L2 community came seventh. This source was
illustrated by the fact that American culture with some of its symbols like
McDonalds and films seemed unattractive to the learners.
Attitudes of group members was the eighth source of demotivation. It was
demonstrated by one learner that he/she felt embarrassed when speaking English
and that he/she felt like being laughed by other group members. Students often had
the feeling of embarrassing in English classes as their English level of competence
was low.
The last source of demotivation was the bad coursebook. The book used was
thought to be the worse one in comparison with some materials the students knew.

11

Among nine categories of source of demotivation, teacher was the most
frequent one (accounting for 40%). Specially, 15% of the corresponding
occurrences were the learner’s reduced self-confidence which was considered
related to teacher’s control in class. Other two categories, inadequate school
facilities and negative attitude towards the L2, were also significant (with the
proportion of more than 10%).
1.2.2.2. Demotivating factors identified by Oxford
Rebecca Oxford (1998, as cited in Dörnyei, 2001) carried out a study on the
essays of approximately 250 American students, both in secondary and universities.
The participants were asked to write about their experiences in learning over a
period of five years. During the time of the investigation, some prompts were given
in order to ease the task such as “Describe a situation in which you experienced
conflict with a teacher” and “Talk about a classroom in which you felt
uncomfortable”. After the data were analyzed, four themes were presented.
The first one was the teacher’s personal relationship with the students. This
theme showed that teachers lacked of caring and general belligerence. Moreover,
they are also hypercritic, patronizing and favoring students.
The teacher’s attitude towards the course or the material was the second
theme, in which the teachers were criticized for not giving enough enthusiasm,
sloppy management and close-mindedness.
Style conflicts between teachers and students were the third theme which
includes multiple style conflicts, conflicts about the amount of structure or detail
and conflicts about the degree of closure or seriousness of the class.
Another theme was the nature of the classroom activities. In this theme, the
classroom activities were said to be irrelevant, overloaded and repetitive.
Although the study consisted of a large number of participants, which helped
her have reliable data, the scope was narrow because it only discusses one
demotivating factor that is the teacher. Thus, based on the results of this study,

teacher is the main source of students’ demotivation. Nevertheless, this study offers
12

the later researchers chance to conduct further investigation on this topic to discover
other factors leading to demotivation among learners.

13

CHAPTER 2 - METHODOLOGY
2.1. Research questions
The minor thesis aims at answering the following questions:
1. What is students’ attitude toward learning to speak English in class?
2. What factors demotivate students at Viet-Hung Industrial University to
participate in English speaking lessons?
3. What should be done to help the students overcome these problems and desire to
be parts of the English speaking lessons?
3.2. Data collection and analysis
3.2.1. Data collection
In order to obtain the data, the author carried out two sets of questionnaires,
one for 14 teachers and the other for 150 students. To get additional information and
illustrations she invited 6 out of 14 teachers to attend semi-structured interviews.
To begin with, the author translated the students’ questionnaires into
Vietnamese to assure that every question was fully understood and answered. Then
with the teachers’ permission, the questionnaires for both students and teachers
were delivered. For the interviews, the author had to make appointments with the
six randomly chosen teachers according to their schedules. During the interviews,
their responses were written down.
2.2.2. Data analysis
The information collected from the three sources was first read carefully and
then analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The data from the
questionnaires were displayed in the tables and charts and the information from the
interviews and class attending was presented in notes and quotations.
2.3. Subjects
In order to get the reliable data, the author decides to choose the probability

method of sampling. It means that all the participants, both teachers and students are
randomly selected. In random sampling, each member of the population under study
has an equal chance of being taken into research and the probability of a member of
14

