Using project based learning to improve speaking skill for second year students at a university in vietnam

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

TRẦN THỊ MINH PHƢƠNG

USING PROJECT- BASED LEARNING TO IMPROVE
SPEAKING SKILL FOR SECOND YEAR STUDENTS
AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM
( Sử dụng phƣơng pháp dạy học theo dự án để tăng cƣờng kỹ năng nói cho
sinh viên năm thứ hai tại một trƣờng đại học ở Việt nam )

M.A MAJOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English language teaching methodology
Code: 60140111

Ha Noi, ngay 17 thang 1 nam 2018
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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

TRẦN THỊ MINH PHƢƠNG

USING PROJECT- BASED LEARNING TO IMPROVE

SPEAKING SKILL FOR SECOND YEAR STUDENTS
AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM

( Sử dụng phƣơng pháp dạy học theo dự án để tăng cƣờng kỹ năng nói cho
sinh viên năm thứ hai tại một trƣờng đại học ở Việt nam)

Field: English language teaching methodology
Code: 60140111
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof . Võ Đại Quang, Ph.D

Ha Noi, ngay 17 thang 1 nam 2018

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DECLARATION
I hereby certify that the minor thesis entitle: Using Project- Based Learning to
improve speaking skill for second year students at a university in Vietnam is the
result of my own work in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts at Faculty at Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and
International Studies, Vietnam National University of Hanoi. The research has not
been submitted to any other universities or institutions.

Hanoi, 2017

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to send my grateful words to those people who have approved and
stood by me during this hard time.
This thesis would not have been fulfilled without the help of many people, and I
would like to show my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has taught me, inspired me,
challenged me, and supported me throughout the realization of this thesis.
I would like to express my deepest thanks to my beloved supervisor, Assoc. Prof
.Vo Dai Quang for his whole-hearted assistance, encouragement as well as profound
guidance he gave me while I was doing my research.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all my lecturers
and staff of Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, Vietnam, University of Languages and
International Studies, whose support and consideration have enabled me to pursue the
course.
I would also like to express my whole-heated thanks to teachers and all students
at Ha Noi Pedagogical University 2 for their helps and their willingness to participate
in the research. Without their help, this thesis would not have been completed.
Last but not least, I owe my sincere thanks to my family and my kind-hearted
friends, who have always inspired and encouraged me to complete this study.

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ABSTRACT

Speaking is considered as one of the most challenging and difficult skills for
second language learners. Learning speaking is not only about producing words and
sentences but communicating effectively with other speakers. For many language
learners, this is a difficult goal to reach. In order to help students improve their

speaking skill, a new method of teaching was implemented. Project- Based Learning is
expected to use as new method of teaching in class to change students‟ learning
attitude, enhance students‟ speaking ability and provide new skills for students. With
these objectives, the researcher adopted t- test to see the differences between the
students‟ speaking ability before and after using the new learning technique. Then she
used survey and interview to gather information about students‟ attitude towards this
learning method. The result collected and processed from the experiment proved that
students have made significant improvement in their speaking skill by using ProjectBased learning and their learning attitude by using this method was positive. This
supported the research objectives and laid a foundation for further research in the
future.
Keywords : Project- Based Learning, speaking skill, improve

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION ................................................................................................... i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................. ii
ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................... iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................... iv
LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................... vi
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................. vii
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. 1
1.1. Rationale......................................................................................................... 1
1.2. The aims of the study ..................................................................................... 4
1.3. The scope of the study.................................................................................... 5
1.4. Research objectives ........................................................................................ 6
1.5. Research questions ......................................................................................... 6

1.6. Research significance ..................................................................................... 6
1.7. Research method ............................................................................................ 7
1.8. The outline of the study.................................................................................. 8
CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................. 9
2.1. Theoretical Review ........................................................................................ 9
2.1.1. The importance of speaking ........................................................................ 9
2.1.2. The speaking activities in classroom. ....................................................... 11
2.1.3. Test of speaking ........................................................................................ 15
2.1.4. Type of scoring rubrics ............................................................................. 17
2.2. Project- Based Learning ............................................................................... 19
2.2.1. Characteristics of Project – Based Learning ............................................. 19
2.2.2. Previous studies ......................................................................................... 25
CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ................................................. 28
3.1. Research method .......................................................................................... 28
3.1.1. The nature of the data ................................................................................ 29
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3.1.2. Context of the study .................................................................................. 29
3.1.3. Data collection techniques ........................................................................ 30
3.1.4. Procedures ................................................................................................. 32
3.2. Data analysis ................................................................................................ 37
CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS .................................................................................... 40
4.1. Findings ........................................................................................................ 40
4.1.1. The t- test results ....................................................................................... 40
4.1.2. The survey ................................................................................................. 46
4.1.3. Interview.................................................................................................... 51
4.2. Discussion .................................................................................................... 54

