1 Part A: Introduction Rationale Learning English is becoming a need that most students are aware of and that the society demands, especially in the process of industrialization and modernization in connection to the open door policy of Viet Nam Therefore, the idea that only English major students have priority in enhancing their skills becomes backward In fact, every learner must be taken care of so that they can benefit from the modern educational opportunities It is confirmed that both English major students and non- English major students should be given good consideration and education to improve overall Even for non- English major students, the four skills as speaking, listening, reading and writing should be stimulated According to Dong Xiaohong (1994.31) speaking is "one of the most necessary language proficiency" Speaking, thus, seems to be the most important skill that should be paid attention to in the process of teaching and learning Likewise, today's world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students' communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and culture rules It is true for the non- English major students of culture management of Thanh hoa college of Culture and Art (THCCA) where learners are future office secretaries or culture managers who learn English in order to be able to communicate with the foreigners and to work as secretaries in the offices But in fact there are a large number of students who find it difficult to speak in English When most of the students are required to talk in English, they often stand speechless or they have to think for a long time about what they intend to say Moreover, when poor speaking competence is reported, one tends to blame the students for having poor ability or making insufficient effort Nevertheless, there are other important factors in the teaching and learning process that should be taken into consideration It could be unsuitable teaching materials, inappropriate attitude of the teachers and students toward the subject, teachers' inappropriate teaching methods or insufficients class time allocated to speaking So what are the speaking difficulties for the teachers and non- English major students of Culture management at THCCA? This is the question that the following study attempts to investigate Once problems have been identified, it will be possible to give solutions to the teachers and students to improve the teaching and learning of speaking skill at THCCA Aims of the study The study has been carried out with the following purposes - To identify the students' attitude toward speaking skill - To investigate the teachers and non- English major students' areas of speaking difficulties - To give some suggestions and solutions to reduce difficulties and improve the teaching and learning of speaking skill In other words, the aims of the study are to answer the following questions What are the difficulties encountered by non- English major students who are learning speaking skill in the English course book “English for office secretaries" at THCCA? What are difficulties for the teachers in teaching speaking skill? What are feasible solutions to overcome the identified difficulties? Scope of the study Dealing with speaking problems of all current materials used for non major students of culture management is too broad for a study of this size Therefore, the focus of this study is to investigate speaking difficulties experienced by teachers and non- English major students of culture management at THCCA when using the course book “ English for office secretaries” designed by the teacher at THCCA, then give solutions to the problems in order to help students improve their speaking skill Methods of the study To fulfill the above aims, a study has been carried out on the basis of material collection and two survey questionnaires - For the theoretical basis, many materials on speaking are collected, gathered, analyzed and synthesized considerately for the content of the intended thesis - For the practical basis, the researcher chooses the survey research with two survey questionnaires for teachers and non- English major students of culture management at THCCA Design of the study The minor thesis is devided into three parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion Part A (Introduction) presents the rationale, the aims, the scope, the methodology and the design of the study Part B (Development) consists of five chapters Chapter reviews the theoretical background, which is relevant to the purpose of the study Chapter gives a brief introduction on the materials and current situations of teaching speaking at THCCA Chapter describes the research methodology, which focuses on the context of the study, participants, the instruments and data collection procedure Chapter deals with data analysis and some suggestions Part C (Conclusion) summaries the study and offers some suggestion for further research Part B: development Chapter 1: Literature review 1.1 The nature of speaking 1.1.1 Definition of speaking It is obvious that speaking is the key to human communication Though speaking takes many definitions, following are some of the definitions by the most famous researchers According to Byrne (1976:8), “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.” Both the listener and the speaker have a positive function to perform: the speaker has to encode the message to be conveyed in appropriate language, while the listener has to decode the message The message itself in normal speech usually contains a great deal of information that the listener needs And at the same time, the listener is helped by the speakers’ prosodic features such as stress and intonation which accompany the spoken utterances and form part of its meaning, and also by his facial and body movements Brown (1983) also states that “speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information.” 