A study on english speaking ability of the first year students at law department, vinh university = nghiên cứu về khả năng nói tiếng anh của sinh viên năm nhất khoa luật, trường đại học vinh

420

VINH UNIVERSITY
FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT
*******

VŨ THỊ THƢƠNG

A STUDY ON ENGLISH SPEAKING ABILITY OF THE FIRST YEAR
STUDENTS AT LAW DEPARTMENT, VINH UNIVERSITY
( NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ KHẢ NĂNG NÓI TIẾNG ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM
NHẤT KHOA LUẬT, TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC VINH )

GRADUATION THESIS
FIELD: METHODOLOGY

VINH-2015


VINH UNIVERSITY
FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT
*********

A STUDY ON ENGLISH SPEAKING ABILITY OF THE FIRST YEAR
STUDENTS AT LAW DEPARTMENT, VINH UNIVERSITY
( Nghiên cứu về khả năng nói Tiếng Anh của sinh viên năm nhất khoa Luật, trường
Đại học Vinh )

GRADUATION THESIS
Field: Methodology

Student
Supervisor

: Vũ Thị Thƣơng, 52B2
: Bùi Thị Thanh Mai, M.A

Vinh, March 2014

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
For the completion of the thesis, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable
contributions from many people.
First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor
MA. Bui Thi Thanh Mai for giving me excellent suggestions, advice and detailed
critical comments on this research.
I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to all my lecturers of the Foreign
Language Department, Vinh University. They taught me a lot of knowledge and
skills which support me to complete this research.
In addition, particular thanks must go to the authors whose materials have been
used in my graduation paper.
Finally, my warmest thanks also go to my loving parents, my younger sister,
and my friends for encouragement.
I have tried my best to complete this graduation thesis; however, because of
the limitation of knowledge, experience as well as materials, my thesis is still far
from being perfect. Therefore, I would like to receive some comments from you so
that my graduation thesis will be better.
Vinh, March 2015

Vu Thi Thuong

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .......................................................................................... ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................... iii
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES ........................................................................... v
LIST OF PICTURES ................................................................................................. vi
PART I: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1
1. The rationale for choosing the subject .................................................................... 1
2. Aims of the study .................................................................................................... 1
3. The scope of the study............................................................................................. 1
4. Research questions .................................................................................................. 1
5. Methods of the study ............................................................................................... 2
6. The design of the study ........................................................................................... 2
PART II: DEVELOPMENT ....................................................................................... 3
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................... 3
1.1 The concepts of English speaking skill ................................................................ 3
1.2 Importance of speaking skill ............................................................................... 3
1.3 The component of speaking skill .......................................................................... 4
1.4. Stages of a speaking class ................................................................................... 4
1.5 Principles for teaching English speaking skill ...................................................... 5
1.6 The criteria of successful speaking activities ..................................................... 5
CHAPTER 2: INVESTIGATION............................................................................... 7
2.1 Investigation .......................................................................................................... 7
2.1.1 Goals of the investigation................................................................................... 7
2.1.2 The subjects of the investigation ........................................................................ 7
2.1.3 Methods for the data collection .......................................................................... 7

2.1.4 Procedures ........................................................................................................... 7
2.2 The real situation ................................................................................................... 8
2.2.1 Survey results: .................................................................................................... 8
2.2.2 Analysed results and the reasons for the real situation. .................................... 14
2.2.2.1 Recommend Target PET - student‟s book. ................................................ 14
2.2.2.2 Problems with speaking activities .............................................................. 17
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2.2.2.3 Analysed results and the reasons of the real situation .................................. 17
CHAPTER 3. THE SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE ENGLISH SPEAKING
SKILL ............................................................................................................... 21
3.1 For teachers ......................................................................................................... 21
3.2 For the students ................................................................................................... 31
3.3 Some important hints used to speak English successfully .................................. 33
PART III: CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 35
3.1 Conclusion........................................................................................................... 35
3.2 Suggestions for further studies ............................................................................ 35
REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 36
APPENDIXES .......................................................................................................... 36

