A study on the reality of teaching speaking skill to non english majors at thai nguyen university college of technologyrelevan

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Table 1: Teacher pedagogical practices in teaching speaking skill 28
Table 2: Students’ opinions on inappropriate teacher pedagogical
practices in English speaking lessons 28
Table 3: Teachers’ English communicative competence 33
Table 4: Teachers’ difficulties in teaching speaking to non-English
students at TNU-CT 35
Table 5: Students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill in English classes
35
Table 6: Students’ reasons for learning English 37
Table 7: Students’ opinions on the speaking skill 39
Table 8: Students’ assessment of speaking topics and activities based on
the textbook ‘New Headway Elementary and Pre-intermediate’ 45
v
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. The background of the study
Nowadays it is not daring to say that the ability to speak at least one foreign language is
a necessity. “Language is arguably the defining characteristic of the human species and
knowledge of language in general, as well as ability to use one’s first and, at least one other
language, should be one of the defining characteristics of the educated individual” (Nunan,
1999: 71). The world has become smaller. It is said it has turned into the size of the so-called
“global village”. We are living in the time of immense technological inventions where
communication among people has expanded way beyond their local speech communities
(Ellis, 1997: 3). Today receiving education, language education not excepting, is not an issue
connected exclusively with schools; the time requires everyone to learn throughout their
lifetimes. Therefore learning a second language has become a means of keeping up with the
pace of the rapidly changing world. Nowadays a foreign/second language forms a permanent
part of all types of curriculum, from primary schools to universities, not mentioning an
employment where a person, in most cases, can hardly survive without this ability. The
demands of the contemporary society together with the position of English as an international
language (McKay: 5) may present a reason for learning this language in particular.
Objectively, the increasing demand for learning a foreign language, especially English in
Vietnam is an evident tendency in the global integration along with Vietnam’s policy of
innovation and industrialization and modernization cause.
Most of the learners of English agree that the ability to express themselves freely in
communication is of great importance for their future career, especially in modern societies
where contacting with foreigners often occurs. However, there still exist many difficulties in
learning and teaching English in Vietnam in general and at Thai Nguyen University-College of
Technology (TNU-CT) in particular. Many Vietnamese learners can write and read English
quite well but they cannot speak it correctly and fluently in real-life communication. Surely,
there are many reasons for this reality. After teaching in some non-language colleges in Thai
Nguyen University for 6 years, I have recognized some big obstacles which prevent English
language teachers and learners in Vietnam from achieving their aims. These obstacles are:
large and heterogeneous classes, students’ low level of English language proficiency, students’
low motivation and some others. Unfortunately, this is not only the situation in these colleges
but also the case for many other non-language colleges and universities in Vietnam.
1
This has given me the desire to conduct “A study on the reality of teaching speaking
skill to non-English major students at Thai Nguyen University-College of Technology:
relevant difficulties and some suggested teaching speaking techniques and activities”.
2. Aims of the study
The study is conducted to investigate the current reality of the teaching of speaking
skill to non-English major students at TNU-CT on the basis of finding out relevant
difficulties experienced by the teachers of English and some recommendations including
coping strategies and classroom techniques and activities for them to minimize those
difficulties. Specifically, this research tries to explore the potential sources causing the
difficulties in teaching the skill of speaking and simultaneously identify the specific
problems of those sources respectively. Furthermore, some recommendations are made with
the anticipation of helping English Language teachers improve the quality of their teaching
the speaking skill.
3. Research questions
The above aims can be realized through the following research questions:
1. What relevant difficulties do the teachers at TNU-CT encounter in teaching the skill
of speaking to non-English major students?
2. What should be done to minimize the difficulties in teaching the skill of speaking to
non-English major students experienced by the teachers of English at TNU-CT?
4. Scope of the study
Though problems in teaching practices in non-language colleges and universities exist
in the four macro-skills, the researcher has chosen to focus on difficulties in teaching
speaking skill to non-English major students at TNU-CT for the fact that mastering speaking
is so central to language learning that when we refer to speaking a language, we often mean
knowing a language (Karimkhanlui, 2006). In addition, some recommendations for the
teachers of English to decrease those difficulties are also proposed.
The study of difficulties, recommendations of other skills to ameliorate the quality of
teaching English skills would be beyond the scope of the study. Also, due to the researcher’s
limited ability, time constraints and narrow-scaled study, this study only involves a small
number of TNU-CT non-English students in their first academic year (i.e., 120 first-year
students of 2
nd
semester).