4.2.1. Project - Based Learning ........................................................................... 54
4.2.2. Group work ............................................................................................... 55
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION ............................................................................. 65
5.1. Conclusion .................................................................................................... 65
5.1.1 Concluding remarks on objective 1 ........................................................... 65
5.1.2. Concluding remarks on objective 2 .......................................................... 67
5.2. Suggestion for further research .................................................................... 67
REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 69
APPENDIX

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1. Analytic Rubric with the Criteria of Speaking Performance (Adapted
from Brown (2003) and O‟Malley and Pierce (1996)) ....................................... 18
Table 3.1. Experimental research procedures. .................................................... 32
Table 3.2. Procedures of the project.................................................................... 36
Table 4.1. Mean and Standard Deviation of Control and Experimental group in
the pre- test .......................................................................................................... 40
Table 4.2. The result of variables between Experimental group and control
group in pre- test ................................................................................................. 40
Table 4.3. Scale Criteria and Tests‟ Scores of Experimental Group .................. 41
Table 4.4. Scale Criteria and Test‟s Scores of Control Group............................ 41
Table 4.5. One sample Kolmogorov- Smirnov test ............................................ 43
Table 4.6. The result of independence t- test sample .......................................... 43
Table 4.7. The group statistics of experimental group ........................................ 44
Table 4.8. Group statistics of control and experimental group in the post- test . 44

Table 4.9. The result of post- test between experimental group and control group
............................................................................................................................. 45
Table 4.10. The score Criteria ............................................................................. 46
Table 4.11. The Interpretation of the survey result ............................................. 47
Table 4.12. The result of students‟ responses to opened- ended questions ........ 49
Table 4.13. The result of interview ..................................................................... 52

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. The category of speaking performances .............................................. 13
Figure 2. Steps of developing Project- Based Learning in the classroom .......... 23

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

This chapter will provide the overview of the study such as rationale, research scope,
research objectives, research questions, significance, methods, and design of the study.

1.1. Rationale
Effective English speaking has become an urgent requirement for students of the
21st century. Nowadays, English language has been considered as the most common

language of the world when its influence is represented in almost every aspect and area
of life from education to politics, culture and business. This proves strongly the
strength and influences of this language on people‟s lives in this century. It is now
impossible to find a country where learning English has not become a norm. From
undeveloped countries in Africa to the most prosperous nations in Europe, all people
know a little English which they can use and understand simple English of others,
even in many countries learning English is compulsory in school and they have
standard tests to verify students‟ English capacity. This approves the concept that
English is becoming more and more important in our lives.
In Vietnam, English has been considered as a compulsory subject in all levels of
school. Students have learned English at young age and continued enhancing their
competence at university level. Moreover, the teaching of English has been
emphasized and invested greatly since 2020 project. English becomes an important
subject in all levels of school. In the future, by the year 2025, Vietnamese students are
expected to reach CEF level after graduation. This proves the importance of teaching
and learning English towards students. Therefore, it can be said that English is taught
popularly in Vietnam and a lot of Vietnamese students know and be capable of using
English.
One of the compulsory language skills to second year English- majored students
at Ha Noi Pedagogical University 2 is speaking. It is an important skill in teaching and


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learning English as a second language. According to Cameron ( 2001: 40) , speaking is
the active use of the language to express intentional meanings so that other people can
make sense of them. At the same time, it is the language users to combine language
components appropriately and deliver intended messages successfully so that listeners
can understand the information. For university students, speaking helps them to
express their ideas, opinions, thoughts and share these with other students and