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LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Table 1: Results of the Survey Questionnaire ................................................................ 8
Figure 1 : Which English skills do you spend most of time on studying?..................... 8
Figure 2: How do you feel about English speaking skill? ............................................. 9
Figure 3: What have you been learning English for?..................................................... 9
Figure 4: How often do you speak English in class ? .................................................. 10

Figure 5: Which level is your ability of speaking English? ......................................... 10
Figure 6: How much time do you spend on practicing speaking English? .................. 11
Figure 7: What do you usually do to raise your English speaking ability? ................. 11
Figure 8: Do you agree that the environment of english communication affect
considerably on your English speaking improvement? ....................................... 12
Figure 9: How often do you study english vocabulary? .............................................. 12
Figure 10: How many new words do you usually study at a time? ............................. 13

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LIST OF PICTURES
Picture 1: Target PET of Richmond (Student‟s Book) ................................................ 15
Picture 2: Content of Target PET (Student‟s Book) ................................................... 16
Picture 3: Discussing activity in English class. ............................................................ 23
Picture 4: The teacher uses the cards in teaching English speaking skill. ................... 24
Picture 5: The pictures or cards in teaching English speaking skill. ........................... 25
Picture 6 : Telling the story base on the pictures ......................................................... 25
Picture 7: Describing and guessing games (for thing) ................................................. 26
Picture 8: Dialogue activity in English class ............................................................... 27
Picture 9: Role play activity in English class ............................................................... 28
Picture 10: An information gap activity ....................................................................... 29
Picture 11: Interview activity in information gap game .............................................. 30
Picture 12: Vinh University English Speaking Zone Club .......................................... 32
Picture 13: Vinh University English Speaking Zone Club .......................................... 32

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PART I: INTRODUCTION

1. The rationale for choosing the subject
Nowadays, English plays an important role in our jobs and life, especially,
English speaking skill. To communicate with other people in the world we often use
English speech. And speaking skill can also help us to express ideas, see, and feel. If
we are good at English, it will help us have many opportunities to get a good job with
high salary, and easily to get promotion in the career. Besides, speaking English well,
we can communicate with most of the people in the world, as well as, access a huge
amount of information on all the fields of science, culture, society, business, sport,
music through books, newspaper, internet, so on.
However, we can look at the real situation of speaking English of the students
Viet Nam in general and the first year students at Law Department, Vinh University in
particular. Most of the students cannot be able to speak English fluently while they
have been studying English for several years. Hence, what are the reasons for the real
situation? Do they belong to the awareness of students, the teaching method of
teachers or other reasons? What are the solutions used to improve the English speaking
ability for the students?
For the above questions, the author would like to conduct the research entitled:
“A study on English speaking ability of the first year students at Law Department,
Vinh University.”
2. Aims of the study
In this graduation thesis, we pay attention to the real situation of speaking
English of students in order to find the reasons and suitable solutions. We hope that
after reading my thesis, the students will aware the necessity of English speaking skill
and get the good ways to study better. In addition, the teachers are given some
essential suggestions to teach English speaking skill more effectively and interesting.
3. The scope of an investigation
Because of the limitation in the objective and subjective conditions, we carried
out this investigation in the first year students of Law Department, Vinh University.
4. Research questions
With the above objectives, the research questions are:

- Why can‟t students speak English fluently while they have studied for a long time?
- What should be done to improve the quality of teaching and learning speaking
skill for the first year students of Law Department, Vinh University?

