Teaching english speaking skills to the tenth form students at dinh chuong duong high school problems and prroposed solutions

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY

TRƯƠNG THỊ LOAN

TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS TO THE TENTH
FORM STUDENTS AT DINH CHUONG DUONG HIGH SCHOOL:
PROBLEMS AND PROPOSED SOLUTIONS
(Dạy các kĩ năng nói Tiếng Anh cho học sinh lớp 10
tại trường THPT Đinh Chương Dương: vấn đề và giải pháp)

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code : 60 14 10

maSTER thesis in education

Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. VÕ ĐẠI QUANG


VINH - 2011

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DECLARATION
Except where otherwise indicated, this thesis is my own work.

Vinh – 2011

Truong Thi Loan

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have been fortunate to receive invaluable help from many people during
my study. First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Assoc.Prof.Dr
Vo Dai Quang, my supervisor, for his immense encouragement, wholehearted and
detailed guidance, without which the study could not have been completed.
My special thanks also go to all my lecturers of the Faculty of Post –
Graduate Studies, Vinh University and Vietnam University of Languages
International Studies for their scientific knowledge through useful lectures which
help me a lot in completing this study.
I would like to show my sincere thanks to my classmates who help me a lot
in finding references and giving their invaluable comments and suggestions while
the work of this thesis was in progress.
I take this opportunity to send my thankfulness to my colleagues and
students from Dinh Chuong Duong High School for their willingness to take part in
the study. Without their help this thesis would not have been so successful.
Last but not least, I also owe my indebtedness to my family members for
their love, care and encouragement in the process of writing this thesis.

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ABSTRACT
This study is aimed at investigating how activities are carried out in speaking
lessons by the tenth form students at DCD High school and at finding out the methods
of teaching activities effectively. The data were collected by means of class
observation and questionnaire administered to 7 teachers of English and 120 students.
The study suggests that in class time, teachers should use various activities to creat

chances for students to practise and encourage them to speak. In addition, they should
develop more positive attitudes towards oral errors to make them feel more confident
to speak. The thesis also provides some implications for English language teaching.

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LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS AND TABLES
1. Abbreviations
CLT

Communicative Language Teaching

COFS

Classroom Observation Forms

DCD

Dinh Chuong Duong

EFL

English as a Foreign Language

ELT

English Language Teaching

ESL

English as a Second Language

L1

First Language / Mother Tongue (in this research: Vietnamese)

L2

Second Language / Target Language ( in this research: English)

SLA

Second Language Acquisition

2. Tables
Table 4.1: Students’ judgement on speaking activities in their speaking lessons
Table 4.2: Teachers’ judgement on speaking activities in speaking lessons
Table 4.3: The types of errors made and the timing of errors – correction.
Table 4.4: The types of activities are conducted and solutions

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DEFINITIONS OF KEY TERMS
(1)

Aims: the underlying reasons for purposes of a course of instruction.
(Richards, 1987, p. 254)

(2)

Approach: different theories about the nature of language and how languages
are learned. (Richarchs, 1987, p.20)

(3)

Communicative Competence: the ability not only to apply the grammatical
rules of a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also to
know when and where to use these sentences and to whom. (Richards, 1987,
p.65)

(4)

Linguistic Competence: the knowledge a learner knows about the language.
(Bailey, 2005).

(5)

Linguistic Performance: how a learner use the known knowledge in
communication.(Bailey, 2005).