the population being selected has no affection on the selection of other members of
population (Cohen, 2007). The number of participants of the study consists of 150
students of Banking and Financing who are at the second year (K35) and 14 full-
time teachers who teach English at Viet-Hung University. The author randomly
selects the second-year students of the Faculty of Banking and Financing from a list
of 8 faculties because English is said to be paid lots of attention in this faculty.
Moreover, they are on the way with the second term of English. All the 150 students
of K35 are chosen to participate in the study, 132 of whom are female and only 18
students are male. They are from different areas throughout Vietnam, but most of
them are at the age of 19 or 20, so they belong to the same psychological age group.
They like speaking English, but this desire has been lost gradually.
The second group of participants consists of 14 full-time Vietnamese
teachers of English at Viet-Hung Industrial University Among these 14 teachers, 12
of them are female and the other 2 are males. Only one of them is over 40 and the
other 13 teachers are at the age of ranging from 30 to 40. 12 of these teachers are
from the North of Vietnam and two from a central province. Although most of the
chosen teachers are all quite young, 1 of them has Doctor Degree, 8 have MA
Degree of English and the other 5 have got University Bachelor’s of English. Only
4 of them have been teaching English for more than 15 years, 3 of them from 10 to
14 years, and 7 of them from 5 to 10 years. Although some of these teachers do not
have a long time of teaching, all of them are believed to have new method of
teaching English effectively, especially speaking skill.
2.4. Instruments
The data in the research are obtained from two questionnaires, one for
students and the other is for teachers, the interviews for teachers.

To begin with, both questionnaires have eight questions.
The questionnaire for students is in Vietnamese so that all respondents can
understand and give reliable responses. It consists of the following main points:
- Students’ opinions to learning to speak English
15

- Students’ reasons for learning to speak English
- Whether students are motivated or demotivated to speak English in class
- Factors that discourage students to participate in English speaking lessons
- To what extend do these factors affect students to participate into English
speaking lessons
- What should be done to reduce demotivation
Another questionnaire is designed to get the information from teachers of
English of the university. It is in English, but the information is quite similar to the
one in the student’s because the author would like to have the responses from two
groups of subjects to the same problems. The questionnaire covers the aspects as
follows:
- Teachers’ opinion on the role of speaking skill in English language learning
- Factors that discourage their students to participate in their English
speaking lessons
- What solutions they recommend to help reduce these factors
Second, the researcher decides to interview some teachers of English of the
University to get more necessary information as well as reinforce the data obtained
from the questionnaires. The interviews cover the following points:
- Students’ attitude to English speaking
- Factors that discourage their students to participate into their English
speaking lessons
- What solutions they recommend to help reduce these factors
2.5. The research context
In this part of the study the author would like to introduce some prominent

information about English courses at Viet-Hung Industrial University, its students
and teachers.
To begin with, Viet-Hung is a big university which consists of various levels
of training and majors. It was founded in 1977 as a Vocational High School. Then
in 2005 it was upgraded to Viet-Hung college of Industry, and became Viet-Hung
16

Industrial University in 2010. Although the University offers credit-based training
courses, students do not register for subject they would like to learn. Instead, they
follow the arrangement given by the University. Students at Faculty of Banking and
Financing learn English for the first two years and, like students of other faculties,
the number of credit they have to attend is 10, 7 of which are for English for
General Purposes (EGP) and the other 3 for English for Specific Purposes (ESP).
Each week they have two lessons of English, each of which lasts for 3 periods.
Speaking accounts for 2 out of 6 periods in total. In these lessons, the focus skill is
speaking. Students are taught both speaking contents from the core book and
supplementary. Like many other universities, Viet-Hung Industrial University is
orientating at developing English communicating skills among students. Then after
four semesters, students are expected to be capable of communicating naturally with
other people in English. With this amount of time, however, being fluent in
speaking English seems so difficult for students and this is also a challenging task
for teachers of English of the University.
In terms of the course-book, as mentioned before, like many other
universities in Vietnam, Viet-Hung Industrial University offers both EGP and ESP
courses. The textbook for EGP course is New English File (Pre-Intermediate), in
which speaking is distributed in every section of each unit. Besides, an additional
book, Let’s Talk 2 is also used to develop students’ speaking skill. Although this is
not the main course book, oral tasks which are relevant to the topics in the book
New English File are introduced to students for further discussions. The number of
the periods for the topics in this book is not fixed. Instead, teacher decides when and

how long they use the book, depending on the topics they have.
Since English in Vietnam is a foreign language learned mainly in
classrooms, the role of a teacher becomes highly significant as the main source and
facilitator of knowledge and skills. In Viet-Hung Industrial University there are 14
full-time teachers of English and 4 teachers who work part-time. In this research,
17

the author only subjects to the full-time teachers who spend more time with
students.
As mentioned before, Viet-Hung Industrial University students come from
different parts of the country, but mostly from the Northern provinces of Vietnam.
All of them had learnt English before, but with different length of time. Moreover,
at primary and secondary levels, books are designed to cover all aspects of language
and skills, but teachers tend to put more emphasis on grammar and vocabulary than
communication. Consequently, after graduating from schools, most of them did not
feel confident in communicating with others. Teachers of English at the University
may suffer in the way that whenever they ask students to speak in class, their
students just kept silent, or even worse they felt frightened to speak out their
thoughts and ideas.

