The reality of assessing speaking skill of high school students at Nguyen Tat Thanh Gifted High School and recommendations Trương Thị Nhung Trường Đại học Ngoại Ngữ Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15 Người hướng dẫn: Assoc. Dr. Tô Thị Thu Hương Năm bảo vệ: 2010 Abstract: English speaking assessment at Nguyen Tat Thanh high school for the gifted, where the author of this thesis works, has been claimed to be problematic. This thesis takes a critical look at the reality of oral English language assessing at this school to identify its weaknesses and the causes of the existing drawbacks or problems. In order to achieve this, a case study was carried out to find out the school teachers’ perceptions towards the necessity of English speaking assessment and evaluate the current practices of this skill assessment in the school. The methods employed in the study include: (1) a detailed analysis of the instructions for teaching and assessing English provided by MOET; (2) a semi-structured group interview to the six teachers in that school;(3) a group discussion among them and (4) classroom observations. The results of the study show that (1) some of the teachers had a negative attitude towards the necessity of English speaking assessment; (2) the assessment of this skill was either neglected or conducted with many problems such as no wall between assessment of learning and for learning, the impressive and norm-based assessment used, light weight of speaking assessment result, etc. These findings serve as the basis for several practical recommendations made for the improvement of English speaking assessing practices. The recommendations are made to Ministry of Education and Training, Department of Education and Training in Yen Bai, the leaders of Nguyen Tat Thanh high school for the gifted and individual language teacher of the school. Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Động từ; Tiếng Việt; Ngữ pháp. 6 Content: TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration………………………………………………………………………… Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………… Abstract……………………………………………………………………………. Abbreviations …………………………………………………………………… Table of contents … ……………………………………………………………… PART A. INTRODUCTION… ……………………………………………… 1. Rationale…………………….………………………………………………. 2. The study aims………………………………………………………………. 3. Research questions …………………………………………………………. 4. Method of the study ………………………………………………………… 5. Scope of the study…………………………………………………… 6. Design of the study…………………………………………………………. PART B. DEVELOPMENT…………………………………………………… Chapter 1. Literature review……… ………………………………………… 1.1. Language assessment …………………………………………………… 1.1.1. Language assessment vs. language testing………………………… 1.1.2. Types of language assessment……………………………………… 1.2. Speaking assessment…… ……………………………………………… 1.2.1. Nature of speaking ………………………………………………… 1.2.2. Preliminary considerations of English speaking assessment…………. 1.3. Previous researches on assessment of speaking skill ……………………… Chapter 2. The study….……………………………………………………… 2.1. Research questions……………………………………………………… 2.2. Methodology……………………………………………………………… 2.2.1. Case study…………………………………………………………… 2.2.2. Contextual factors affecting the practice of speaking assessment……. 2.2.2.1. The case of Nguyen Tat Thanh Gifted High school……………. 2.2.2.2. Syllabus approach to English speaking teaching and assessing… 2.2.3. Data collection……………………………………………………… i ii iii iv v 1 1 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 5 5 6 7 7 9 11 14 14 14 14 15 15 15 16 7 2.2.3.1. Participants……………………………………………………… 2.2.3.2. Procedures………………………………………………………. 2.2.4. Methods of data analysis…………………………………………… Chapter 3. Results of data analysis and discussions………………….……… 3.1. Semi-structured group interview …………………………………………. 3.1.1.Teachers’ perception towards the necessity of English speaking assessment 3.1.2. Unsound practices of English speaking skill assessment… ………… 3.2. Group discussion………………………………………………… ……… 3.3. Classroom observation…………………………………………………… PART C. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………….…… 1. Conclusions of the study……………………………………………………… 2. Suggestions for assessing English speaking skill in upper secondary school… 3. Limitation of the research ………………… …………………………………. 4. Suggestions for further study……………………………… …………………. REFERENCES…………………………………………… …………………… APPENDICES Appendix 1. Guided questions for the semi-structured group interview…… Appendix 2. T he instructions for teaching and assessing English provided by MOET ……………………… …………………. Appendix 3. Group discussion transcripts and translation…… ……………. 