(6)

Objectives: descriptions of what is to be achieved in a course. ( Richards,
1987, p.253)

(7)

Speech (Oral) Errors: faults made by speakers during the production of

sounds, words and sentences. (Richards, 1987, p.344)

(8)

Target Language: the language a person is learning, in contrast to a first
language or mother tongue. (Richards, 1987, p.373)

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TABLES OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION.........................................................................................................................i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.......................................................................................................ii
ABSTRACT..............................................................................................................................iii
LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS AND TABLES.......................................................................iv
DEFINITIONS OF KEY TERMS..............................................................................................v
TABLES OF CONTENTS.........................................................................................................1
PART A: INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................3
1. Rationale.................................................................................................................................3
2. Scope of the study...................................................................................................................3
3. Objectives of the study...........................................................................................................4
4. Research questions.................................................................................................................4
5. Organization of the study........................................................................................................4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT.......................................................................................................5
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW....................................................................................5
1.1. Review of previous words...................................................................................................5
1.2. Speaking skill.......................................................................................................................5
1.2.1. Speaking skill definition ..................................................................................................5
1.2.2. Features of teaching speaking skills.................................................................................6
1.2.3. Features of learning speaking skills.................................................................................8

1.3. Motivation............................................................................................................................8
1.4. Articulatory features of some English speech sounds.........................................................9
1.5. Types of Errors in Speaking Lessons................................................................................11
1.5.1. Grammatical errors.........................................................................................................11
1.5.2. Discourse Errors.............................................................................................................11
1.5.3. Pronunciation Errors.......................................................................................................12
1.5.4. Lexical Errors..................................................................................................................12
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY............................................................................................13
2.1. An Overview of the Research Site....................................................................................13
2.1.1. Dinh Chuong Duong High School.................................................................................13
2.1.2. Textbook.........................................................................................................................13
2.1.3. Teachers..........................................................................................................................13
2.1.4. Learning Situation in 10th Form...................................................................................14
2.2. The Subjects of the Study..................................................................................................14
2.2.1. The Students....................................................................................................................14
2.2.2. The Teachers...................................................................................................................15
2.3. Data Collection Instruments..............................................................................................15
2.3.1. Questionnaires ...............................................................................................................15
2.3.2. Classroom Observation...................................................................................................15
2.4. Data Collection Procedures...............................................................................................16
2.4.1. For Questionnaires..........................................................................................................16
2.4.2. For Classroom Observation............................................................................................16
2.5. Summary............................................................................................................................17
CHAPTER 3: PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE DATA...................................18
3.1. Students’ Questionnaires...................................................................................................18
3.2. Teachers’ Questionnaires .................................................................................................21
3.3. Observation Classroom .....................................................................................................26

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3.4. Summary............................................................................................................................28
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND COMMENTS.......................................................................29
4.1. Problems faced by tenth form students at Dinh Chuong Duong High School in learning
English speaking skills..............................................................................................................29
4.1.1. Learning environment.....................................................................................................29
4.1.2. Difficulties from teachers...............................................................................................36
4.1.3. Facilities..........................................................................................................................37
4.2. Discussion .........................................................................................................................37
4.2.1. For teachers of English at DCD Upper Secondary school ............................................37
4.2.2. For students of English at DCD Upper Secondary school.............................................38
CHAPTER 5: PROPOSED SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS MENTIONED................45
5.1. Some proposed solutions for teachers...............................................................................45
5.1.1. Well – defining the purpose of each speaking lesson: accuracy or fluency..................45
5.1.2. Catching students’ interest..............................................................................................46
5.1.3. Lead students to activities...............................................................................................48
5.1.4. Considering some other factors in speaking activities...................................................50
5.1.5. Making pre-speaking activities meaningful...................................................................53
5.1.6. Redesigning inappropriate tasks.....................................................................................53
5.2. Some proposed solutions for students...............................................................................53
5.2.1. Maximal students’ talking time......................................................................................54
5.2.2. Even participation among the students...........................................................................54
5.2.3. Strong motivation to speak.............................................................................................54
5.2.4. Comprehensibility of the students’ language.................................................................55
5.3. Summary............................................................................................................................55
PART C: CONCLUSSION......................................................................................................55
1. Recapitulation.......................................................................................................................55
2. Concluding remarks..............................................................................................................56
3. Pedagogical Implications......................................................................................................57
4. The limitations of the study .................................................................................................59