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 that tent to recur in certain discourse situations (declining and invitation, requesting time off from work) can be identified and charted Speaking requires not only that learners know how to produce specific points of language, such as grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary (linguistic competence), but also that they understand when, why and in what way to produce language (sociolinguistic competence) Scott (1978) reveals 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.” Each has an intention or a set of intentions that he wants to achieve in the interaction and an ability to interpret what is said to him which he can not predict exactly either in terms of form or in terms of meaning Chaney (1988:13) defined that “speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use verbal and non-verbal symbols in a variety of contexts” Different researchers have different concepts of speaking but they all agree with one very important feature of speaking, that is a two way process between the speaker and listener 1.1.2 Spoken language and communication: It would be pointless to talk about the importance of language if we ignore relation between language and communication as language is a means of communication According to Broughton (1980:25), “all living creatures have some means of conveying information to others of their own group, communication being ultimately essential for their survival;” Man can use various means of communication, but mainly through spoken language Today, it is commonplace to say that “language is never used for its own sake, but always for the sake of achieving an objective, or to perform a function, to persuade, in form, inquire, threaten, etc.” (Ur, 1981:3) Brown and Yule (1983:23) believe that spoken language has two main functions: “The primary function of spoken language is interactional, to establish and maintain social relations.” Most people spend a lot of their daily lives chatting with others The purpose is to express their emotion and concerns to the person they are talking to Not only they chat with their relatives or friends, but also they spend a lot of time talking with strangers so that they can remain social relations Moreover, another important function of spoken language is transactional to convey information This deduction is again confirmed by Broughton (1980): Thoughts Sender Language Recipient Figure 1: Spoken language and communication He explains that thanks to spoken language, we can produce a sequence of vocal sounds in such a way that listeners can reconstruct from these sounds an approximation to our original meaning thus understands the thought According to Wright (1987), we speak because of the following reasons: - Giving or asking for factual information - Expressing what we think and find out what someone else thinks - Expressing what we feel and find out what someone else feels - Expressing what we think is right or wrong,…etc In order to exchange information, a man has to talk with other people and thus he uses spoken language to take part in communication 1.1.3 Types of speaking There are two major types of speaking: monologue and dialogue Monologue In Brown and Yule’s opinion (1983), a monologue involves the ability to give an uninterrupted oral presentation such as when a broad caster reads news in radio or television programs, a teacher or professor gives a formal lecture, an announcer gives the instruction or changes in the airport, etc This type corresponds with non-reciprocal listening where the transfer of information is in one-direction only from the speaker to the listener and is used like the written form with no reaction and response from the listener These types take place when the speaker wants to talk with a large number of listeners about the same issue Dialogue A dialogue, conversely, means interacting between two or more speakers for transactional and interactional purpose There are turn takings to change the roles of speakers and listeners in this type Idea exchanges occur directly and quickly as well Donne Byrne (1986) also says: “Dialogues seem to be best suited to the teaching of the spoken language” Using a dialogue to speak spoken English to non-major students of culture management is one of effective techniques which will be discussed in this study 1.1.4 Speaking skill According to Martin Bygate (1987:5), there are two basics ways in which speaking can be seen as a skill He distinguishes between motor-perceptive skills, which are concerned with correctly using the sounds and the structures of the language and interactional skills, which involve using motor-perceptive skills for the purpose of communication Motor-perceptive skills are developed in the classroom through activities such as model dialogues, pattern practice, oral drills, etc Until relatively recently, it was assumed that mastery of motor- perceptive skills was what one needed in order to communicate successfully We now know that this is not necessarily the case and that learners can benefit from direct classroom practice in communicative interaction Bygate suggests that, in particular, learners need to develop skills in the management of interaction and also in the negotiation of meaning The management of interaction involves such things as knowing when and how to take the floor, when to introduce a topic or change the subject, how to invite someone else to speak, how to keep the conversation going, when and how to terminate the conversation and so on Negotiation of meaning refers to the skill of making sure the person you are speaking to has correctly understood you and that you have correctly understood them Speaking, therefore, can be considered as a skill for many reasons: the first is that we don’t know how to assemble sentences in the abstract The second is that we have to produce them and adapt depending on circumstances 1.1.5 Stages of teaching speaking 1.1.5.1 The role of the teacher and students in teaching and learning speaking The role of the teacher According to Breen and Candlin (1980), the teacher has three main roles in a speaking class The first is to act as a facilitator of the communicative process, the second is to act as a participant, and the third is to act as an observer In addition, Donn