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5. Organization of the study
The study consists of three parts. Part A, Introduction, deals with general background of the
study, aims of the study, research questions, scope of the study, and the outline of the study. Part B,
Development, is composed of three chapters. Chapter One, Literature Review, reviews the
theoretical literature involving the difficulties in teaching speaking skill to non-English major
students in three relating areas: Nature of language skills and oral communication, The skill of
speaking and Difficulties in teaching English speaking skill. Chapter Two, Methodology, mentions
the research context, methods of the study and research design. Chapter Three, Findings and
discussion, presents and discusses findings of the difficulties in teaching the skill of speaking to
non-major students of English at TNU-CT including the difficulties caused by teachers themselves,
students and objective factors and some coping strategies and classroom techniques and activities
in reducing those difficulties suggested by the participants of the study. The last part, Suggestions
and Conclusion, is the conclusion of the study, which presents the overview of the study and some
suggestions for the teachers of English comprising some coping strategies and classroom
techniques and activities in decreasing those difficulties. Besides, the limitations of the thesis are
pointed out and the areas for further study are also proposed.
In a word, part A has provided an overview of the study which consists of the
background information of the study, the aims of the study, the research questions pursued in
the study, its scope and its structure. In the next part, the literature review, methodology and
findings and discussion relevant to the study will be examined.
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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter briefly covers the theories related to the study: nature of language skills
and oral communication, the skill of speaking and difficulties in teaching speaking skill.
1.1. Nature of Language skills and oral communication
1.1.1. Nature of Language skills
For the purpose of analysis and instruction, language has been divided into different
skill areas. These can be discussed in the framework of how we learned our first language. A
child first learns to practice language through the skill of listening. Later, a child uses
language by speaking combined with listening. Then, when school begins, children learn the
skills of reading and writing. The first two skills, listening and speaking, are called the oral
skills due to the manners by which they are formed (they are related to articulator organs).
The last two, reading and writing, are called the literacy skills as they connect with manual
script. All four are represented in Figure 1. (Figure 1 is extracted from the book
“Methodology Handbook for English Teachers in Vietnam” by Forseth, R., Forseth, C., Tạ,
T.H. & Nguyễn, V.D. p.34)
As learners grow in their language ability and use, the different skills are most often
integrated with each other so that they are being used in coordination with each other. In
conversation, when one person is speaking another is listening. After listening and
understanding, the hearer responds by speaking. In an academic setting, while students are
listening, they may be also writing notes or reading a handout. As a teacher, you will be
reading your lesson plans and then speaking to your students. All of the skill areas are related
to each other and used in coordination with each other.
Oral Skills
Literacy
Skills
THE FOUR
LANGUAGE
SKILLS
Receptive SkillsProductive
SkillsLISTENINGSPEAKINGREADINGW
RITING
4
However, for the purpose of teaching language, we may divide language into the
various skill areas and concentrate on one at a time. We are first interested in speaking
because second (or foreign) language learners often neglect or have difficulty with oral
production (speaking). Some learners have memorized hundreds of words and many
grammar rules, but they still can not speak well. Many learners can read better than they
speak. This is very much unlike a child who learns to listen and speak long before learning to
read or write.
So, we begin with speaking, because after learning to speak, it is easier to develop
reading and writing skills in the foreign language classroom. However, language teachers
have found it is difficult to develop their students’ speaking skills after reading and writing.
1.1.2. Oral communication
Communication between human is a complex and ever changing process. When
communication takes place, speakers/writers feel the need to speak and write. One of the
forms of communication is oral communication which is realized by using oral skills.
As mentioned above, oral communication skills are speaking and listening. In real life,
listening is used twice as often as speaking. However, speaking is used twice as much as
reading and writing (Rivers, 1981). Inside ELT classrooms, speaking and listening are the
most often used skills (Brown, 1994).
In oral communication process, the roles of speakers and listeners are interchanged;
information gaps between them are created and then closed with the effort from both sides.
In organizing classroom oral practice, teachers should create as much information gap as
possible and teachers’ vital duty is to encourage communication which yields information
gaps. Teachers should also bear in mind the differences between real-life oral
communication and classroom oral communication. As for Pattison (1987) classroom oral
practices have five characteristics: (1) the content or topic is predictable and decided by
teachers, books, tapes, etc; (2) learners’ aims in speaking are to practice speaking, to follow
teachers’ instructions and to get good marks; (3) learners’ extrinsic motivation is satisfied;
(4) participants are often a large group; (5) language from teachers or tapes is closely
adapted to learners’ level.