18

CHAPTER 3 – DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
In this part of the thesis, the author deals with the analysis of the data
collected in order to find out the factors that discourage students to participate in the
English speaking lessons.
3.1 Data analysis of students’ response
 Students’ attitude to the importance of learning to speak English:

71.3%
28.7%
Yes
No

Chart 1: Students‟ attitude to the importance of learning to speak English
As can be seen from the chart, most students think that learning to speak
English is important, accounting for 71.3%, while 28.7% of the students do not
regard speaking an important part in their process of learning English. It is evident
that the majority of students is aware of the importance of speaking skill and would
like to be good at it. However, they have different reasons for learning to speak
English.
 Students’ reasons for learning to speak English:
Why is this skill important to you?
A. To get good grades.

B. To communicate with foreigners.
C. To fulfill the requirements of the University.
D. To get good job in the future.
E. To be admired and respected by friends and teachers.
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65.30%
13%
53%
46%
5%
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
E
D
C
B
A

Chart 2: Students‟ reasons for learning to speak English
Some students can have more than one reason of learning to speak English,
so in this question the responders can choose more than one option. As being shown
in the chart, students’ learning to speak English to get good marks and to meet the
requirements of the University are the most important reasons, making up 65.3%

and 53%, respectively. 46% students think that they should learn to speak English
so as to have a satisfactory career in the future, and only 5% of them decide to learn
to speak the language to get admiration and respect from friends and teachers. It is
clear that there is some extrinsic motivation among these students.
 Students’ attitude to the participation in English speaking lessons
18.7%
81.3%
Yes
No

Chart 3: Students‟ attitude to the participation in English speaking lessons
20

The above chart clearly indicates that the majority of investigated students
are not interested participating in the English speaking lessons. This number
accounts for 81.3%. Meanwhile, 18.7% of these students believe that they feel like
working in the lessons. There must be factors that demotivate them to work in class
and they are all discussed in the next question.
 Students’ opinions on factors demotivating them to participate in English
speaking lessons
Once again, in this question participants can choose more than one answer,
which means that their desire of participating into English speaking lessons may be
affected by more than one factor. The details are shown in the following table,
which helps readers identify the demotivators and how much they affect students’
willingness to be parts of the speaking lessons.
Factors
Results
Degrees of affection
Total
A

B
C
D
1. Teacher
a. We are often
interrupted by the
teacher when presenting
if we makes mistakes,
even the minor ones.
0%
10%
0.6%
0%
10.6%
b. Teacher does not
allow students to ask
questions after each
presentation.
4.6%
6.6%
0%
0%
11.3%
c. Teacher is usually at
his/her seat, so it is not
convenient for us to ask
for help from him/her.
12.7%
40%
10%

2%
65%
21

d. Teacher does not
often give clear enough
explanation and
instruction before each
task, so we frequently
do not know what to do.
0.6%
41.3%
13.3%
7.3%
66%
e. Teacher sometimes
speaks very fast, so we
can not understand
him/her much.
3.3%
26.7%
30%
10.7%
70.6%
f. Teacher’s language
competence is not good
enough.
0%
0.6%
2.7%

0%
3%
g. Teacher is so yielding
that he or she can not
maintain discipline in
class.
1.3%
3.3%
1.3%
0.6%
6%
h. Teacher is not
friendly, so teacher and
students’ relationship is
not good.
7.3%
0.6%
0%
0%
8%
i. Teacher does not care
whether we work or not
because he/she is often
busy to do his/her own
work.
2.6%
13.3%
3.3%
0.6%
20%

j. Teacher often
criticizes us when we
say something wrong.
2%
10.7%
13.3%
2.7%
28.7%