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5. Methods of the study
For completion, we have carried out some methods as follows:
Analytic methods: A survey questionnaire on the first year students of Law
Department, V.U about speaking skills and give the suitable solutions.
Quantitative: 70 students in class were required to do the questionnaires.
6. The design of the study
Apart from acknowledgement, table of contents, there are three main parts in my
thesis:
Part I. Introduction: The introduction is the overview of the study. It refers to
the goals of this research, research subjects, the mission of research, the methods of
research, the scope of an investigation and the design of the study. Through this part,
we can understand the purposes of the thesis and what we get after reading this.
Part II. Development
Chapter 1: Literature review: In this chapter, we will review the theory around
speaking skills, such as concepts of speaking, its importance, the component of
speaking skill, stages of a speaking class, and the criteria of successful speaking
activities.
Chapter 2: The investigation and the solutions: This chapter is very important. It
helps us understand the procedures of the survey, the real situation and its reasons,
then the results of the investigation.
Chapter 3: The solutions to improve English speaking skill: In this chapter, the
researcher will put the solutions for English teachers and students in improving
English skills.

Part III. Conclusion and suggestions for further study: This part includes the
main results of the research and gives some suggestions for further study.

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PART II: INVESTIGATION
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1 The concepts of English speaking skill
Speaking is the primary mode of communication and the key to human
communication. We can say that speaking means to converse, or expressing one‟s
thoughts and feelings in spoken language. Therefore the most researchers studied and
brought out many different concepts of speaking, such as :
Byrne (1997:8) has claimed that “speaking is a two-way process between the
speaker(s) and the listener(s) involving the productive skill of speaking and the
receptive skill of understanding.”;
Brown (1983) has stated “speaking is an interactive process of constructing
meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information.”;
Scott (1978) has pointed that “speaking can be typified as an activity involving
two or more people in which the participants are both hearers and speakers having to
react to what they hear and make their contribution.”;
Most of these researchers agree with one very important feature of speaking, that
is a two way process between the speaker and listener. Both the speaker and listener
have specific functions to perform their communication. The speaker transmits the
information to the listener and use different ways to express what they want to say by
eye contact, body language, intonation, stress, his facial expressions while the listener
has to decode that information.
1.2 Importance of speaking skill
As the number you are concerned that English is the official language of 53
countries and territories. It is the official language of the Europe and 3rd most people

use only after Chinese and Spanish. Especially, if you want to study abroad, European
Union is a top priority for you by the living conditions and the school‟ s reputation,
then English is the language you should never ignore. Therefore you necessarily have
to learn English to be able to follow the content of training programs, to communicate
with teachers and friends as well as to serve your life. When you can speak English
well, you can be confident to live and work in any countries.
Besides, learning speaking English is to improve your lives and your future.
Because employers will want to choose a candidate with good English speaking skills,
instead of a candidate cannot use or use this bad language. Even if you work for a
Japanese company, or any other multinational ones, if you can speak English well, you
will be given priorities.

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In addition, speaking English well help you promote your career. You can get
your dream jobs with a higher salary.
1.3 The component of speaking skill
According to Vanderkevent (1990:8) there are three components in speaking:
The speakers: Speakers are people who produce the sound. They are useful as
the tool to express opinion or feelings to the hearer. So if there are no speakers, the
opinion or the feelings will not be stated.
The listeners: Listeners are people who receive or get the speaker‟s opinion or
feeling. If there are no listeners, speakers will express their opinion by writing.
The utterances: The utterances are words or sentences, which are produced by the
speakers to state the opinion. If there is no utterance, both of the speakers and the
listeners will use sign.
1.4 . Stages of a speaking class
According to Erin Lowy (1999), a speaking class should have three stages: prespeaking stage, while-speaking stage and post-speaking stage.
The Pre-speaking stage: prepares students by getting them to think about the