5. Suggestions for further research...........................................................................................59
REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................60

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PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
From the reality of teaching and learning English speaking skill, especially at
upper secondary schools, we can easily see the obvious limitations. Even students
who have learned English for several years cannot speak English fluently or cannot
speak it at all. In class, we as teachers often find the students can hardly use English
for communicative objectives even in the simple form or we may find the students
who are able to point the answer of the question on a text but they can not explain
their reason in choosing the answer. It is also evident that in class, the students have
limited time to practice their speaking skills, and it resulted on their ability to use the
target language, as the old saying “Practice makes perfect”. The lack of motivation,
the lack of confidence when communicating or poor knowledge of English language
can be causes. In addition to those mentioned above, equipments and teaching
methods of teachers can make the situation worse. In speaking lessons, teachers use
different methods to get students to speak English in which speaking activities are
considered effective and interesting to motivate students to learn.
Speaking skills has been used for a long time and proved very effective as the
inspiration for students to study. And the fact of teaching speaking activities at upper
secondary schools seems not to meet this target. However, this problem is not easy;
teachers and students get many difficulties in carrying out activities in teaching
English-speaking skills. Students still feel bored or do not want to take part in these
activities during speaking lessons.
Therefore, in order to teach students how to speak in the best way possible,
studying on how to teach English-speaking skills effective is very necessary.

Thus I decide to choose a study on “Teaching English speaking skills to the
tenth form students at Dinh Chuong Duong Upper Secondary School: Problems and
proposed solutions”
2. Scope of the study
Detecting problems in the teaching of English speaking skills at DCD Upper
secondary school in Thanh Hoa province and providing some proposed solutions for
speaking skill development.

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3. Objectives of the study
This thesis is designed as a research into how E-speaking activities are taught
at DCD Upper secondary school in Thanh Hoa province. The focus is on recognition
of problems and finding solutions to these problems.
4. Research questions
1. What are the current problems in teaching speaking activities to the tenth form
students at DCD Upper secondary school?
2. What are the causes of the difficulties encountered by the tenth form students
at Dinh Chuong Duong Upper secondary school?
3. What are the possible solutions to the problems?
5. Organization of the study
This study is structured as follows:
Part A:

Introduction

Part B:

Development

Chapter 1: Literature review
.

Chapter 2: Methodology
Chapter 3: Presentation and analysis of the data
Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion
Chapter 5: Proposed solutions to the problems mentioned
Part C: Conclusion
REFERENCES
APPENDIX

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is mainly the result of the process of reading, collecting, studying,
and generalizing the documents from many authentic sources about the literature
review of the study.
1.1. Review of previous words
For years, language teaching was seen as helping learners develop linguistic
competence. Many researches around teaching speaking as ‘appropriate errorcorrection strategies in speaking lessons’, ‘Some suggestions to conduct effectively
English speaking activities’ ..etc.. proved very effective as the inspiration for students
to study. Recently Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) with its emphasis on
meaning and communication in the target language and its learner- centered approach
has served as the dominant approach to language teaching. Davies (2000) finds that
CLT is without doubt the approach used by most language today. With the fact of
teaching speaking skills at Dinh Chuong Duong High School I want to study more

about teaching English speaking activities for the tenth form students. I hope I can
contribute to teaching English speaking successfully.
1.2. Speaking skill
1.2.1. Speaking skill definition
There are many scholars expressing their own viewpoints about speaking. These are
some of the most typical ones.
- Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal
and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998, p. 13).
- In Brown and Yule’s opinions (1983), spoken language consists of short,
fragmentary utterances in a range of pronunciation.
- Speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing,
receiving and processing information (Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997). In
general, speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode. It, like the other skills, is
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more complicated than it seems at first and involves more than just pronouncing
words.
Speaking skill is considered the art of communications, it is a productive
skill that helps the speakers express their ideas. A person who has good speaking
skills is the one who can generate words that can be understood by listeners and for
that good speaking skill is a useful mean to make the utterances clear and
informative. According to “Language Teaching Techniques” published by English ]
=language institute Victoria University of Wellington: “ Speaking activities are ]very
often used to master content matter. Group work in most school classes is used not for
the language activities it provides, but because through trying to understanding texts,
experiencing activities, producing material, or problem solving activities, learners
master the content matter of the subject they are studying”. This proved that in the
classroom, speaking skill can be effectively conducted by the activities relating to the
tasks for a group of people such as discussion or group-work, pair-work.