speakers. In university, speaking is the pivotal skill that prepares students in English
department to become teachers who can speak English and communicate with English
speakers. For others, spoken English lays a foundation for students to specialize in and
discover diverse cultures all over the world and acts as a bridge to promote and
develop their career. Speaking English also pushes students into awareness of
surrounding changes by using English to read and transact ideas so that they are ready
to engage in global changes. Most importantly, speaking helps students understand
context and become ready to communicate with people around the world. For those
reasons, speaking is one of the crucial skills that helps to contribute to the spread and
dominance of English.
In the relation between speaking and teaching this skill in school, teachers take
greater responsibility for teaching speaking in comparison with other skills. Thus, it is
the teacher‟s role to help students speak as much as possible. Which means is teachers
have to work harder and spend more time for thinking about new strategies and
practical, useful and applicable activities to help students speak and achieve the
improvement with their learning. Concerned about Ha Noi Pedagogical University 2
students, this is a challenging mission for teacher to teach speaking. The students study
English as their major come from different background and they have different
purposes of learning. These students don‟t enjoy a good foreign language setting to
learn because they don‟t have English speakers to interact and communicate
frequently. Students have to go out to the capital to talk with foreigners if they want to
improve their speaking fluency and pronunciation. This is time- consuming and
students can not afford for this often. Then, the other difficulties about teaching these
students come from themselves. Many students are not comfortable to speak since they


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hold a belief that their English is not good. They are shy and embarrassed to make
mistakes and speak as much as possible. Otherwise, students have troubles with

vocabulary; they do not have enough words to express; therefore, they are afraid of
speaking. Besides, students are not engaged in the classroom. As a result, they do not
take part in learning process actively.
Taking into account these challenges, it is the teacher‟s responsibility to find the
teaching method which is able to encourage students to learn English and produce
effective results. Towards students‟ learning, it is a long –term plan to maintain and
keep students‟ interest to speaking. When students perceive the importance of
speaking and meaning and value of speaking skill in their life, they will put effort and
attempt for it. This is very significant for teacher to understand her students‟ purposes
and learning interest and find out suitable and practical method of teaching to students.
Project- Based Learning is one of instructional approaches to learning which
allows students to plan, design and carry out projects that can produce a final product
such as magazine, drama, presentation ( Paton 2000:13). Project- Based Learning is an
open, accessible and practical method of teaching when it allows students free chances
to speak and upgrade other skills during their project work. By joining and
collaborating to complete an output product, students are more responsible with their
assigned tasks and look for new ways to finish their roles. This is beneficial for their
learning and later career. Through the Project- Based Learning, students are engaged
in a variety of activities and purposeful communication to complete project work, so
that they have opportunities to use language both inside and outside class to
communicate and exchange ideas. Project - Based Learning provide students with
multiple tasks to do during the learning process such as design journal, magazine,
rehearse drama, edit writing and practice presentation so students are able to expose to
language learning by taking a various role in their work process. The force of
cooperating with other members to find out the best form of projects and make the best
product would motivate students to learn and improve their language skills.
For students at Ha Noi Pedagogical University 2, Project- Based Learning is an
appropriate approach to teach speaking English because it can engage students in

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active learning and self - study. Working with Project- Based Learning means students
work in a group with other members and actively involved in learning activities to
complete their work, otherwise, they will fall behind. More importantly, through this
period of working together, students are expected to improve their speaking skills
thank to all the tasks they have to go through to complete their projects. Students are
expected to share responsibility, to cooperate with other members, to argue and defend
if necessary. And through these activities, students are more confident, more flexible
and responsible in their group work. Moreover, they are believed that in order to
complete their projects, students will get access to a certain number of resources and
documents to obtain knowledge for their project theme. So their knowledge and
understanding about authentic material will be enhanced. From these reasons, the
researcher wants to implement the Project-Based Learning in class to produce
effective result for students‟ learning and confirm the role of Project- Based Learning
as an approach to accomplish learners‟ expectation in improving their speaking skill.
From the explanation stated previously that describes about the importance of
speaking towards students and the need to find out the appropriate method of teaching
to help students engage and motivate them in learning, the researcher attempt to use
Project- Based Learning to see whether the implementation of this method can be
effective to improve the speaking skill of second year English students at Ha Noi
Pedagogical University 2 or not.

1.2. The aims of the study
The study aims at investigating the effectiveness of Project- Based learning on
students‟ speaking results and students‟ attitude toward new learning method.
Therefore, through the process of experimenting and all data collected, the researcher
expects to achieve positive influence of Project- Based Learning on speaking skill and
students‟ attitude towards the new learning method. From this result, it will make a
contribution to the study of further Project- Based Learning research and teachers can

apply this technique to teaching and improve students‟ oral language and other skills.