Byrne (1976:3) has a clearer explanation for the teacher’s roles as follows: * The teacher acts as an informant at the presentation stage He/ she knows the language items, selects new materials and presents them in such a way as to make its meaning clear and understandable and as memorable as possible The students listen to the teacher’s introduction and try to understand The major thing is how the teacher will present the lesson so that the limited time of one lesson is not affected and the students get enough time to practise the new language items themselves * The teacher as a conductor and monitor at the practice stage At this stage, the teacher talking time is less It is the students’ turn to most of the talking The teacher’s main role is to provide students with the maximum amount of practice which must be both meaningful and practical He/she becomes a skilful conductor of an orchestra giving each performer (student) a chance to take part * The teacher as a guide at the production stage The lesson finishes when the students are given enough new language items But at any level, students need to be given regular opportunities to use language freely Furthermore, they want to put what they have learned into real life And through these opportunities they can use the language as they wish to express their own ideas so that they will become aware that they have learned something useful to them and are encouraged to pursue learning Therefore, the teacher takes the role of a guide or an adviser in providing the students with activities for free expression even if they occasionally make mistakes The role of the learners The aim of teaching speaking is to enable learners to communicate effectively and successfully in real life In Nunan’s view (1998: 80) To meet this aim the learners have take the following roles : - The learner is the passive recipient of outside stimuli - The learner is an interactor and negotiator who is capable of giving as well as taking - The learner is a listener and performer who have little control over the content of learning - The learner is involved in a process of personal growth - The learner is involved in a social activity, and the social and interpersonal roles of the learner cannot be divorced from psychological learning process - The learner must take responsibility for their own learning developing autonomy and skills in learning how to learn 1.1.5 Stages of teaching speaking According to Methodology course 1- Teaching the skills (Ha Noi 2002: 42-43) a speaking lesson should have three stages: pre-speaking, while- speaking, and postspeaking Obviously, each stage has it own characteristics The Pre-speaking stage This stage plays an essential role in the whole process of a speaking lesson because it is difficult to ask students to speak without preparation which involves such activities as pre-speaking questions, brain storming, discussion tasks or vocabulary tasks It is commonly found in every course book that oral materials are written into different forms: dialogue and prose Byrne introduced the procedure in which the ten steps to present dialogue are included - Establish the setting: Pictures are made use of and drawn if simple Use English as much as possible at this stage - Arouse students interests and experience related to the situation - Explain some selective words - Set a listening task by asking key questions of the dialogue - Ask the students to listen without looking at their books - Ask the students to look at their books while they are listening - Ask the students to listen and repeat - Deal with any difficulties in the dialogue - Ask the students to practise the dialogue - Ask the students to dramatize the dialogue What’s more, the presentation of prose massage suggested by Byrne (1991: 26) includes the nine steps - Introduce the topic by asking the students to have a quick look at the picture or by asking them about a related book, film, or TV programme they have seen - Introduce the text including new words or new structures However, there is no need to explain all things in the text - Provide relevant language practice, for example, train the students with pronunciation drill so that they can speak English easily, fluently and also help them remember the new words - Set the reading task by making questions - Ask the students to read the silently - Read the passage aloud - Explain any difficulties faced by the students - Do silent reading again - Get the students to talk about what they have learned The two above produces could be said that they are perfect for presenting a dialogue and prose However, depending on the students’ level and time allocation, some of the steps can be left out In addition, before delivering activities for this stage, the teacher needs to pay careful attention to the object of each lesson, the situation of teaching and learning and the student’ needs as well 10 The while- speaking stage Unlike the pre-speaking stage, it is the student’s turn to most of the talking The teacher, at this stage, lets students work with each other without interfering or correcting any mistakes in order not to stop students from speaking fluently The teacher only gives assistance if necessary The specific aim of the while- speaking stage is to develop students’ speaking skill so the teacher does the minimum amount of teaching and talking since the students will be working on the while- speaking task by themselves, individually or in groups Instead, the teacher will have to a lot of monitoring and assisting weaker students who have difficulty completing the task The post- speaking stage It is the last phase of a speaking lesson so it is the time for the students’ production What they produce will reflect their speaking skill, interests or views A real show of English speaking takes place when the students are able to use English for themselves Also, when they reflect upon their performance, they can recognize what they have done well and where they require improvement The post-speaking stage is like the follow up stages After students have practised speaking skill in the while- speaking