1.2.2. Features of teaching speaking skills
Just think of all the different conversations people have in one day and
compare that with how much written communication they do in one day. Which do
they do more of? In their daily lives, most of them speak more than they write, yet
many English teachers still spend the majority of class time on reading and writing
practice, almost ignore speaking and listening skills. If the goal of their language
course is truly to enable their students to communicate in English, then speaking
skills should be taught and practiced in the language classroom.
According to Jack Richards, a very famous professor at Cambridge University,
when teaching speaking skill, teachers determine a set of the goals that the course
should be required to meet. A speaking class should have the activities which address
specific aspect of oral skills. Oral skills conclude three aspects: interaction,
transaction or performance. An interaction talk is that talk can create social
interactions among people and address the face needs of participants. An interaction
talk has to focus on participants and their social needs such as greeting, asking for

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permission, etc. Meanwhile, a transaction talk obtains information or gets goods or
services. This focuses on the message that the participants wants to transmit. And a
talk is performance when there is audience and speaker, the speaker must be single so
that there is no interaction in the talk and the speaker must create a “ product”, and
here it may be a welcome speech, class talk, etc.
According to Hayirie Kaky, teaching speaking skill is to teach learners to:
-

Produce the English speech sounds and sounds and sound patterns:
Pronunciation is a very important part in learning any languages including
English.

-

Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and rhythm of the second
language.

-

Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social
setting, audience, situation and subject matter.

-

Organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence

-

Use language as a means of expressing values and judgments.

-

Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses,
which is called as fluency.

Teaching speaking skill is really difficult because it is a challenge for teachers
who want to raise students’ interest. If the activities are interested, students will
participate in the class actively. This is also a criterion to evaluate the quality of the
speaking class. Teaching speaking skill is somehow an art of getting students’
involvement in the activities. If teachers don’t prepare the speaking lesson carefully,
they won’t make their students concentrate on the lessons and implement the tasks

willingly.
A successful speaking class is one in which the grammar and pronunciation
errors are addressed appropriately. However, teachers should notice the differences
between the mistakes and the errors. Some mistakes can be ignored but the error
system must be addressed and corrected so that students can avoid these later.
Teachers should give feedback and must address both the good and the bad of the

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students and the thing that students have not done well yet can be corrected smoothly
to save their face.
1.2.3. Features of learning speaking skills
Grace Stovall Burkart (1998) claims that it is necessary to supply students with
the basic aspects of the skill and language learners should recognize three areas of
knowledge: Mechanics, Functions and Social and cultural rules and norms. The first
aspect includes pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. This aspect helps students
use the right words in the right order with the correct pronunciation. Besides, It
focuses on the surface of the talk in terms of how the ideas are arranged, how words
are pronounced and used. The second is Functions. It includes transaction, interaction
and performance. It helps students determine the type of the talk with certain criteria
and purposes. And the last is the social and cultural rules and norms such as turntaking, rate of speech, length of pauses between speakers, relative roles of
participants. This aspect supplies students with the background knowledge to help
them understand how to take into account who is speaking to whom, in what
circumstances, about what, and for what reason.
According to Jo Mac Donough (1995: 151) “ speaking is often thought of as
“colloquial”, which helps to accounts for its lower priority in some teaching context”.
In the process of language teaching, teachers should help their students
develop speaking skill by providing interesting topics, authentic practice that prepares
students for real- life communication situations.