topic or situation before they speak about it. Pre-speaking tasks can be brainstorming
or discussion tasks, where students collect all their ideas on the topic; vocabulary
preparation tasks, where the teacher pre-teaches key vocabulary to help students
express their ideas more easily or train students with pronunciation drill so that they
can speak English in good stress and intonation and this will help them speak out their
ideas in English easily and fluently. In this stage, the teacher will have to set up a pre
task, organize pair/group work and give clear instructions about the task.
The while-speaking stage: the teacher lets students work with each other without
interfering with correcting any mistakes in order not to stop students from being
influent. She/ he just gives assistance when if necessary. At the while-speaking stage,
the teacher does not have to do a lot of teaching, because her/ his will be working on
the while-task by themselves, individually or in groups. Instead, the teacher will have
to do a lot of monitoring and assisting weaker students who are having difficulty
completing the task.
The post-speaking stage: is like the follow-up stage. After students have practiced
speaking skill in the while-speaking stage, they do an extension speaking activities.
This helps students take the information from other groups or whatever they have
produced in the while-speaking stage, and do something meaningful with it. At this
stage, the teacher gets students to report their work and let the whole class share what

4


they have got from pair/group work. The teacher might give feedback, correct serious
mistakes here and give students marks.
1.5 Principles for teaching English speaking skill
According to Burn and Joyce (1997), each teacher should follow these principles
for teaching as follows:
1. Provide the cultural and social purposes of spoken.
2. Provide activities which involve dialogues and functional use of the language. In other

words, teaching should focus on language use and on meaning rather than usage and form.
3. Do not emphasize the significance of mistakes. This helps to encourage
students to speak without fear of correction.
4. State the purpose of the activity to the students. This provides a context or
focus to help comprehension.
5. Focus and work toward real and spontaneous speech.
6. Design activities which encourage natural interaction between speakers.
7. Place students in pairs, or small groups. Small groups and pairs are good
sources of motivation and surely help to increase the students‟ talking time. Besides, it
is easy for the teacher to access the students, to give explanations, suggestions,
assistance and encouragement to each student.
8. Provide topics of interest to the students.
Use the target language. This greatly increases the amount of English spoken and
reduces the temptation of students to hide in their native language.
1.6 The criteria of successful speaking activities
In order to get involved in activities in an English speaking class, teachers of English
should pay attention to the following criteria (Ur, 1996:120)
Learners talk a lot. As much as possible of the period of time allotted to the
activity is in fact occupied by learner talk. This may seem obvious, but often most time
is taken up with teacher talk or pauses.
Participation is even. Classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative
participants: all get a chance to speak, and contributions are fairly evenly distributed.
Motivation is high. Learners are eager to speak, because they are interested in the
topic and have something new to say about it, or because they want to contribute to
achieving a task objective.
Language is of an acceptable level. Learners express themselves in utterances
that are relevant, easily comprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of
language accuracy. Speaking is the ability to use the language in ordinary way by
speech. It is not only a matter of transferring some messages to other persons but is

5


also communication, which needs more than one person to communicate with. When
people speak, they construct ideas in words, express their perception, their feelings and
intentions, so that interlocutors grasp meaning of what the speakers mean. If the
learners do not have speaking skill, do not understand the English words that are said
by the speaker, do not acknowledge the language, they cannot grasp meaning of what
the speaker mean. In that condition, they cannot be said successfully in learning
English, because they do not have a meaningful interaction of English conversation.
Due to it, students who want to speak English well need to learn and practice it as
much as possible. As proverb says „practice makes perfect‟. Therefore, students must
practice to speak English as often as possible so that they are able to speak English
fluently and accurately.

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CHAPTER 2: DEVELOPMENT
2.1 Investigation
2.1.1 Goals of the investigation
In 4 skills: listening skill, speaking skill, reading skill, writing skill, most learners
have difficultly in speaking skill. Because speaking skill requires learners to have their
general language knowledge, such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation so that they
can communicate effectively in every situation.
The investigation was carried out with the aims of understanding clearly about
the real situation of English speaking nowadays, finding the reasons why, and putting
the suggested solutions to improve English speaking skills of the students.
2.1.2 The subjects of the investigation
The first year students at Law Department, Vinh University.

