The Application of communicative activities to develop speaking skills for 10th graders in Son Tay High School, Hanoi

The Application of communicative activities to
develop speaking skills for 10th graders in Son
Tay High School, Hanoi

Lê Phương Lan


Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Teaching Methodology; Mã số: 60 14 10
Người hướng dẫn: Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Van
Năm bảo vệ: 2011


Abstract: In recent years, English has been considered one of the most important subjects, and is
a compulsory subject in Vietnamese schools. However, there are many problems facing the
students when they communicate. Among them, the problem of oral communication seems to be
the most serious one. The need to develop speaking skills for learners of English in general and
students at Vietnamese schools in particular, is greater than ever before. Son Tay High School,
one of the best high schools in Hanoi, for the last five years has encouraged its teaching staff to
apply the communicative approach in language teaching and learning. Much attention has been
paid to developing students’ listening and speaking skills by using communicative activities in
speaking classes. The application of communicative activities in teaching English speaking to
10
th
graders in this school has inspired my writing of this study report as an attempt to search for
more effective ways in developing students’ speaking skills.
Keywords: Phương pháp giảng dạy; Kỹ năng nói; Học sinh; Lớp 10

INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
The introduction of the new textbook “English 10” into teaching at Son Tay High School
in 2006 has marked real renovation in language teaching and learning from the traditional
approach-grammar translation method, which only concentrates on the ability of using grammar
rules precisely, to communicative approach, which focuses on communication ability.
Nonetheless, the teachers of English at Son Tay High School find it difficult to teach speaking
successfully because of the class size, the students’ language level, and additionally, students are
not acquainted with CLT. Moreover, the majority of the teachers were trained under the strong
influence of the Grammar-Translation method, which impedes them from teaching speaking
successfully even the new textbook follows the communicative approach.
As a teacher of English at Son Tay High School in Hanoi, I often receive similar
questions from many students. For example, “I can understand grammar and sentence structures
well, but I feel embarrassed to talk in English” or “What should I do to speak English well?” In
my reality of teaching, there are a lot of students who have perfect knowledge of grammar that
works wonderfully for reading and writing but cannot express themselves to the teachers. On the
other hand, I often hear a lot of complaints from the colleagues: “Students seem so quiet and lazy
during speaking lessons. It is very difficult to make them participate in speaking activities”.
Therefore, the idea of doing something useful for my colleagues and students has urged me to
conduct the research.
Another reason why the study was carried out lies in my love for teaching speaking. By
doing the study, I can know more about the challenges in teaching and learning speaking skills
so that I can find relevant techniques along with activities to improve my teaching speaking at
Son Tay High School.
The above reasons have inspired me to conduct a study on “The application of
communicative activities to develop speaking skills for 10
th
graders at Son Tay High School-
Hanoi” with the hope to make a little contribution to the quality of teaching and learning
speaking skills for Grade 10th at Son Tay High School.

2. Aims of the study
The aims of the study are to address the following issues:
 The difficulties that teachers and students face in the process of teaching and
learning speaking skills;
 The application of some useful communicative activities to improve English
speaking ability for 10
th
graders.
3. Research questions
To achieve these aims, the following two research questions are addressed:
1. What communicative activities can make the speaking lessons more effective?
2. What obstacles have the teachers and students faced in their speaking lessons?
4. Scope of the study
This study is concerned with the application of communicative activities to develop
speaking skills to the students in grade 10
th
at Son Tay High School. The researcher is not
planning on studying a larger population of the whole students at Son Tay High School, just on
the students in grade 10
th
in order to find out what communicative activities are applied and the
obstacles experienced by these students and teachers of English then offer some
recommendations with the hope that teaching and learning speaking skills will be improved.
5. Design of the study
Apart from acknowledgement, abstract, table of contents and appendices, this thesis is
structured in three main parts namely: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion.
The first part “Introduction” presents the rationale, aims, research questions, scope of the study
and its design.

The second part “Development” includes four chapters.
Chapter 1, Theoretical Background, begins with the literature on understanding speaking,
including the comparison of spoken language with written language and implication for teaching.
Then comes the literature on teaching speaking with the speaking needs and goals of language
students, some approaches to teaching speaking and principles for teaching speaking. The rest of
the chapter is on communicative activities, its purposes and its different types.
Chapter 2 is composed of two sections. The first section presents the local situation in Son Tay
High School. The second section provides the research methods that involve information about
the subjects, data collection instruments and procedures. Also, the methods of data analysis are
mentioned.
Chapter 3 presents major findings and discussion
Chapter 4 gives recommendations for more effective application of Communicative Activities
in developing students’ speaking skills.
The third part is the conclusions of the study.

REFERENCES
Brown, H.D. (1990). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to language
Pedagogy. Prentice Hall Regents. San Francisco State University.
Burns, A. (1997). Focus on Speaking. Sydney, Macquarie University.
Bygate, M. (1987). Speaking. Oxford University Press.
Byrne, D (1987). Techniques for Classroom Interaction. Longman.
London-New York.
Canale, M & Swain, M (1980). Approaches to Communicative Competence.
SEAMO Regional Language Centre
D’Arbon, T. Frawley, J. Fasoli, L. & Ober, R. (2008). Metaphor workshops as a
means of identifying special features of educational leadership and remote indigenous
communities. Presentation at ACEL 2008 Conference. Melbourne: ACEL.
Eken, D.K (1996). Ideas for Using Pop Songs in the Language Classroom.
English Teaching Forum, 34, 46-47.
Harmer, J. (1983). The Practice of English Language Teaching.

London: Longman.
Hoang Van Van, Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, Do Tuan Minh, Nguyen Thu Phuong, Nguyen Quoc
Tuan (2006). Tieng Anh 10. Hanoi: Educational Publishing House.
Ladousse, P (1987). Role play. Resource Book for Teachers. Oxford
University Press.
Littlewood, W (1990). Communicative language Teaching. An Introduction.
Cambridge University Press.
Littlewood, W (1992). Teaching Oral Communication. A Methodological
Framework. Blackwell.
Nambiar, S.A (1985). Suffer Students to Speak. Guidelines, Vol XII. No 2,
December.
Nation, P. (1991). Managing Group Discussion: Problem-solving tasks,
Guidelines, 13, 2, 1-10.
Nunan, D (1989). Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom.
Cambridge University Press.
Nunan, D (1991). Language Teaching Methodology. A Textbook for the Teacher.
E.L.T Prentice Hall.
Quan, Nguyen Hai. (2004). Learning to Use Songs to Teach Grammar.
Teacher’s Edition, 14, 57.
Richard, J.C & Rodgers, T.S. (1986). Approaches and Methods in Language
Teaching, Cambridge: CUP.
Rivers, W.M. (1983). Communicating Naturally in Second Language
Teaching, Cambridge: CUP.
Rivers, W.M. (1987). Interactive Language Teaching. Cambridge Language
Teaching Library.
Sheils, J. (1993). Communication in the Modern Language Classroom. Council of
Europe Press.