17 17 19 20 20 20 23 29 30 33 33 34 38 38 39 40 I IV VI 8 PART A. Introduction 1. Rationale: In Vietnam, there have long been heated discussions about the English competence of Vietnamese people. The Vietnamese are often described as having no ability to communicate in English. A typical example of this was published in Viet bao (Viet bao.com.vn -12.10.2006), Tin tuc 24/7 (tin247.com.vn-13.10.2006). The article by Kim Lien discussed why the majority of Vietnamese high school students after having learnt English for 7 years in school could not use English to communicate with foreigners. One of the main reasons provided was that the current English tests in the curriculum did not focus on assessing communicative skills, thus, teaching practices which were always test- oriented also neglected speaking and listening skill. The article was issued 4 years ago but it has pointed out the key factor which caused the poor quality of English learning in general and Vietnamese students’ inability to communicate in English in particular being negative washback effects of official tests, low proficiency of teachers and negative attitudes toward speaking English. Since then much effort has been spent on improving Vietnamese students’ ability to communicate in English. The most significant solution can be the implementation of the new series of English books for secondary high school which claimed to be based on communicative approach and not only focus on the language elements as the old ones did but also develop all the four macro language skills. Another big solution would be the Prime Minister’s approval of one big project called “Teaching and learning foreign languages in the national English education system in the period 2008-2020”. The project aims at renewing teaching and learning of foreign languages in Vietnam. The significance of the project lies in the adoption of a new language assessment standards and framework, the Common European Framework for Language Reference (CEFR) for assessing English language ability of Vietnamese learners. However, the question is that once the new textbooks have been implemented, the teaching approach has changed, the new assessment framework has been introduced, whether there are any positive changes in assessing interaction skills which include assessing listening and speaking skill. The question remains unanswered empirically. 9 The researcher has been unsuccessful in finding researches done on speaking assessment in high schools of Vietnam. As a teacher of English, the researcher is eager to find the answer to this question. Firstly, she would like to study how speaking and listening were assessed in her school. However, with a very early look at the situation of the school, she soon realized although all the four skills were taught to the students, students’ listening skill was not assessed and speaking skill was assessed to some extents but with many problems. Consequently, she decided to do research on investigating how English speaking assessment was conducted at her school. The research was entitled “The reality of assessing speaking skill of high school students at Nguyễn Tất Thành gifted high school and Recommendations.” The research was conducted in the context of a high school for gifted students in a mountainous area. The students in the school have a higher level of English than students in other schools in the province. No students with the English score at the school entrance examination lower than 4 can enter the school. Besides, 95 % of the school leavers succeeded in university entrance exam in 2009 and some students has won scholarship for foreign study. Thus, the students do not only learn English grammar and vocabulary for the graduation exam but they also see the importance of speaking skill. The size of the class at the school is much smaller than that of a normal one. All the above-mentioned factors seem to be advantageous to teaching English speaking in general and the application of the skill assessment in particular. In the context of this school, English speaking assessment, therefore, should be done and needs to be done appropriately. However, the reality appears to be not perfect. This also adds one more reason to the rationale of this research. Overall, the researcher hopes that this study would provide a closer look at the speaking assessment in everyday classroom situation; thus, it would be helpful to not only the researcher herself in making better teaching decisions in her classes but also to the school administrators and policy makers for further improvement of English teaching and learning. 2. The study aims: With the above rationale, the two main aims of this research are: - to find out the problems emerging during the process of assessing English speaking skill in the school context. - to propose some practical solutions to the problems. 10 To achieve these aims, some specific objectives were defined as follows: - to investigate the high school teachers’ perception toward the necessity of English speaking assessment. - to study the purposes and methods of English speaking assessment, the uses of assessment data. - to identify the problems arising in the speaking assessing procedure - to offer some recommendations on solutions to the problems. 