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1.3. The scope of the study
The project aims at applying Project- Based Learning to teaching English
speaking to second year university students in Vietnam and find out the effectiveness
of this teaching technique on improving students‟ oral skill. The research was
conducted at class 41B Education. The researcher choose to study this topic because
speaking is one of the most important skills in learning a foreign language which can
change students‟ life greatly. Moreover, students here have great troubles with
learning this skill since it is difficult and challenging to cope with. There are several
problems that may affect research study process. One of the reasons is that speaking
requires many language components such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and
fluency which are difficult for students to obtain through traditional learning model.
Besides, speaking has received great attention from school and education
administration , especially the 2020 project that requires graduates reach C1 before
graduating school; therefore, to maintains both the goal of the research and the
objective of school curriculum which guarantee that after semester students meet up
the school‟ requirements are difficult to reach at the same time.
Then, students are from different background and have different learning
purposes but they follow the same learning program, so it is the teacher‟s
responsibility to make sure that students can follow with the projects and achieve the
goal at the end of the semester. Through project work, it is a challenge for teacher to
make students understand the importance of speaking, which does not only help them
improve speaking skill, knowledge and understanding a specific field through project
work but also enhance their confidence, motivation and encourage them to learn and
take responsibility for their learning process.
Through the study, the researcher expect to find out the effectiveness of ProjectBased Learning on enhancing students‟ speaking skill and obstacles as well as

challenges that the students encountered during their learning to process to make
improvement and well preparation before she implements this method of teaching in
the future.


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1.4. Research objectives
The purpose of this research is to find out the effectiveness of using ProjectBased Learning to improve second year students‟ speaking skill. The researcher would
use appropriate data collection techniques to achieve the purpose of the study. In this
research, there are two objectives that the researcher needs to answer. First, it is the
influence of using Project- Based Learning in speaking class whether it is able to
enhance students‟ speaking skill or not. Then, it is necessary to see students‟ attitude
towards using of this method of teaching in class whether they favour the method of
teaching or show different opinions about the new learning method. Ignoring all
unnecessary factors, it is important to see whether the use of Project-Based Learning in
classroom changes and improve students‟ oral speech or not. In order to obtain these
objectives, the study will employ experimental design, survey and interview to collect
quantitative and quantitative data to answer the research questions.

1.5. Research questions
The objectives of the thesis can be elaborated into the following research questions
1. What are effects of Project- Based Learning on students‟ speaking skill?
2. What are students‟ attitudes towards the implementation of Project- Based
Learning?

1.6. Research significance
This research is expected provide a positive result of the implementation of
Project- Based Learning approach that hopefully enhances students‟ speaking skill.
For students, through the projects which are formed under Project –Based Learning,

students have opportunities to enjoy the various and interesting stages of project
works. Under researcher‟s guide and instruction, students have chances to get involves
in different world of knowledge by reading and researching authentic materials.
Besides, they are expected to explore their learning interest by working with other
peers and experience they have got during the project time. Students also have


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opportunities to know other members better, strengthen their relationship and develop
important skills in learning such as collaboration skill, problem solving, and
communication. Most importantly, through a variety of tasks that students have to
experience to complete their project, students are able to improve their speaking skill
and language knowledge.
Project- Based Learning does not only bring benefits to students but it also
provides great opportunity for teacher to learn. By adopting new teaching technique in
speaking class, the researcher also gain a lot of benefits from carrying out this ProjectBased Learning. Firstly, the researcher learns to organize speaking activities
effectively and bring great interest to students. By preparing materials for students and
guidance for the students, the researcher can select the most appropriate, practical,
useful beneficial learning activities for students to enjoy, therefore, they can improve
their understanding and knowledge as well as speaking ability, too.
Secondly, through the process of learning, the researcher is able to observe the
class, to summarize the problems and difficulties that the students may encounter
during their learning process, from that the researcher will have proper change to
improve the situations. This will result in the improvement of the researcher‟s
flexibility toward organizing class and engage the students in speaking process.
For others concerning Project- Based Learning, they will have an explicit
understanding of how to implement Project- Based Learning to second year English
language students at university level, both complexity and advantages of this technique
in real learning environment. Thus, it increases their awareness of the second year

students‟ speaking need and characteristics of these students toward learning speaking.
The result of this research will support data and further research on the same
topic which are expected to increase the quality of learning process of teaching and
learning English as a foreign language at university level in Vietnam.

