An investigation into the Reality of Teaching and Learning Speaking Skills to the 2nd year non-Major English students at Pre-Intermediate level of Proficiency at Hanoi University of Industry

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION RATIONALE OF THE STUDY Since the open-door policy adapted to Vietnam, the need for integrating into the world has increased. That is why, English teaching and learning have become very important to our country’s modernization and industrialization. However, in some places in Vietnam English teaching has been strongly influenced by the traditional methods. Teachers as well as students paid too much attention to the grammatical items. In these classes, teachers mainly focused on explaining the grammatical rules and structures to students who were considered as passive recipients. As a result, those students might be structurally competent but communicatively incompetent. That causes a lot of difficulties in using English in their real-life communication. In addition, the political and economic changes have a great positive impact on the teaching methods of teachers of English in Vietnam. They have realized that students can only improve their language competence through communication. It is the need for oral competence in English that has turned the teachers’ emphasis from teaching grammar into teaching communication. Therefore, speaking skills nowadays play a much more important role in modern English than ever before. In every English class, teachers would like to develop students’ speaking skills by applying the communicative language teaching method known as one of the most effective approaches that help students speak. To meet the demand of students, English teachers in general and English teachers at Hanoi University of Industry (hereafter HaUI) in particular have been trying to find out the most suitable and effective method of teaching English Speaking. Thus, the Communicative Language Teaching Approach (hereafter CLT) is applied to teach English Speaking at all levels at this university. Teachers hope with this teaching method, they can help their students both improve their English knowledge and use it effectively and fluently in communication. This idea is also suggested by many linguists and methodologists such as Nunan, 1991 and Das, B.K, 1985. As one teacher of English at this university I realize that although both the teachers and students try their best to reach their goals to teach and study English Speaking skills effectively, up to now the results have been still far from satisfaction. Hence, I would like to do something with a hope to improve Speaking skills for our students so that I have carried out the study entitled “An investigation into the Reality of Teaching and Learning Speaking Skills to the 2nd year non-major English students at Pre-Intermediate level of Proficiency at Hanoi University of Industry. ” AIMS OF THE STUDY The main purpose of this study is to research the reality of teaching and learning speaking skills to the 2nd year non-major English students at Pre-Intermediate level of Proficiency at HaUI in order to find out the problems preventing the students from willingly taking part in speaking activities at the English class. The writer also makes some recommendations for the English teachers to consult and apply in their teaching speaking skills with a view to help the students improve their speaking competence. RESEARCH QUESTIONS The above aims of the study can be realized by the following research questions: (i) What is the present situation of teaching and learning English speaking skills at HaUI? (ii) Which problems do the teachers and students have in a speaking lesson? (iii) What are the techniques to be used to improve speaking skills for the 2nd year non-major English students at HaUI? SCOPE OF THE STUDY The study focuses on the reality of teaching and learning English speaking to the 2nd year non-major students at Pre-Intermediate level of English Proficiency at HaUI. Although the author is well aware that the survey statistics are not fully representative of all the non-major students of English at many universities in Vietnam, she hopes to propose some of the most popular facts that occurring in the study. V. METHODS OF THE STUDY In order to achieve the aims mentioned above, the researcher collects information from the teachers of English who have been teaching non-major English students at HaUI. Firstly, questionnaires are delivered to the teachers so that more information on the reality and problems they face and solutions implemented can be collected. Then, questionnaires are also given to the students to investigate their problems in learning speaking skills. The information from questionnaires can help to draw a general picture about the reality of teaching and learning speaking skills at HaUI and suggest some solutions for this situation. DESIGN OF THE STUDY The thesis consists of three parts: Part one is the INTRODUCTION which presents the rationales, the objectives, the method and the design of the study. It expresses the reason why the author decided to choose this study and the methods for the fulfillment of the study. Part two, DEVELOPMENT, includes three chapters. Chapter one deals with a historical overview of literature. It starts with the theoretical issues on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which consist the definition, characteristics, communicative competence, using CLT in teaching speaking, conditions of applying CLT, and the factors affecting CLT application. The next part discusses about the definition of speaking skill, the characteristics and three stages of teaching and learning speaking skills as well as the problems of speaking and speaking activities. This chapter also presents the motivation and types of motivation which is considered to be a very important factor in a speaking lesson. Chapter two emphasizes the study methodology. The method of the study is carried out by investigating the teaching staff’s perception of communicative approach and the difficulties they confront with in their teaching process with a questionnaire distributing to 15 teachers and another one to 110 students. Also, in this chapter the author would like to provide some information about the findings of the study. Chapter three suggests some recommendations to improve the teaching and learning to speak English. Part three, CONCLUSION, summarizes the thesis with key issues in the study, makes some suggestions for further study. PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 1.1.1. Concept of CLT There are varieties of definitions about CLT. Nunan (1989:194) overviews the methods, which are adapted below, certain aspects that are common to many definitions of CLT. CLT views language as a system for the expression of meaning. Activities involve oral communication, carrying out meaning tasks and using language, which is meaningful to the learners. Objectives reflect the needs of the learners; they include functional skills as well as linguistic objectives. The learner’s role is as a negotiator and integrator. The teacher’s role is as a facilitator of the communication process. Materials promote communicative language use; they are task-based and authentic. Nunan also asserts that in communication process, learners are negotiators and integrators whereas teachers are facilitators. The definition above, as with any definition of the language teaching method, represents a particular view of understanding and explaining language acquisition. It is socially constructed and must be seen as a product of social, cultural, economic, and political forces. Canale and Swain (1980) expanded on the theoretical basis of CLT for both teaching and testing. In their reaction against an over emphasis on function and a lack of emphasis on grammatical complexity, they pointed out that externally oriental communication is not necessarily more essential than other proposes of language such as “self-expression, verbal thinking, problem solving, and creative writing”. 1.1.2. Characteristics of CLT Language is not simply a system of rules. It is now generally seen “as a dynamic resource for the creation of meaning” ( Nunan, 1989). This point of view is really supports CLT. - CLT is aimed at (a) making communicative competence the goal of language teaching and (b) developing procedures for the teaching of the four language skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication. (Le Van Canh, 2004). - The goal of CLT is to create a realistic context for language acquisition in the classroom to develop Hymes’ notion of communicative competence. - CTL is also associated with learner-centered and experienced based tasks. - The focus of CLT is on functional language usage and learners’ ability to express themselves. In other words, for CLT, developing learners’ skills is more important than the content of the teaching and learning ( Johnson, 1982). - There are three major principles of CLT: communication principle: emphasizes activities that involve real communication promote learning. task principle: purposes that activities in which is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning. meaningfulness principle: claims that language that is meaningful to the learners supports the learning process. (Le Van Canh, 2004) - In communicative classes, learners communicate with each other and learning tasks are completed by means of interaction between learners. It is clear that learners’ completing a task is fore-grounded and communicating with each other is back-grounded. This may lead to considerable use of pair work, group work and mingling activities. - In ESL classes, teachers are facilitators and monitors, usually, without interruption and then to provide feedback on the success. However, CLT is not a perfect method. There still exist critical remarks on CLT like: its inappropriateness to local contexts and cultures; its negation of rote-learning, memorization, displaying questions, teacher’s talk, etc. In spite of its limitations and shortcomings, no one can negate that CLT allows teachers to incorporate motivating and purposeful communicative activities and principles into their teaching, which later results in the improvement of their learners’ proficiency. For the seasons mentioned above, CLT has served as the dominant approach to language teaching since the demise of the Audio-lingual Method. 1.1.3. Conditions of Applying CLT 1.1.3.1. Authentic materials To overcome the typical problem that students can’t transfer what they learn in the classroom to the outside world and to expose students to natural language in a variety of situations, adherents of the Communicative Approach advise the use of authentic language materials. Materials like newspaper articles, books in target language, live radio or television broadcast programs are only suitable for students of high intermediate level of proficiency. For those with lower proficiency in the target language, simpler authentic materials are realistic and most desirable. Besides, the lower level class can use authentic materials without containing a lot of complicated language items, but a lot of discussion could be generated. 1.1.3.2. Teachers Teacher’s role is also one of the most important components in applying CLT. In CLT class, teachers are not only facilitators of students’ learning but also advisors of the students’ wonderings. Sometimes, they can act as a co-communicator to engage in the communicative activities along with students. Teachers are the initiators of classroom activities but they do not always interact with the students. They give the students chances to express their individuality by having them share their ideas and opinions. As for Littlewood (1981) this helps learners integrate the target language with their own personality and feel more emotionally secure with it. For the ones who never or rarely attend any language courses on CLT, training or retraining in CLT is always necessary because teachers’ competence decides the success or failure of applying CLT. 1.1.4. Using CLT in Teaching Speaking Skills When using communicative activities, it is important to make students feel comfortable and confident, feel free to take risks and have opportunities to speak. According to Pica, Young and Doughty (1987), there are two kinds of classroom available to second language learners: Input has been modified or simplified such as a traditional “teacher-fronted” classroom; and authentic students-to-student interaction is emphasized. It provides the learners more opportunities for speaking since the learners try to achieve mutual understanding and modify their language according to the demand of the situation. Objectives for speaking are often given by the particular program in which the teacher must work. In some cases, the syllabus will consist of a list of grammar structures to be taught. The teacher needs to be flexible in making best use of what is available for teaching purpose. In other words, the teacher must have some freedom in deciding what objectives to meet, what content to cover, and what activities to use. In this case, the teacher can go beyond the more specific goals and objectives of the particular program to the speaking needs that the students have in the “real world”. There are many speaking activities can be used in classroom such as scrambled sentence, language games, role-plays, problem-solving, discussion, cued story, picture story etc. 1.1.5. Factors Affecting CLT Application It is commonly seem that any choice of an approach of teaching needs favorable conditions for effective application. The following sections will deal with the factors often cited as influential to CLT application. These factors are: Learners’ motivation, Learners’ beliefs and attitudes, Learners’ learning styles, Learners’ anxiety and confidence, Teachers’ attitudes and beliefs, Teachers’ qualities and personalities, Language environment, Classroom conditions, Syllabuses and textbooks, Tests and evaluations. 