stage, they an extension speaking activity This helps students take the information from other groups or whatever they have produced in the while- speaking stage and something meaningful with it Accordingly, getting the students to report their work and the whole class may be invited to comment can be recommended to be the most effective at this stage Thus, the teacher in this stage must take on the role of a manager or a guide in order to give feed back, correct serious mistakes, give students marks and set personal goals for improving their speaking abilities Byrne (1988:2) comes to a conclusion that to develop oral ability, the three stages: pre-speaking, while- speaking and post- speaking should be followed orderly Nevertheless, due to time constraint, purposes of a speaking lesson, types of students and materials in use, this sequence might not always be applied mechanically on every occasion However, teachers ought to pay attention to what has been spoken by the students during the while and post speaking stages so that they can see how far students improves their speaking ability, what mistakes they might produce, what problems they encounter Then appropriate techniques, particularly technique to deal with students’ 30 * Student to student vocabulary checking game Aims: Take the responsibility for own learning Procedure: Assign students words that need to be checked Assign one or two students for each lesson to bring in some words to check their classmates The students check the word meaning, word pronunciation, word in context in front of the class The students’ word checking works well as a warm up before or after breaks Ask the students to keep a record of the words checked and periodically gives quizzes Example: For Unit 4:( Making inquiries p.45 ), we can ask a student to prepare for his wors checking game as follows: Words to be checked: quota/ quotation / quarter / quote Keys 2a Word meaning and word pronunciation quota ('kwoutə ): hạn ngạch quarter ('kwo:tə): tháng, quí quotation (kwou'tei∫n ): bảng báo giáquote (kwout): định giá, đặt giá 2b Words in context: • I would be more grateful If you give me a quotation for building a garage • Would you please estimate how many units you will need in the last quarter of 2006? • He would like to increase his quota from 100 to 120 units in the coming quarter • This is the best price I can quote you * Using Websites Currently, a variety of websites are offering the students different sort of materials through which the students can acquire vocabulary and grammatical structures Here are addresses of some websites - http://www.british - www.easyenglish.com council.org/learning - - English Word Builder 2.0 www.vocabulary.com - www.english-at-home.com 31 Take “www.english-at-home.com” as an example Home Real Life English Grammar and Tenses Forums Speaking Test Yourself Vocabulary Games and Quizzes Idioms search GO Subscribe to our feed English Reading All material on this site is © 2008 englishat-home.com 4.2.2 Eliminating the students’ anxiety Trying to produce language in front of the other students, the students may have natural anxiety about being incomprehensive; they may have cultural inhibition about losing their face The self-esteem factor also contributes to students’ lack of confidence They feel inadequate in English experience and therefore they face considerable pressure in the class Although many students are happy to speak under the teacher’s guidance, they are inhibited when they are asked to express themselves freely in the presence of the whole class This may be they have never been encouraged sufficiently to have a go without worrying about mistakes But in this part, this may also be due to the fear of being corrected in front of the other students The more anxious the less confident they are It is, therefore, an important responsibility of the teacher to give immediate praise and encouragement so that they will have no fear but enough bravery to speak Possible feed back from the teachers and classmates might also be of great help in encouraging and relaxing shy students to speak more It is advisable that the teacher should give feedback and correct errors on both form and content after the students already finish their task However, the students’ anxiety of losing face may result from their low level of proficiency and their lack of ideas so there is not an isolated solution for this problem To deal with it needs the combination of solving the later issues 32 4.2.3 Creating speaking environment Having no opportunities to practise speaking English outside the classroom was another hindrance It is obvious that to acquire a foreign language successfully, we must have a good foreign language environment But at THCCA, most students not have favorable foreign language environment People living around them, their parents, relatives and friends not speak English and they not have many chances to contact with English speaking foreigners Consequently, the language they use and hear around them is almost always Vietnamese They only have a chance to practise English inside their English classrooms In addition to this, all teachers in THCCA are not native speakers of English This, to some extent, prevent them from creating an English speaking environment For an immediate future, the following proposals to this problem should be done: organizing an English club and extracurricular activities on secretaries periodically ( twice each term) so that students can have chances to practise speaking English and exchange their knowledge with each other (For more details, you should see Appendix1) Creating an English environment for the students to practise speaking English outside the classroom is of great importance Hence an English club and extracurricular activities frequently organized in the college gives the students a chance to experiment with their new linguistic skills and bridges the gap between “skill getting” and “ skill using” in real life It is believed that when they take more opportunities to participate actively in an English club and extracurricular activities they will be