Nunan (1989) provides a list of characteristics of successful oral communication. As
for him, successful oral communication should involve: (1) comprehensible pronunciation of
the target language; (2) good use of stress, rhythm, intonation patterns; (3) fluency; (4)
5
good transactional and interpersonal skills; (5) skills in taking short and long speaking in
turns; (6) skills in the management of interactions; (7) skills in negotiating meaning; (8)
conversational listening skills; (9) skills in knowing about and negotiating purposes for the
conversation; (10) using appropriate conversational formulae and filters.
1.2. The skill of speaking
1.2.1. The role and status of speaking in language learning and teaching
As it was implied in the introduction, the skill of speaking has been recently
considered by many methodologists a priority in language teaching. Of all the four skills, Ur
(1997: 120) concludes, speaking seems intuitively the most important. Most language
learners, she adds, are primarily interested in learning to speak. Similar view is held by
Nunan, who says that the ability to operate in a second language can be actually equated to
the ability to speak that language. Hedge gives the evidence that speaking has recently
obtained, at least from textbook writers, the attention it deserves: “Learners need to develop at
the same time a knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, functional language and communicative skills.
Attention to the systems of language is crucial, but the development of fluency and contextual
appropriacy are equally important goals”. The reasons for learning to speak competently are
formulated as follows: Learners may need the skill to establish and maintain relationships, to
negotiate, to influence people. Speaking is the skill by which learners are assessed when the
first impression is formed (Hedge: 261).
The development of speaking skill, in terms of its importance in language teaching,
can be illustrated by the position ascribed to this skill in different approaches to teaching.
Presumably the most striking contrast would be revealed in comparison of the recent view on
speaking with the views held by advocates of grammar-translation or audio-lingual method.
In these approaches the skill of speaking was rarely emphasized in connection to its purpose,
i.e. the ability to use a language in real-life situations, the ability to communicate. If it was
addressed, then it usually was only in terms of accuracy. That can be seen in the following
quotation by Mackey: “Oral expression involves not only [….] the use of the right sounds in the
right patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also the choice of words and inflections in the right
order to convey the right meaning” (Bygate: 5). The quotation reflects the conception of
speaking at that time. The emphasis on the formal part, i.e. the correct sounds, the correct
choice of words and inflections etc., led to the accuracy oriented practice. Types of activities
such as oral drills, model dialogue practice and pattern practice (“The Audio-lingual
method”) were widely used in teaching speaking. The result was that, although learners
6
knew the patterns and memorized the rules, they were not able to use their knowledge in
practice. They were not capable of exploiting the rules and patterns in real interaction. One
of the possible causes of their “inability” could be the lack of opportunities to use their
theoretical knowledge in purposeful communication. They were not exposed to situations
when they would be made to use whatever language they had at their disposal to convey
their message or to try to understand their interlocutor’s message. There was not much
prominence given to the fact that there was a difference between “knowledge about a
language” and “skill in using it” in communication (Bygate: 3).
1.2.2. Concepts of speaking (spoken language)
As mentioned above, speaking is the productive, oral skill. Speaking consists of
producing systematic verbal utterances to convey meaning (utterances are simply things people
say). Speaking is “an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and
receiving and processing information” (Florez, 1999, p.1). It is “often spontaneous, open-
ended and evolving” (ibid., p.1), but it is not completely unpredictable.
Speaking is such a fundamental human behavior that we don’t stop to analyze it unless
there is something noticeable about it. For example, if a person is experiencing a speech
pathology (if a person stutters or if his speech is impaired due to a stroke or a head injury), we
may realize that the speech is atypical. Likewise, if someone is a particularly effective or lucid
speaker, we may notice that her speech is atypical in a noteworthy sense. What we fail to
notice on a daily basis, however, are the myriad physical, mental, psychological, social, and
cultural factors that must all work together when we speak. It is even a more impressive feat
when we hear someone speaking effectively in a second or foreign language.
According to Brown and Yule’s opinions (1983), spoken language consists of short,
fragmentary utterances in a range of pronunciation. However, speaking is a skill, which
deserves attention as much as literacy skills in both first and second language because our
learners often need to speak with confidence in order to carry out a lot of their most basic
transactions (Bygate, 1991). Furthermore, speaking is known with two main types of
conversation called dialogue and monologue.