1.2. Speaking Skill Many language learners consider speaking ability the measure of knowing a language. As for them, fluency is the ability to converse with others much more than the ability to read, write or comprehend oral language. They regard speaking as the most important skill they can acquire and they assess their progress in terms of their accomplishments on spoken communication. Therefore, if learners do not learn how to speak or do not get any opportunities to speak in the language classroom, they may soon get de-motivated and lose interest in learning. On the contrary, if the right activities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a lot of fun, raising general learner motivation and making the English language classroom a fun and dynamic place to be. 1.2.1. Concepts of Speaking Speaking is fundamental to human communication. Different linguistics have different concepts of speaking but they are all agreeing with this idea. Brown (1994) defines speaking as an process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information. In Brown and Yule’s opinions ( 1983), spoken language consists of short, fragmentary utterances in a range of pronunciation. Usually, there is a great deal of repetition and overlap between one speaker and another. Speaker usually uses non-specific references. They also add that spoken language is made by using the loosely organized syntax, and non-specific words, phrases and filters such as oh, well, uhuh etc. 1.2.2. Characteristics of Speaking As for Bygate M. (1987:12), in most speaking the person to whom we are speaking is in front of us and able to put right if we make mistakes. He/ She can also generally show agreement and understanding - or incomprehension and disagreement. Unlike readers or writers, speakers may need patience and imagination, too. While talking, speakers need to take notice of the other and allows listeners chance to speak it. It means that we take turns to speak. Brown (1983) and her colleagues point out that a listener helps speakers improve their performance as a speaker because being a listener gives learner models to utilize when acting as a speaker. In addition, being a hearer first helps the learner appreciate the difficulties inherent in the task. It is clear that giving speakers experience in hearer’s role is more helpful than simple practice in task in which a speaker is having real difficulties in appreciating what a particular task required. Speaking has the following characteristics: Its form and meaning are dependent on the context in which it occurs, including the participants themselves, their collective experiences, the physical environment, and the purposes for speaking. It is often spontaneous, open-ended, and evolving. However, speech is not always unpredictable. Language functions ( or patterns) that tend to recur in certain discourse situations can be identified and charted. Speaking requires that learners not only know how to produce specific points of language such as grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary (“linguistic competence”), but also that they understand when, why, and in what ways to produce language (“sociolinguistic competence”). Speech has its own skills, structures, and conventions different from written language. A good speaker synthesizes this array of skills and knowledge to succeed in a given speech act. Bygate (1987) considers speaking as an undervalued skill in many ways. The reason is that almost all people can speak, and so take speaking skill too much for granted. He also asserts that speaking skill deserves attention every bit as much as literacy skilled. Learners often need to be able to speak with confidence in order to carry out many of their most basic transactions. Bygate also highly appreciates speaking by stating that speaking is the medium through which much language is learnt. To sum up, it is undeniable that speaking is key to communication. By considering what good speakers do, what speaking tasks can be used in class, and what specific needs learners report, teachers can help learners improve their speaking and overall oral competency. The Development Approach of Speaking Skill There are three main phases in the teaching of a speaking lesson. Byrne (1991:22-31) points out that there are three phases to develop learners’ oral ability, which are as follows: - The Presentation Phase ( when you introduce something new to be learned) In this phase, teachers are centre. It means that they work as information provider, since they know English, select materials to teach and present the material in such a way that the meaning of the new language is as intelligible and memorable as possible while the learners are motionless. As far as we know, oral materials are written mainly in two forms in every course-book. They are dialogues and prose. And obviously these two forms must be presented in different ways. According to Byrne (1991:22) 10 different steps are used to present a dialogue. They are the following: 1. Establish setting by using pictures. At this phase English should be used as much as possible. 2. Draw out learners’ experience related to situation. 3. Explain some key words. 4. Set listening task by asking key information of the dialogue. 5. Ask learners listen without looking at the books. 6. Allow learners to have a look at their book when necessary for them. 7. Ask the learners to listen and repeat. 8. Ask learners to pick up difficulties ( good chance for them to speak) and explain difficulties. 9. Ask them to practice ( role-play). 10. Ask them to dramatize the dialogue. It is known that this procedure is perfect and logically arranged. However, it is dependent on learner’s competence so some steps can be left out. It is quite hard for Vietnamese learners to conduct the step 10 because they are generally shy and time is limited. 9 other steps are used to present a prose. Byrne (