more confident and make considerable improvement in speaking skill 4.2.4 Raising the teachers’ confidence 4.2.4.1 Problems of the teachers The problem that most of the teachers at THCCA experienced in the process of teaching speaking is their low strategic and sociolinguistic competence The demand of teachers’ strategic and sociolinguistic competence must be greater in a communicative class than in a traditional grammar focused class In a communicative class, students often ask more questions than in traditional one However, teachers feel confident when answering the ones that are related to English grammar but feel confused if they are related to sociolinguistic aspects of English Thus, deficiency in strategic and sociolinguistic 33 competence obviously prevents some teachers from teaching speaking successfully but for others lack of confidence was more likely to be reason Another trouble from the teachers was lack of specialized knowledge of office secretaries In speaking class, several problems occur unexpectedly Many unexpected questions related to the terms and specialized knowledge from the students make the teachers confused or embarrassed Some of those questions are difficult for the teachers to answer immediately due to their limited knowledge of the subject matter In addition, the teachers themselves are not secretaries, sometimes they have to deal with problems arisen from solving problem exercises which various explanations for one situation may occur Due to the lack of experience in the secretary work the teachers can not create various situations and speaking activities needed by the students in their future job The teachers at THCCA were not trained officially to become an ESP teacher nor provided with knowledge of the subject matter they were going to teach, so the gap of specialized knowledge seems to be a major concern 4.2.4.2 Solutions to the teachers’ problems To solve the two above problems, the administrators should give them assistance, support and encouragement in their job More opportunities to be trained in sociolinguistic should be given to the teachers and more seminars should be held The teachers should be provided opportunities to take part in short term courses or in seminars about secretary work and socio-linguistic so that they are beneficial to more specialized knowledge Moreover, self-studying is an effective solution since the teachers may achieve knowledge from other sources as books, magazines, etc In order to teach English for secretaries, the teachers should self-study the Vietnamese course books on secretary to enrich their basic knowledge on the subject matter and achieve necessary vocabulary and terms If they still have any problems, they can discuss with ESP colleagues for their help It can be concluded that the solutions suggested above may solve the problems from the teachers To realise the above- mentioned strategies effectively, we would like to offer some suggestions to develop the students’ speaking skill 4.2.5 Some suggestions to develop the students’ speaking skill 4.2.5.1 Helping the students to have ideas to speak Having no idea to speak to speak becomes a great obstacle to students Thus, the teacher should use some activities to encourage them to have some ideas to speak 34 * Brainstorming Example: Ask students to arrange the annual conference for the company ( Application for section 2-Unit 7: Making arrangements p.71) Procedure: • Give the students some information they need to know when they choose a venue for the conference: (1) Where exactly is the venue? (2) How long does it take to get there? (3) What kind of accommodation is available? (4) Are there restaurants near by? (5) What kind of food they offer? (6) Is there any kind of entertainment? (7) What conference facilities are available? • Ask students to work in pairs and decide which order you should these things in “to do” list: arrange accommodation for participants, prepare conference folders , book venue, draw up conference schedule, send out invitations to participants, decide on conference programme, set dates for conference, finalize conference schedule, find a suitable conference venue, send joining instructions to participants • And then ask students to arrange the annual conference for the company * Conversation completion Example: Ask students to complete the following conversation with suitable phrases provided ( a or b or c……) ( Application for Unit 6: Dealing with complaints p.63 ) Royal Company May I help you? 1………………………………………………………… So you contacted the service Department, didn’t you? 2………………………………………………………… I’m very sorry to hear that Would you please tell me the approximate date of purchase? 3.……………………………………………………… Thank you, madam I understand this has caused a lot of trouble to your company Please accept my apology on behalf of the company ……………………………………………………… I’ll pass on your complaint right away Please give me your telephone number and I’ll see what can be done and call you right back 5……………………………………………………… a Yes, a serviceman was sent to our company and took the video-tape recorder back for repair But up to now, we have got no reply b What would you then? c Thank you for bringing the matter to us Goodbye d Hello, I’m calling from Chick Company I called several days ago requesting your service for our videotape recorder we purchased from you e April, 2000 Model BCJOZ 35 (Key: 1d, 2a, 3e, 4b, 5c) 4.2.5.2 Using pair work and group work to help low level students Students’ low English proficiency was barrier for the teachers in teaching speaking For this problem, the teachers chose the solution as dividing the students into pairs or group work including weak and good students This solution seems good to develop cooperation among the students However, a group including good and weak students can produce a defect that the good usually dominate the group To avoid the good students’ dominance in group work, teachers should ask students to appoint their group leader to help with their problem and sometimes have students change their group leader from this student to another Thus, all students in a group recognize