Brown and Yule (1983) point out the ability to give uninterrupted oral presentation
(monologue) is rather different from interacting with one or more other speakers for
transactional and international purposes. It is much more difficult to extemporize on a given
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subject to a group of listeners. That explains why speaking skill generally has to be learnt
and practiced carefully before giving a presentation.
A comprehensive discussion of the nature of speaking is provided by Bygate (1987),
who shows that in order to be able to speak a foreign language, it is obviously necessary to
have micro-linguistic skills, that is, to understand some grammar, vocabulary and the rules
governing how words are put together to form sentences. However, these motor-perceptive
skills, as Bygate calls them, are not sufficient since while producing sentences, we often
have to adapt them to the circumstances. He then presents the second set of speaking skills:
the interaction skills, which involve using knowledge and basic motor-perception skills in
deciding what to say and how to say it, while maintaining the intended relation with others.
1.2.3. Speaking: knowledge vs. skill
The aim of teaching speaking is for learners to be able to use a language freely and
fully in communication. Both teaching and learning to speak are, possibly, not easy and
effortless processes. There are many “wheels” in the mechanism that have to work in
agreement, so that “the whole” could function effectively. If the ultimate goal is the ability to
communicate, then learners must be able to understand what others wish to share and at the
same time be able to convey their own messages. The complexity of learning to communicate
in a second language is recorded in the scheme by Rivers and Temperley (see Figure 2).
The authors
comment that the schema is not sequential but parallel. According to them, skill-getting and
skill-using are continually proceeding hand in hand. “There is a genuine interaction from
SKILL-
GETTING
COGNITION
(knowledge)
PRODUCTION
(or pseudo-
communication)
PERCEPTION
(of units, categories, and functions)
ABSTRACTION
(internalizing rules relating categories
and functions)
ARTICULATION
(practice of sequences of sounds)
CONSTRUCTION
(practice in formulating communications)
INTERACTION
(or real
communication)
EXPRESSION
(conveying
personal meaning)
SKILL-
USING
MOTIVATION
(to communicate)
RECEPTION
(comprehension of a
message)
Figure 2. Processes involved in learning to communicate (Rivers and
Temperley 4)
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the beginning, with students exploring the full scope of what is being learned” (Rivers and
Temperley: 4). However, not only learning to communicate but also learning a second
language (or Second Language Acquisition) in general is a complex process with many
factors pertaining to it (Ellis, 1991:4).
The distinction between knowledge about a language and skill in using it was already
mentioned (Bygate: 3). In teaching practice the distinction gradually grew in importance. It is
apparent that a learner, in order to be able to speak a language, needs to have a command at
least of basic grammatical structures and vocabulary. This part represents the “knowledge
about a language”. However, it was recognized that knowledge itself is not sufficient for
successful functioning in a second language. The other part of communicative ability that
learners in grammar-translation and audio-lingual classes usually lacked was the “skill”. The
presupposition that knowledge itself was not satisfactory was confirmed mainly in practice. It
meant that knowledge had to be put into action.
For delimitation of the two notions, i.e. knowledge and skill, Bygate uses a parallel
with a driver of a car. A driver, before he sets out on the road for the first time, has to know
something about a car. He has to know where various controls are, where the pedals are and
how to operate them, how the car as a whole functions. But he would not be able to guide the
car safely along the road only with this knowledge. What he also needs is skill. When he
eventually sets out on the road, he will not be there on his own. There will be many other
drivers as well. Thus, in order to drive safely and smoothly, he has to be able to handle
various obstacles or unexpected problems that may occur in his path. In this sense, speaking
is similar to driving (Bygate: 3).
In communication the learner does not manage only with knowledge either. It is not
sufficient for him to be aware of how sentences are formed in general, to know certain
amount of vocabulary concerning the particular topic or remember certain grammatical rules.
He should also be capable of forming sentences “on the spot” and adjusting his contribution
to the immediate situation. This involves drawing on his theoretical knowledge, making
quick decisions and managing difficulties that may arise. It may be worthwhile to know what
differentiates skill from knowledge. According to Bygate, “a fundamental difference is that
while both can be understood and memorized, only a skill can be imitated and practiced”.
The notion of skill can be interpreted in more than a single way. Bygate speaks about
at least two types of skill, i.e. motor-perceptive skills and interaction skills. Motor-perceptive
9