2.1.3 Methods for the data collection
In this research, the data collection have been used by the following methods:
Questionnaire: A questionnaire with 12 questions was given to 70 students. The
questionnaire is aimed at investigating the awareness of the students about studying
English speaking skills, requiring to give some ideas to study English speaking skills
more effectively.
Analytic and synthetic methods: from the data collected, the researcher
synthesized and analized to know the facts about the ability to speak English.
2.1.4 Procedures
The procedures of the investigation were carried out as follows.
First, the researcher prepared some lists of questionnaires to investigate the
teachers and the students about the real situation of studying English speaking skill.
Then the researcher delivered it to the students. After filling in it, we collected all the
papers and analyzed data.
Second, from collecting the data and information, the researcher spent much time
on analyzing answer sheets and direct interviews.

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2.2 The real situation
2.2.1 Survey results:

Table 1: Results of the Survey Questionnaire
Choice
Questions

A

B

C

D
13 (18,75%)

2

17 (25%)

11 (15,75%)

29 (40,5%)

3

26 (37,5%)

35 (50%)

9 (12,5%)

4

26 (37,5%)

18 (25%)

8 (12,5%)

5

5 (6,25%)

52 (75%)

13 (18,75%)

6

0 (0%)

18 (25%)

52 (75%)

7

31 (43,5%)

13 (18,75%)

0 (0%)

26 (37,5%)

8

18 (25%)

39 (56,25%)

5 (6,25%)

8 (12,5%)

9

65 (93,75%) 5 (6,25%)

10

8 (12,5%)

62 (87,5%)

0 (0%)

11

35 (50%)

27 (37,5%)

8 (12,5%)

18 (25%)

Question 1: How long have you been learning English ?
According to statistics, every student has been studying English for a long time. 7

years is for 43,75 % and 9 years is 37,5%, 12 years for 18,75%. So, we can see that
students have chances to study English when they were still pupils of the primary
school.
Figure 1 : Which English skills do you spend most of time on studying?

40,5%

25%
18,75%
15,75%

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In this question , 40.5% of the students admit that they spend most of time on
studying reading skill, and 25% of the students choose listening skill while writing
skill covers for 18,75%. Unexpectedly, only 15.75% of the students practice speaking
skill.
Figure 2: How do you feel about English speaking skill?

50%
37,5%

12,5%

It can be clearly seen from the chart, 50% of the students admit that English
speaking skill is difficult and 37,5% of the students say that they are interested in
English speaking skill. Meanwhile, only 12,5% think that English speaking skill is
boring.
Figure 3: What have you been learning English for?

25%

37.5%

A. To cope with the tests and
contests
B. To communicate with foreigners
C. To satisfy your favorite in English

12.5%
25%

D. To get a good job

9


In question 4, “What have you been learning English for?”, most of the students
(37,5%) choose the aim of studying English is to cope with the tests and contests in

18,75%

6,25%

class, 25% of the students study English to communicate with foreigners and to get a
good job, besides, 12.5% of the students want to satisfy their hobby in English.
Figure 4: How often do you speak English in class ?

75%

Speaking English in class is very useful to improve the English speaking ability
of the students. However, it is clear from the chart that 75% of the students sometimes
speak English in the class whereas only 6.25% always speak English and never speak
English is for 18.75%. This result shows that the students need to create by themselves
opportunities to practice speaking English as much as possible in class.
Figure 5: Which level is your ability of speaking English?

75%
25%
0%

In question 5, the researcher wants the students to judge their English speaking
ability correctly by themselves. Conformable statistics, 75% of the students realize that

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they are bad at speaking English skills; unexpectedly, only 25% are good at speaking,
no one judges that they are excellent.
Figure 6: How much time do you spend on practicing speaking English?
43,5%
37,5%

18,75%

0%

The aim of this question is to survey the time which the students spend on
practicing speaking English. Looking at this chart, we notice the results as follows:

43,5% of the students spend 10 minutes practicing and 18.75% choose 20-30 minutes.
However, no one spend over 30 minutes on speaking skill. Noteworthy, 37.5% of the
students never practice speaking English.
Figure 7: What do you usually do to raise your English speaking ability?