1.3. Motivation
Many students equate being able to speak a language as knowing the language
and therefore view learning the language as learning how to speak the language, or as
Nunan wrote, "success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation
in the target language." Therefore, if students do not learn how to speak or do not get
any opportunity to speak in the language classroom they may soon get de-motivated
and lose interest in learning. On the other hand, if the right activities are taught in the

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right way, speaking in class can be a lot of fun, raising general learner’s motivation
and making the English language classroom a fun and dynamic place to be.
1.4. Articulatory features of some English speech sounds
Vowel should be differentiated based on criteria such as distance from the top
of the tongue and soft palate, tongue position that blocks occupied in the mouth, lip
roundness, and duration. To distinguish, we can use features such as [high], [low],
[Back], [front], [round], [tense], and [Advanced Tongue Root]. These features can
also be used to describe the consonants.
1.4.1. Feature [+ / - high] distinguish narrow vowels (close / high) with the other
vowels. The vowel [+ high] is pronounced with the tongue body that is higher than
''neutral' 'position. The vowels are not articulated with the tongue body raised are
sounds [- high]:
[+ high]: [i:, i, u; u: ]
[- high]: [o, o:, a:, ∧, „, e, ∂, ∂:]
1.4.2. Feature [+ / - low] distinguish low /close (low /open) vowels with the others.
The vowels [+ low] are pronounced with the lower tongue body compared to the
neutral position. The ones [- low] are the sounds which not pronounced with the
tongue body lowered.
[ + low ]: [„, a:, o, ∧]

[ - low ]: [ i:, i, u, u:, o, o:, e, ∂, ∂: ]
All consonants in English, except for two sounds [h], [?] (glottal), are the
characteristic [- low].
1.4.3. Feature [+ / - back] distinguish the back vowels with other vowels. Vowel
[+back] is the sound of articulation with the tongue block backward compared to the
neutral position. Value [- back] is used to describe the vowel pronounced with the
tongue position which does not shrink back. All consonants in English, except for the
soft palate sounds, all share the characteristic [- back].
[ + back ] : [ u, u:, o, o:, a, a:]

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[ - back ] : [ i:, i, , ∧, ∂, ∂:, „, e]
1.4.4. Feature [+ / - front] is used to distinguish the sound from the front of the
articulation with the sounds formed later in the mouth cavity. Value [+ front] is vowel
that the tongue body is pushed forward neutral position in the process of articulation.
Value [- front] is used to indicate the sounds which are not on the manner of
articulation above. The sounds with the character [- front] including central vowels
and back vowels:
[ + front ] : [ i:, i, „, e ]
[ - front ] : [ u, u:, o, o:, a:, ∧, ∂, ∂:]
The combination of two features [back] and [front] which describes the nature of the
central vowels such as [∂, ∧].
1.4.5. Feature [+ / - round] distinguish the lip round sounds and not ones. Value
[+round] is formed with rounded lips. The sound is not formed by such method as the
character [- round]. All consonants in English, except for sound [w] are bilabial.
[ + round ] : [ u, u:, o, o: ]
[ - round ] : [ i:, i, a:, ∧, ∂, ∂:, „, e]
1.4.6. Feature [+ / - tense] can be used to distinguish the long vowels with short

vowels. This feature is usually not considered to be related to the consonants. The
sounds [+ tense] are articulated with the stiffness of the muscles of the tongue mass
with its neutral status. And the sounds [- tense] are made without the stiffness of the
tongue.
[+ tense]: [ i:, u:, o:, ∂:]
[ - tense ]: [ i, u, o, „, ∧, ∂, e]
1.4.7. Feature [+ / - Advanced Tongue Root] is used to distinguish the vowels
pronounced with the tongue ahead. The sounds [ATR] is produced with the tongue
pushed forward leaving its neutral position in the mouth cavity, so tongue body is
lifted. The sounds without the method of articulation above is the character [- ATR].