1.7. Research method
As has been stated in research objectives, this research dealt with the
effectiveness of Project-Based Learning in improving students „speaking. In order to


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gather the result, this research used t- test, survey and interview. The first step is to
collect data. The researcher would deliver two tests to two groups of students, one is
control which follows the traditional style of study and another is experimental group
which enjoys the treatment of Project- Based Learning. The test is called t- test and
processed by using SPSS.22. The survey and interview will be delivered after the ttest results to gather more students‟ personal ideas about the use of Project- Based
Learning in class.

1.8. The outline of the study
The research would present the study in logical ways following 5 chapters.
Chapter 1 : The introduction
This chapter was a brief description of the research including the rationales for
conducting the research, the aims and objectives of the study, research questions,
scope of the study, significance of the study, and design of the study.
Chapter 2 : Literature Review
This chapter introduced some concepts, theoretical frameworks and related studies
Chapter 3: Methodology
This chapter introduced the research context and methodology of the study
Chapter 4: Findings and discussion

This chapter presented the major findings from t- test, students‟ survey, interviews to
answer research questions, and some discussions to help students overcome the
difficulties in learning English speaking skill.
Chapter 5: Conclusion
This section gave some concluding remarks, some limitations existing in this study,
implication for my teaching, and suggestions for further studies.


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CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter will discuss relevant studies and theories concerning the research.

2.1. Theoretical Review
This research attempts to find out the importance of speaking towards students,
distinguished characteristics of Project- Based Learning in class and some of previous
studies related to Project –Based Learning in educational settings.
Thus, it is important to understand the basic theory of speaking and speaking –
related theories.

2.1.1. The importance of speaking
In Oxford dictionary, speaking is defined as the action of conveying information
or expressing one‟s feeling in speech. From this definition, it can be seen that speaking
includes a speaker and an intended message followed in the speech. In the study of
speaking and communication, some linguists referred speaking as the ability of using a
language in an oral communication. This requires speakers to be able to function in
language to transform his or her idea to other. Thanks to speaking, students are able to
convey his ideas to listeners and get the feedback, therefore, the communication is
successful and the purpose of communication is complete.

While speaking, students can express their feelings, thoughts, and attitude,
explain, demand, request, critics towards a certain phenomenon. They are able to
perform other tasks such as telling stories, interviewing, conversing with other people
by using language in multiple- context settings. In speaking activities, students are
required to understand a text and be able to provide feedback by the requirements of
the tasks. Therefore, speaking is a skill that students should master to help them to
interact with other people
Besides, speaking also plays an important role in improving students‟ other
language skills. It is considered as a productive skill that leads learners to develop their
reading and writing and speaking in learning a foreign language. Linse (2005) also


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stated that speaking is the first step that needs to be learned by young English language
learners before they can read and write in English.
In teaching and learning a foreign language, speaking is one of the most
important and basic skills in learning to a student. This skill is considered as a
productive skill which requires learners to release the message by following linguistic
rules and at the same time meeting up with communication environment setting. If
reading and listening are skills to lay a foundation for language learners to reach the
higher level of language learning, speaking can be regarded as a skill which derive and
develop from these skills. Nunan (1991) also claimed that speaking is the most
important aspect of a learning a second language. This can be explained that learning a
language is measured in the ability of learners to carry out conversation in the target
language. This concept is more supported because nowadays, the ability to
communicate and converse with foreign language learners in the target language is the
tenet of learning a foreign language all over the world.
Compared with other skills, speaking seems to be one of the most important
skills of four (reading, listening, writing, speaking) and get the most attention from

educators and learners. Ur ( 1996) also asserts that people who know a language are
usually referred to as speaker of that language.
It is popularly believed that the purpose of teaching and learning English
language is to give learners opportunities to learn and to use English effectively in
communication. Thus, it is teacher‟s role to prepare appropriate oral English materials
for students to express themselves in the target language, to use language components
effectively to meet the requirements of conversation settings. It is also important that
teacher set up effective classroom activities to make students engaged in the lesson
and take on learning actively.
By providing authentic materials and learning activities, students have more
opportunities to use language to interact with their peers and to enhance their skill
through practising tasks. Moreover, when students are engaged into the learning and
motivated about studying English, they tend to explore more the world of language.
This will help them to increase self- study and learning autonomy. For example, when