that they have responsibility for the task progress Accordingly, the information gap in group should be paid attention to so that each member has opportunities to exchange information Here are an example: Game: Terribly sorry (Application for Unit6 Dealing with complaints p.63) Aims: Develop small group interaction skills and collaborative work among partners in the group Practice complaining and apologizing Procedure: • Divide the class into the group of four or five • Give the students two sets of cards for each group The card should be shuffled well and dealt out equally to each member of the group ( see a sample of cards in Appendix 4) • Student may look at his/ her own card but he/ she must not show them to the other players • Student chooses a card and lay it down on the table, making an appropriate complaint, for example, Look here, your son’s just kicked a football through my window • The student with the matching card should lay the card on the top of the first card and apologise, for example, I’m terribly sorry, I’ll make him pay for it • Then it’s the second student’s turn • The student who gets rid of all his/ her cards first is the winner 4.2.5.3 Reducing the students’ use of Vietnamese during group work The students’ use of Vietnamese during pair work or group work was a result of the 36 two constraints as low English proficiency and limited motivation Indeed the mother language which is used appropriately can bring back effects, especially for the beginning or pre-intermediate students who possess limitation of vocabulary and structures However, the students at THCCA usually use Vietnamese during pair work or group work To reduce the students’ use of Vietnamese during group work, teachers should move around the classroom monitoring the students’ participation and giving support if necessary 4.2.5.4 Changing the students’ deep routed habit of passive learning style The factor that prevented the teachers from teaching speaking resulted from the students’ passive learning style This problem seemed to arise from the key causes One of them was due to their low English proficiency The other was the students’ assumption, the teachers must be a “ knowledge transmitter and they are knowledge receivers” Additionally, the students were deeply affected by the traditional teaching methods and the learning environment at second or high schools where speaking was not encouraged and focused The two solutions to deal with the students’ passive style of learning were creating a variety of activities to have the students participate in and using praise when the students volunteer to speak Noticeably, they are non-English major students whose level and external motivation are low, whose passive learning style is big hindrance It is affirmed that the solutions above are helpful to make the students more active to some extent The students’ passive style of learning is likely to originate from the causes mentioned above Therefore, to deal with this problem, the teacher should apply some remedies to overcome the students’ low English proficiency as well as change the students’ conception, modify their habit of passive learning style The students need to be encouraged to discuss with the teachers, those of whom show their opinions in the classroom should be given great praise from the teachers That each student is marked a plus when they participate in the class motivates them Gradually, they will become interested in speaking and willing to take part in the lesson Obviously, the passive students need the teacher’ attention more They have to be appointed to speak The easy questions should be given to the weak students to assure their successful completion of the form Negative comments from the teacher which de-motivate the students should be avoided For examples, instead of criticizing them as “ Nonsense”, “ Wrong”, the teachers should 37 praise as “Try another time”, “ Thank you, what about other” In short, the psychological aspect should be highly appreciated 4.2.5.5 Maintaining students’ extrinsic motivation and enhancing their intrinsic motivation The challenge faced by the teachers at THCCA in teaching speaking is students’ low motivation The majority of the teachers engaged in solving the students’ low motivation in learning reported that creating interesting topics, giving positive correction and feedback on students’ mistakes and using authentic materials (see Appendix and as examples) are of great value to motivate the students Nevertheless, it is doubtful that the situation will be improved if only the solutions above are accomplished Other solutions should be applied to increase the students’ motivation as follows: Downs ( 2000) suggests some effective ways which the teacher can apply in the classroom to enhance students’ motivation They are: the teachers call the students by names, the teachers appreciate highly the students’ opinion: tangible instructions and objectives are used in class Those remedies are related to psychological factors In addition, Davies and Pearse (2000) state that routine communicative activities play a crucial role in reminding the course goal which influences the motivation Similarly, Walker (2001) indicates that fun learning activities should be added so that the students can be motivated and the classroom can become more enjoyable According to her, fun learning activities are games, songs, storytelling, etc The teachers must spend much time on designing them as well as the teachers’ effort and enthusiasm are required Based on the collected data from 80 students’ questionnaires for their interest, I will introduce some communicative speaking activities to motivate the students in speaking lessons 4.2.6 Some communicative speaking activities 4.2.6.1 Drill activities This is quite a simple kind of activities as students only repeat or imitate These activities may be: repetition practice of set of sentences prompted by pictures or word cues, asking and answering questions with only one predictable, correct answer In my opinion, these activities are very helpful for the students with low level of proficiency