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Sometimes this feature is used in English to describe the distinctive needs of the
characteristic sound [tense]
1.5. Types of Errors in Speaking Lessons
1.5.1. Grammatical errors
Grammatical Errors, which stress the need for grammatical accuracy in both
speech and writing, may hinder communication. Actually, the biggest distraction for
any language teacher with regard to error correction has been the traditional focus in
ELT on the correction of errors at a grammatical level. At the global level, morphosyntactic errors can detract from overall intelligibility and may thus have a serious
effect on communication. A speaker’s utterance “I love my dog more than my wife”
can be very confusing. At sentence level, ‘errors’ may often reflect performance
‘mistakes’ for which immediate teacher correction is not necessarily appropriate (Lee,
1990). For instance, a speaker said: “I singed English, but I didn’t feel it is English”.
1.5.2. Discourse Errors
Discourse Errors are dependable upon the observance of the rules of speaking
and reflect learners” cultural and pragmatic knowledge of language use. An example
for this kind is “Now I’m learning English news. I like them”. As can be seen, this is

an error of cohesive device misuse because the speaker considered “news” a plural
noun.
Hendrickson (1981) points out that pedagogy needs to be related to modes of
linguistic presentation. The approach to correcting errors. Each discourse mode
demands different correction at different acceptable periods.
With spoken discourse, the question of when to correct becomes vital to the
learner’s confidence and to the train of conversation. Besides, methods for correcting
oral errors are also paid much attention to. It is extremely difficult for a spontaneous
conversation or interaction to take place in oral communicative discourse if oral
errors should not be encouraged for fear of damaging learners’ confidence. A more
suitable approach would be to encourage learners to be conscious of the ability to
monitor themselves and correct their own errors.

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1.5.3. Pronunciation Errors
Phonological Errors are manifested in wrong pronunciation and intonation. For
example, the speaker mispronounced the word from [waste] to [water] in the
following sentence: “Some threw water in the forest they got a fine”. This caused
difficulty for the listener to understand. In the process of SLA, such errors necessitate
timely correction because they may have a meaning-differentiating function. As
teachers, few would expect students to be able to achieve a native sound system in
their L2. This is an area where fossilization does tend to take place. However, a
communication breakdown can occur if a phonologically-induced error is serious
enough to affect intelligibility. This is when appropriate correction is crucial in
indicating the speaker’s error, as by implicit suggestions from the listener.
1.5.4. Lexical Errors
Lexical Errors may also hinder communication and intelligibility. This type of
errors can easily arise in combination with other categories. An example is a

speaker’s error in the sentence: “I read a lot of books interesting”. It is a common
type of lexical errors, namely wrong word order. A more serious lexical error can be
found in the following utterance: “The man raised from the ground”. That is the
misuse of the verb “raise”. In this case, “rose” would be accurate. Like morphosyntactic errors, lexical errors are errors which are habitually corrected by teachers.
On the whole, it is easy for teachers to correct lexical errors as one only needs to
pinpoint the change in meaning and provide the correct word.

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1. An Overview of the Research Site
2.1.1. Dinh Chuong Duong High School
Dinh Chuong Duong High School, founded in 1998, is located in Hau Loc
Town, Hau Loc District, Thanh Hoa province. This public school has 28 classes with
68 teachers of different subjects. Currently there are approximately 1427 students of
three grades: 10, 11 and 12. Grade 11 has 9 classes, grade 12 has 11 classes, grade 10
has 8 classes. On the average, there are about 50 students in a class. Most of the
students come from different villages close to the school.
The number of students in the 10th grade are 435 students. They are now 16
years of age. The students learned English as a foreign language for four years at
Junior High School and are all learning English, with three English classes a week.
2.1.2. Textbook
The 10th form students are now using Tieng Anh 10, the standard syllabus,
written by Hoang Van Van et al. It follows two popular approaches, namely learnercentered approach and communicative approach. There are 16 units in the textbook.
Each units contains 5 lessons: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language
Focus. Obviously these textbooks focus on linguistic knowledge as well as skill
formation and development. Speaking skill is taught in one lesson of a unit. Its
primary goal is to teach communicative competence, that is, the ability to