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students are motivated to use language freely and naturally in class, and they are able
to use simple English to communicate and exchange ideas; consequently, they are
opener with language and tend to focus on the aspects or the themes they concern.
From then, they will spend more time researching and understanding language.
Students are also encouraged to use language if they feel their learning is meaningful
and useful. This is clearly seen in class. When teachers and students discuss something
and if students are encouraged to speak and give out ideas, they will find a way to use
the language properly to convey their thoughts accurately and make the readers
understand.
Once, students feel the need of learning and importance of speaking, they will
automatically look for most suitable method of learning to enhance their language
competence. The more students try to speak English regularly, the more they will

know about the language and improve their vocabulary, grammar, structure.
According to Harmer ( 2001), speaking activities can lead students to be excellent
language speakers who are able to process language in their head and make it coherent
and meaningful and release it out in a form that are not only comprehensible but
conveys the meaning it is intended.
For Ha Noi pedagogical University 2, speaking does not only help students to
learn to perform speaking tasks by combining language components and carry out
speaking activities to interact with others but also prepare them to become a teacher in
the future. For this purpose, the learning of speaking skill is more necessary for
students. They needs to realize importance of speaking English and start practising
under teacher‟s guide and instruction. Adam (2013) stated “ I believe that oral
language is important not only as a vital communication tool that empower us in daily
life but also as valuable way to learn” .This also means Adam admits the importance
of oral activities in our daily life and probably the most important communication tool.

2.1.2. The speaking activities in classroom.
The speaking activities are the ones that are designed and delivered by teacher to
class so that students can carry out oral speaking tasks to meet up the requirements of


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teacher or the exercise. In learning a foreign language, teaching speaking takes a lot of
time and preparation from teacher who has responsibility to design different speaking
activities to facilitate students speaking and enhance their skills. Predominantly,
speaking activities in classroom are based on traditional learning style. Students often
follow textbook‟s instruction and discuss speaking tasks with each other. Teacher can
give feedback and correct their pronunciation and grammar. When designing speaking
activities, teacher needs to understand the principles for teaching speaking. The
teacher should be aware of the differences between second language and target

language learning contexts. At this point, the challenge a teacher face may be
determined partly by the target language context (Brown, 2000; 54) . The differences
of language uses and cultural aspects should be introduced to students to help them
avoid making the same mistakes which do not exist in two languages. The speaking
activities also guarantee to improve or at least give students practice with fluency and
accuracy. For language learners, it is important that speaking activities provide them
opportunities to develop both accuracy and fluency. While accuracy is the extent that
students‟ speech matches what other people say when they use target language ,
fluency refer to how speakers use the language quickly, confidently and naturally with
proper hesitations and pause in their communication. One other important principle of
designing speaking activities is to offer students opportunities to talk and interact by
using group work, team work, pair work, and limiting teacher‟s talk. If the teacher
takes part in so much into student‟s talk then students will not have time for speaking.
In fact, this can prevent and discourage students to speak also. The role of speaking in
teaching language is to teach students how to speak; consequently students are able to
produce language by themselves. When students carry out group work and pair work,
they would be able to play different roles in communication and discussion, if teacher
is removed or limited in these practices, then students enjoy more on diverse roles of
speaking.
Next, the speaking tasks should be practical, meaningful and useful. It is a fact
that students learn more if they see the application and usefulness of what they learn.
Speaking activities should involve to practical purposes that students find useful for


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their learning. In addition, it is the responsibility of teacher to design activities that
involve guidance and practice in both transactional and interactional speaking for
students. This means teacher should combine and engage interactional speech which is
used to communicate with someone for social purposes to establish and maintain

social relationships with transactional speech which involves communicating to get
something done in classroom since the language learners will have to speak target
language in both transactional and interpersonal settings, finally this practice will help
students master the target language.
Brown ( 2004) has proposed a six different categories of classroom speaking
performances.
Figure 1. The category of speaking performances

Step 1: Imitative

In this phase, students repeat the information they listen from a tape. Usually, they repeat
very simple phrases, vowels, consonants or short sentences ( Brown, 2000:273)

Step 2: Intensive

After repeating and get familiar with the language, students practice some speaking
performances which focuses on grammatical and phonological aspects of language.