3. The research questions: With the aims stated above, the researcher proposed three following research questions for the study: 1. What are the perceptions of Nguyen Tat Thanh gifted high school teachers of English on the necessity of English speaking assessment? 2. What are the problems emerging during the assessing process? 3. What are the approaches to tackle the problems? 4. The method of the study: The research was conducted as a case study. This research method was chosen for the following reasons. Firstly, the research stresses on investigating the reality of speaking assessment in a high school context; thus, we need an in-depth study on how speaking assessment is actually done. Besides, because it involves the data from teachers’ perspectives only, an in-depth study then becomes manageable. Finally, the object of the study is speaking assessment conducted in a school for gifted students so it has a clear boundary differentiating it from that of normal schools. This study employed qualitative data collection instruments which included semi- structured group interview, group discussion and class observation. The semi-structured group interview was conducted with some guided questions. The interviewees were also given the guided questions before hand in the form of a handout for better preparation of ideas and thoughts. Because the questions gathered information of a rather unfamiliar topic to the teachers and it involved a great recall of assessing experiences in the whole academic year, the teachers obviously needed time to prepare. The questions also kept the interviewer as an inexperienced researcher from losing tract. Then a group discussion was held involving orally assessing one videotaped speech made by one non-English major student of this school. The teachers were asked to give 11 comments and marks for the presentation. They were also encouraged to discuss the differences in their assessing practice. Last but not least, class observation was employed to provide triangulated data. The class observation may identify gaps between what the teachers say in the interview and what they actually do in class. The lessons observed were chosen randomly because the researcher prefers a real picture of speaking assessment. Besides, the speaking assessment can be conducted in any lesson, not only in speaking lesson. 5. The scope of the study. This is a minor descriptive study; thus, a number of issues would be beyond the scope of enquiry. For example, the students’ perceptions of speaking assessment would not be the study’s concern. The study will not focus on investigating the validity, reliability and authenticity of the speaking assessment because these are the centre issues in speaking tests situation rather than speaking assessment in everyday classroom. Especially, the appropriateness of speaking assessment tasks will be left for further research. 6. The design of the study The thesis was designed in three parts. Part A is The introduction. It provides a brief overview of the study with more details of the rationale, the aims, the scope, the research methodology as well as the design of the study. Part B, the Development, consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 reviews the literature in the field of assessment. This chapter presents the theoretical background of the thesis which contains three main points: language assessment in general, speaking assessment in particular and some of the previous researches on assessments of English speaking skill. Chapter 2, namely The study, focuses on the method of the study, the contextual factors of the case school and the data collection instruments and procedure. The next chapter, chapter Three, represents not only a detail description of data analysis but also the discussion of the findings. Chapter 3 is divided into three parts dealing with the data collected through three instruments: interview, discussion and observation. Part C, The conclusion, is devoted to the conclusions of the studies. It summarizes the problems associated with English speaking assessment and provides some recommendations to cope with the identified problems. In this part, the researcher also mentions the limitations of the study and some recommendations for further study as well. 46 References 1. Bachman, L. F. & Palmer, A. S. (1996). Language Testing in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2. Brown, D.H. (2001). Teaching by Principles, New York: Pearson Education Limited 3. Brown, D.H. (2004). Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices. United State of America: Pearson education, Inc. 4. Brown, K. L. (1981). Teaching, Speaking and Listening skills in the Elementary and Secondary School. Boston, MA: Massachusetts Department of Education. 5. Chalhoub-Deville, M. & Deville, C. (2005). A look back at and forward to what language testers measure. In E. 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English speaking assessment at Nguyen Tat Thanh high school for the gifted, where the author of this thesis works, has been claimed to be problematic. This thesis takes a critical look at the reality