communicate in English. However, this year Ministry of Education and Training asks
schools to reduce lessons and improves quality of teaching and learning. So some
units are cut and some long and difficult units are added with periods
2.1.3. Teachers
All the 8 teachers of English at DCD High School are Vietnamese, aged from
26 to 37. The youngest has 2 years of teaching English while the oldest has been
teaching English for 12 years. Seven of them are female. Seven of them got formal
training. Only one is in-service graduates.

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2.1.4. Learning Situation in 10th Form
In English lessons, the main materials used are simply a blackboard, textbooks
and in recent two years teacher have been using cassettes during listening lessons and
using projector during the lessons. The classrooms are physically overcrowded, with
limited space for activity organization. Besides, there are no competitions and
outdoor activities for students to take part in. Moreover, most of the students do not
see the importance of English. They just focus on learning the subjects for their
entrance exam, namely maths, chemistry and physics. English tests are administered
to measure students’ language ability. However, students’ speaking exam is not
implemented. Generally, the students’ knowledge of English is poor. Also their
exposure to English in the classroom is very limited, so they are not good at
communicative skills. Therefore, the teaching of English in general, and the teaching
speaking English in particular has encountered a lot of difficulties.
The organizing of activities in speaking lessons is arbitrary. Each teacher has
different reactions to learners’ activities. Most of them don’t usually use activities in
the lessons due to the lack of knowledge of teaching methods and students’ ability
when they use activities in the class.
2.2. The Subjects of the Study

The subjects of the study are 7 teachers of English teaching the tenth form
students. Besides, 120 students at DCD High School, where the researcher teaches
English, are selected. The teachers and students will help by filling in the
questionnaires and carrying out their classes as usual for the researcher to observe and
collect the most reliable data.
2.2.1. The Students
The subjects of the study are a sample of 120 students in the 10th form selected
at DCD High School. They are from three classes: C2, C3 and C4. In terms of
geographical origin, 98 % of them come from the countryside, and the rest are from
the town. They are not the same at English proficiency level in common and speaking
competence in particular. Only some of them are good and active in speaking classes
while others remain passive and quiet.

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2.2.2. The Teachers
The 7 teachers of English who are currently teaching the tenth form are
asked to complete the questionnaires for teachers. Among them, there are 6 females
and 1 male. Their ages range from 26 to 37. They have been teaching English at DCD
High School from 2 to 12 years. Most of them got formal training.
2.3. Data Collection Instruments
In order to get the needed information, the two instruments are employed.
They are questionnaires and classroom observation.
2.3.1. Questionnaires
Two sets of questionnaires were designed to investigate how speaking
activities are carried out and get the participants’ opinions of taking part in different
activities. Each includes 9 items to be responded to answer the research questions.
The questionnaire for students, with 9 questions written in English, was
administered to the students. The questionnaire for students was divided into two

parts as follows:
Part 1 is designed to get some background information of the students.
Part 2 consists of 9 questions devised for the students to provide the facts of
conducting speaking activities in their speaking lessons
The questionnaires which delivered to 7 teachers also consists of 9 questions
in order to collect information related. The teacher-questionnaire consists of two
main parts:
Part 1 elicits some background information from the teachers.
Part 2 with 9 questions, is designed for the teachers to give the facts of English
speaking activities.
2.3.2. Classroom Observation
Besides the questionnaires, classroom observation is also the main tool to
collect more information about the work of conducting speaking activities in speaking
lessons for the study. The researcher intends to observe the three classes C2, 10C3,
10C4, taught by two different teachers of English who have different abilities. The