Step 3: Responsive

After repeating and get familiar with the language, students produce the language themselves.
They will respond to teacher‟s question and interact with other classmates in a very simple
form of language. Typical activities for this stage is question and answer, give instruction and
direction ( Brown , 2000:273)


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Step 4: Interactive
( Transactional dialogs)

The purpose of this technique is to provide students opportunities to practice short
conversation to convey idea, exchange information, and opinions with others. Students can
adopt short interview, dialogue with other classmates ( Brown, 2000: 273)

Step 5: Interactive
( Interpersonal ; dialogs)

At this stage, students are directed to produce conversations. It is necessary for students
to engage social themes into their conversations. Slangs, idioms, phrasal should be
encouraged and introduced to students‟ conversation ( Brown, 2000: 274)

Step 6: Extensive
( Monologue)

At this level, students are able to produce and take part in producing language frequently.
They can join the monologue, respond to speech, change their positions when
communicating. Some forms of this technique that students can implements are
presentations, story telling, making news reports ( Brown,2000: 274)

Speaking activities in language classroom can be diverse and presented in many
different formats. O‟Malley and Pierce ( 1996) says that authentic activities such as


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role- play, drama, simulations can be useful to use real life conversation. Repetitions,
pauses, interruptions, body language, gestures can be implemented in these situations
and make the conversations more natural.
The teacher is also expected to create speaking tasks to foster and motivate

students in learning the speaking skill and make them practice speaking English
consistently. By using the right and appropriate activities that match students‟ interests
and ability and syllabus inspire students to learn. Usually, in classroom, discussion is
commonly used to stimulate students to negotiate and express their opinions. Harmers(
2001: 272) mentions the whole range of discussion from basic to high level of
students. The buzz group is a good organization of students into different team to have
quick discussion with other members in a group before any member is asked to speak
in public. Students are also expected to predict the content of some reading, or talk
about their reaction after reading and discussing the reading with other members.

2.1.3. Test of speaking
Test of speaking skill is necessary to assess students‟ oral ability. It is an
assessment tool to help teacher know a student‟ strength and weakness in their
speaking ability. Thus, the teacher can use different kind of tests as a way to measure
the teaching and learning process , sometimes they want to see whether their method
of teaching speaking skill is effective or not. Another benefit of testing is that it helps
teacher discover students‟ oral great speaking and the results collected from test would
let teacher decide the appropriate teaching technique to apply to certain type of
students and therefore, allow them to participate in a particular course or program.
The test of speaking is popular in school as a requirement of the school program.
When teacher tests students‟ speaking ability, they will consider it as a productive
skill. However, unlike writing which is also a productive skill, speaking test is more
difficult to measure. In speaking, there is no true or wrong answer. It is the reflection
of how students use language to perform certain tasks, therefore, teacher should create
a scoring standard sheet which contains elements reflecting the characteristics of
speaking skill.


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Also, teacher need to think about rubrics, criteria and assessment for students‟

tests. Among these preparations, assessing and scoring students‟ speaking skill is the
most difficult. Indeed, it is quite difficult to assess a productive skill which covers
many aspects of the language that a teacher has to be an expert in the field. Speaking is
not simply a skill lonely but a combination of other languages skills which may not
correlate with each other. In speaking test, students have to use a range of vocabulary
to express ideas while he needs to be accurate in pronunciation and grammar. The
combination of many language component aspects accurately at short time may
discourage students in speaking and communicating.
It has been mentioned previously that giving scores to students‟ speaking test is
also difficult task for teacher or test taker. The reason is speaking involves many
aspects of language skills and language components which speaker can fail in their
test. It is easy and possible to find some students who are strong at vocabulary but lack
of fluency and expression ability. They know many words but they can not express the
language properly and communicate with each other. The similar situation can happen
to some students who have good pronunciation and intonation but they lack words and
vocabulary to express and convey their ideas. The other difficulties that the teacher
may find in giving students‟ speaking score is that some students are able to make
meaningful sentences in term of grammar and semantics and make it comprehensible
but the other students can deliver the message of their speech but they can not make
correct sentence structures. The difficulty of testing a student‟ speaking is that it can
not have a perfect standardization of giving the scores to students. The teacher can
base on a scoring rubrics but in practice, the process of testing and scoring are
influenced by language uses that students adapt. Therefore, according to (Brown : 143)
speaking test is not about single skill testing. Teacher should be careful to specify and
calculate to produce an appropriate rubrics for speaking test due to the complexity of
oral testing process; consequently, the teacher will achieve a fair and high reliable
index of scoring result for students.