6,25%

12,5%

25%

56,25%

A. Watching the films of American
B. Listening to music and singing English songs
C. Joining in English speaking clubs
D.Chatting with the foreigners on internet such as facebook, yahoo, skype,..

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In question 8, the researcher put this question with the aim of investigation about
some ways which the students usually use to promote their English speaking ability.
Through these questions, the researcher can understand more clearly the reasons why
the students cannot speak English well while they have studied for several years.
The above pie chart shows that most of the students choose listening to music and
singing English songs (56,25%), 25% of the students watch the films of America, and
12.5% of students raise their ability by chatting with the foreigners on internet such as
facebook, yahoo, skype,...Meanwhile, only 6.25% of the students join in English
speaking clubs.

Figure 8: Do you agree that the environment of English communication affect

6,25%

considerably your English speaking improvement?

93,75%

In question 9, 93.75% of the students admit that the environments of English
communication affect considerably their English speaking improvement. However,
6,25% say that they do not agree with this opinion. The students think that they can
speak English better or not, it depends on one‟s effort, not on the environment.
Figure 9: Vocabulary is very essential in studying speaking skill. Because of
having plentiful vocabulary, it is easy for you to express what you want to share. So,
how often do you study English vocabulary?

12


87,5%

12,5%
0%

Looking at the chart, we can notice that the students “always” study English
vocabulary only 12.5%. Most of the students chose the answer “sometimes”. It means
that 87.5% of the students “sometimes” study English vocabulary.
Figure 10: How many new words do you usually study at a time?

12,5%

50%
37,5%

In question 11, the researcher wants to survey the number of new words which
the students usually study at a time. As can be clearly seen from the chart, 50% of the
sts study 1-2 new words each time, 37.5% study 5-7 new words, and over 10 new
words only for 12.5%. From this result, we can notice that the investment in learning
english vocabulary is too limited. 1-2 new words each time is really too difficult for
the students to their speaking ability. Because of having many new words, it is easy for
you to express what you want to share.
Question 12: Which activities do you want to be organized in class by your
teacher to raise your English speaking ability? Please make clear.
In question 12, according to the investigation 70 students of Law Department,
Vinh Uni, we noticed that most of the students hope their teacher to organize some
activities in English lessons such as discussing in small groups, listening to music in
English and singing, presenting dramas, playing games, outdoor activities, quick oral,

13


problem solving, etc. They believe that discussing activities help the students get more
chances in practicing speaking English with their friends. They can be confident to
speak their opinions in front of people. Through this activity, the students will be more
confident and increase vocabulary, and the lesson will be more effective. In addition,
they think that presenting a drama in class is very interesting. It creates the air of class
more comfortable, happier and more active. It also makes the relationship between the
sts and teacher closer. Besides, the students desire that the teacher should sometimes
play some songs in English in class. Because it not only helps them reduce stress in a
difficult lesson, but they also get vocabulary and improve their pronunciation.
Moreover, they also solve problem in the fact of life through picture, or video.

Because it is compulsory that they must think carefully about the problem to solve it
appropriately, and then they use their vocabulary in English to convey to others.
However, they admit that the oral activity between the teacher and the students is very
boring.
2.2.2 Analysed results and the reasons for the real situation.
2.2.2.1 Recommend Target PET - student’s book.
At present, Target PET (student‟s book) of Richmond has been used by students
of Law Department, Vinh University. There are 12 units in the book, each of which is
divided into two lessons. Each lesson looks at one of the topics that could appear in the
exam, and contains Vocabulary, Language focus and authentic Exam practice.