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data will be collected in four lessons, two for each class. Each lesson lasts 45 minutes.
The classes must not be prepared for being observed. The teachers and students do as
usual. Moreover, the researcher must not do anything to interfere with the teachers,
the students and activities, that is non-participating observation. The details of
speaking activities are observed and filled in the Classroom Observation Forms
(COFs), (see Appendix).
2.4. Data Collection Procedures
The work of data collection for this study was carried out in the beginning of
the second semester. The school – years started early, August 16, 2010, so the second
semester began on November 18, 2010. At this time, the tenth form students have
learned in DCD for one semester. They have quite adapted to the new environment in

general and the teaching and learning of English in particular. Also the teachers have
got to know quite a lot about their students.
2.4.1. For Questionnaires
To collect data, the researcher has to design the questionnaires for the teachers
and students. Student-questionnaires were distributed to 116 students of the three
classes 10C2, 10C3 and 10C4 at DCD High School. 4 students from the three classes
were absent on the day the filling of the questionnaires was carried out due to their
sickness. Teacher-questionnaires were also delivered to 7 teachers of English
teaching the 10th form students.
Before administering the questionnaires, the researcher gave some
introduction and instructions, including Vietnamese explanation when necessary, in
order to make the procedures clear to the teachers as well as the students in the hope
that the subjects would fully understand the contents of the questionnaires. As for the
questionnaires administered in the classrooms, the teachers were asked to leave the
classroom so as to make the students feels comfortable as they were answering the
questions. Then, all 116 student-questionnaires and 7 teacher-questionnaires were
returned to the researcher.
2.4.2. For Classroom Observation
Before embarking in observing the classes, the researcher designed the COFs
and got permission from the school and the teachers to be observed to avoid ethics

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violations. Also, prior to the observation, in order to have an overview of the English
language knowledge provided for the students in lower secondary school, the
researcher spent a considerable time reading the textbooks, namely, Tieng Anh 6,
Tieng Anh 7, Tieng Anh 8 and Tieng Anh 9.
When observing the lessons, the researcher did not do anything to interfere the
class. All the data needed were observed and carefully filled in the forms. Besides,

the researcher used a voice recorder to record all the lessons in case of later reference.
After observing the lessons, the data from the COFs were organized and analyzed to
get needed information for the thesis.
2.5. Summary
This chapter has presented the methodology of the study. In other words, the
researcher site, subjects of the study and data collection methods have also been
discussed at great length. Next chapter will present presentation and analysis of the
data.

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CHAPTER 3: PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE DATA

In this chapter, the data collected from the questionnaires and class observation
will be presented and analyzed. Data analysis is based on the details of the
questionnaires for teachers and students and Classroom Observation forms. Firstly, all
the collected data from the questionnaires and Classroom Observation forms are read
through to obtain the sense of the overall data. The data will then be calculated and
expressed in the form of tables. Finally, the data will be systematically analyzed and
evaluated.
3.1. Students’ Questionnaires
The first part of the questionnaires for 120 students of 10C2, 10C3 and 10C4
is designed to get some background information of the students. It consists of
questions, each offers the students freedom to choose what are true for them. The
results of the questionnaires for students are presented in table 3.1 and analyzed as
follows:
Questions
1.How do you like
speaking activities

?
2.Which kinds of
errors do students
often face with?
3.How often do
teacher

apply

speaking activities
in

speaking

Options
a. I like speaking activities a lot
b. I like them very much
c. I don’t like them very much
d. I don’t like them at all
a. Lexical errors
b. Grammatical errors
c. Discourse errors
d. Phonological errors
a. Often
b. Usually
c. Sometimes
d. Never

lessons

18

Number of
Responses
71
18
29
2
14
25
5
76
79
20
21
0

Percentage
59.17%
15%
24.17%
1.67%
11.67%
20.83%
4.17%
63.3%
65.8%
16.67%
17.5%
0