like those at THCCA They help students improve the accurate use of words, structures pronunciation 4.2.6.2 Information gap activities These activities are often carried out in form of pair work and group work 38 Example: Filling the gaps in a timetable or diary (section -Unit 7: Making arrangement p.71) Procedure: Students A holds Mr Konstanz’s diary with some information missing Student B has the same diary with different blank spaces Without looking at the others’ picture, they must fill the blanks by asking appropriate questions Mr Konstant’s diarySeptember4 Monday 9.00am Attend seminar Tuesday Wednesday 2.30 Show visitors round7 Thursday 10.30am Hold committee meeting Friday Saturday 3.00 Fly to Denmark Mr Konstant’s diarySeptember4 Monday Tuesday 10 am Discussions with Mr Peter 12.00 Lunch with Peter Wednesday7 Thursday Friday 2.pm Speak at management conference Saturday Information gap is one of the most fundamental concepts in communicative language teaching In the classroom, we will want to create the same kind of information gap if we are to encourage real communication 4.2.6.3 Improvising dialogues In this activity, the students base themselves on the model dialogue to improvise a similar one If there are two roles in the model dialogue, we will use pair work, if there are more than two, group work will be used The teacher can give the students “ prompts” so it will be easier for the students to this activity Example: Work in pairs to make a similar dialogue as the model one in your textbook based on the “ prompts”.( Application for section 1- Unit 7: making an appointment p.67) Secretary: Good morning, Johnson Motorcars Can I help you? 39 Caller: Secretary: Caller: Secretary: Caller: Secretary: Caller: Secretary: Caller: Secretary: Caller: Secretary: Caller: Secretary: Prompts: Could I speak to Mr Johnson, please? Who shall I say is calling, please? Mr Paul White from New York I’m sorry; Mr Johnson is in conference now, Mr White Would you like to speak to someone else in the office? Well, I’d like to make an appointment to see Mr Johnson next week while I’m in Shanghai I’ll check Mr Johnson’s diary and see if I can arrange an appointment for you Just a moment Yes, Mr Johnson seems to have some time on Monday morning, Wednesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon Could I make an appointment for Wednesday afternoon, please? Would 14:30 be convenient? Yes, that’ll be fine I’ll make a note of that Would you like me to confirm the appointment Yes, please You can contact me any day at New York 718-271 848 extension 185 New York 718-271 848 extension 185 I’ll confirm your appointment as soon as possible, Mr White Thank you very much Good-bye Good- bye - Mr Paul white - Zhang Yan from Hong Kong Trade Company - a.m Monday - Contact any time in the afternoon Tel 643- 592- 666 4.2.6.4 Problem-solving With intermediate and advanced students, problem solving activities can be used to promote interaction and provoke ideas Problems can also be created around almost every theme For example: When students learn Unit (Telephone message p.23), we can raise the questions like this: (1) If someone calls your boss, your boss is not available What you in such a case? What you say? (2) What you if you not understand the speaker or massage? 4.2.6.5 Discussion After a content-bused lesson, a discussion can be held for various reasons The students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about an event or situation, or find solutions in their discussion group This activity fosters critical thinking and quick decision making and students learn how to express and justify themselves in polite ways while disagreeing or agreeing with the others The teacher can give some questions for the students to discuss as following: Section - Unit 1: Receiving visitors without appointment p.5 (1) What are some common topics of conversation when you first meet someone? 40 (2) Do you find it easy or difficult to start conversation with someone you have just met? Unit 2: Telephone call p.13 (1) Must the caller announce his/ her identify when making a telephone call? (2) If the person wanted is not there, what should the phone receiver say? 4.2.6.6 Role play Role-play is to create a real life situation in the classroom That is, the students simulate the real world by role-playing real life situations Role-play is one of the most popular activities done in pairs or in groups The following example is about role play activity: The teachers give students the situation, instructions then appoint them to play roles * Situation: Your boss is engaged at the moment and he doesn’t want to meet anyone Mr Wang from Johnson Company visits the office and asks to see your boss to introduce a new product Your task is to deal with this visitor ( Application for section Unit1 Receiving visitors without appointment p.5 ) * Instruction: - If you are secretary, you should: Introduce yourself, invite him to sit down, offer something to drink, ask him whether he has made an appointment with your boss or not, explain that your boss is busy now, ask him what does he meet your boss for?, make an appointment to see him again - If you are Mr Wang, you should: introduce yourself, accept or decline the offers explain that you haven’t made an appointment with the boss, explain you need to introduce new product of your company, make an appointment to see the boss again 4.2.6.7 Game 4.2.6.7.1 The selling game The Selling Game provides a creative gamelike setting in which students can explore the language of persuasion and negotiation in a series of motivating, on going oral interactions Aims: Develop interaction oral fluency; focus on persuasion and negotiation functions Procedure: • Gather a bag of products that students will have to try and sell to each other • Divide the class in half between sellers and buyers 41 • Have all the sellers come to the front of the class pull one of the objects from the bag • Have the sellers and buyers mingle, with the sellers trying to interest buyers in purchasing their product The seller must think of as many uses as possible for product, and