14


Picture 1: Target PET of Richmond (Student’s Book)

15


Picture 2: Content of Target PET (Student’s Book)

16


2.2.2.2 Problems with speaking activities
During the process of speaking English, the students have difficulties as follows.
Firstly, there are some inhibitions during speaking English, such as lack of
vocabulary, fear of making mistakes and fear of losing face in front of teacher and friends.
Secondly, the students have nothing to say, because the speaking activities are
not appropriate for the students and the teacher. In addition, they have no motivation to

press what they want to share and even if maybe they are lazy in thinking to find the
answers or because the topic is too difficult and not closed with the life, therefore they
are bored with the topic so they have nothing to say.
Thirdly, in a large group, each student has very little talking time. This problem is
complexed by the tendency of some learners to dominate, while others speak very
little, even not at all.
Finally, the students use mother-tongue in class. Especially, when discussing in
small group, it is difficult to use the target language if the students are undisciplined
and demotivated. Because the learners will not speak naturally in foreign language,
otherwise the learners always feel less exposed during they are speaking mothertongue. Moreover, mother-tongue is used easily than a foreign language, so they tend
to use this.
2.2.2.3 Analysed results and the reasons of the real situation
Why is the students‟ English speaking competence still limited after a long time
of studying? There are some main reasons and analysed results of the real situation as
follows:
Firstly, because they have no specific studying period of English speaking skill,
the English studying program in school only concentrates on grammar, reading and
listening; the final tests at the end of each team are carried out on paper. Whereas, to
speak English well, students need to practice everyday in order to promote the exact
pronunciation, establish the quick response and natural intonation, and increase
vocabulary range. While the students have no chances to speak English in the lessons,
they always have to try their best to study well the knowledge of grammar, reading,
etc.
Secondly, there are some factors interfered in their English speaking ability. They
lack vocabulary to express what they want to share while studying vocabulary is very
necessary and it is one of the first steps in process of studying English. In spite of
studying vocabulary in mother tongue or the foreign language, it requires that learners
must continuously enrich their vocabulary. However, basing on the results of the
investigation we can realize that a great number of the students (87.5%) sometimes

17


study new words whereas the regular level of studying vocabulary is too rare (only
12.5%). Besides, almost all of the students only study 1-2 new words (50%), 5-7 new
words (37.5%). In fact, the students often have a habit of studying vocabulary from a
single style, rewriting several times since then , but they have no routine or do not
know how to learn from the context or in a combination with others. This way takes
time, but the effect of memory is very limited. On the other hand, the students did not
know how to use words as well as to arrange phrases in a logical order .This real
situation is an alarming level problem in process of studying English nowadays. It is
the big limitation in the students‟ English speaking ability development.
Thirdly, if you build confidence in everything, it means you will get 50 percent of
success. The better you speak, the more confident you will be at speaking a second
language. However, many students are inconfident to speak English when standing in
front of teachers, and friends. Because they fear to make mistakes of grammar and
humiliate by their teachers and friends. This is the general real situation nowadays.
These factors make the students have troubles and they feel English skill difficult to
study.
The next reason is that our country has been intergrating in international
economy, many foreign companies with invested capital have been stablished more
and more in Viet Nam nowadays. Therefore, they require English language ability to
apply for the jobs. Being awared of the English language importance in this modern
era, many students concentrate on studying English. According to the statistics, 50
percent of the students study English to get good jobs and communicate with the
foreigners. However, there are a great number of the students studying English with
negative aims (for 37.5%), they do not have the proper motivation. They often have
learning attitude "deal”, that is to cope with the tests and contest in school. On the
other hand, the students use the answer key which is available from textbooks or books
borrowed from former classes; during class time, some students often do not pay

attention and even not cooperate with the pairs, and when the group is asked to
perform a certain actions, they ask for help from other students and teachers.
Sometimes students also express "uncooperative" such as not preparing in advance,
not to engage in communicative activities in class; or finding reasons to go to school
late. If this real situation keeps rising, it will affect considerably the quality of teaching
and studying English in general and E.S.S in specific. Because the students only learn
by rote to get over the contests while they do not receive any knowledge in their mind
then and in a short time, everything will be forgotten quickly. This aim makes the
students become worse in studying English.

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