buyers may haggle with the seller over the price set if they think it is too high Buyers must make a purchase by the end of the game • After the sale, have the seller make a note of any money that would be exchanged and move on to the next buyer • Close the market after 10-15 minutes and have the sellers add up the value of the sales The student who has made most money is the winner (Application for Unit 8: Acceptance and Negotiation p 77) 4.2.6.7.2 Yes / No game Aims: Increase fluency with question forms Procedure: • Teacher explains the object of the game is to use only Yes/ No questions but to answer questions without using Yes/ No • Call on students to be questioners and have them ask several questions in quick succession • Have each student try to answer questions for two minutes without saying Yes or No • If a student uses Yes or No, move onto the next student If a student answer questions successfully for two minutes, he/ she is a winner Example: ( Section 1- Unit 1: Receiving visitors with appointment p.1) Student1: Is the visitor’s name Tony? Student 2: His name is Smith Student 1: Does Mr Smith have an appointment with Mr George Student 2: That’s correct Student 1: Is Mr Smith a little bit early for the appointment today? Student 2: It’s true (And so on)…… ( This kind of game can be applied for all units) Various speaking activities such as those listed above make students more active in learning process and at the same time make their learning more meaningful and fun Part C Conclusion Conclusion 42 This study aims at investigating some difficulties faced by the teachers and students in teaching and learning speaking skill Based on the instrumentation as two questionnaires, this study has discovered the significant findings with the purpose of helping teachers to foresee the problems and find out ways to solve them in order to improve the students’ speaking skill The findings are divided into groups as difficulties and solutions In order to help the reader easily grasp the main findings each difficulty is displayed and followed by its solutions Another very important part of this chapter is the suggested activities which help overcome the major difficulties as well as improve quality of teaching and learning speaking skill at THCCA The findings, to some extent, reflect the situation of teaching and learning at THCCA It is conclusive that difficulties and solutions focused on in this chapter have answered the research questions In summary, this minor thesis is believed to be a turning point in the research field on non- English major students at THCCA It is hoped that the teachers of English at THCCA can benefit from the findings and suggestions to improve the students’ speaking skill Limitation of the study and suggestions for further studies Although the researcher has made effort toward conducting this thesis, there undoubtedly exist some limitation First, due to small group of teachers and students involved in the study, the conclusions drawn were tentative a study with a large number of teachers and students to investigate their difficulties and solutions would certainly have more valid and reliable data Therefore, further studies with larger population should be carried out to show more convincing results Second, this study suggests some activities for students which help them improve their speaking skill As a result, an action research on the effectiveness of suggested activities mentioned in this research calls for further studies REFERENCES Bailey, K.M & Savage, L (1994) New ways in Teaching Speaking The USA: Teachers of English to Speakers 43 Bock, G (2000) Difficulties in Implementing Communicative Theory in VietNam Teacher’s Edition, 2, 24-28 Brown, G and Yele, G (1983) Teaching the spoken language Cambridge language Teaching Library Brown, H.D (1994) Teaching by principle: an interactive approach to language pedagogy Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Brumfit, C (1984) Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching – The role of fluency and accuracy Cambridge University Press Byrne, D (1988) Focus on the classroom Hongkong: Modern English Publications Davies, P & Pearse, E (2000) Success in LanguageTeaching Oxford University Down, M (2000) Increasing Student Motivation Teacher’s Edition, 4, 8-13 Harmer, J (1991) The Practice of English Language Teaching Longman 10 Jonhson, K & Morrow, K (1981) Communication in the classroom Essex: Longman 11 Littlewood, W (1981) Communicative Language Teaching Cambridge University Press 12 Martin Bygate (1987) Speaking Oxford University Press 13 Nguyen, B (2002) Methodology course 1- Teaching The Skills VNUH 14 Nunan, D (1989) Designing tasks for the communicative classroom Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 15 Nunan, D (1998) Language Teaching Method ( A textbook for teachers) Prentice Hall, NewYork 16 Pattison, P (1987) Developing Communication Skills Cambridge University Press 17 River, W (1981) The Psychologist and The Foreign Language Teacher University of Chicago Press 18 River, W M (1987) Interactive Language Teaching Cambridge University Press 19 Rools, G (1983) Can not stop talking Rowley; MA: Newbury House 20 Sasse, M (1999) Role-playing in the second language classroom Teacher’s Edition, 1, 4-8 44 21 Ur, P (1981) Discussion that work: Task-centered Fleecy Practice Cambridge University Press 22 Ur, P (1996) A course in Language Teaching Cambridge University Press 23 Walker, L (2001) Creative Ideas for the TESOL classroom Teacher’s Edition ... students Không tìm đợc từ, cấu trúc để diễn đạt 57 Không tìm đợc ý tởng để diễn đạt 23 Gặp khó khăn phát âm từ tiếng anh 13 Thầy cô không nhiệt tình giúp đỡ Quá thời gian dành cho hoạt động nói 26... difficulties occurred 2.4 Students and their background Students of THCCA come from all parts of Thanh Hoa province (Thanh Hoa city, districts and mountainous areas) Most of these students commonly spent... from Thanh hoa city and towns (Bim Son, Sam Son) seem better at English However, during the years at secondary schools as well as at high schools, these students are trained under the strong