Tài liệu Application of cooperative learning strategies to improve speaking skills for non english major students in a police training institution in vietnam

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES **************** TRẦN THỊ THÙY DUNG APPLICATION OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE SPEAKING SKILLS FOR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS IN A POLICE TRAINING INSTITUTION IN VIETNAM (Áp dụng chiến thuật học hợp tác nhằm cải thiện kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh tại một cơ sở giáo dục thuộc ngành công an tại Việt Nam) M.A. MINOR THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 Hanoi - 2020 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES **************** TRẦN THỊ THÙY DUNG APPLICATION OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE SPEAKING SKILLS FOR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS IN A POLICE TRAINING INSTITUTION IN VIETNAM (Áp dụng chiến thuật học hợp tác nhằm cải thiện kỹ năng nói cho sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh tại một cơ sở giáo dục thuộc ngành công an tại Việt Nam) M.A. MINOR THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 Supervisor : Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lê Văn Canh Hanoi - 2020 DECLARATION I - Tran Thi Thuy Dung, hereby certify that the thesis entitled “Application of cooperative learning strategies to improve speaking skills for non-English major students in a police training institution in Vietnam” is the result of my own work and effort. This thesis was carried out and submitted in partial fulfillment for the Degree of Master of Arts at the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University of Hanoi. I also certify that my thesis has not been submitted anywhere for any award. Where other sources of information have been used, they have been acknowledged and documented in the Reference list. i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This graduation thesis could not have been accomplished without the invaluable assistance, encouragement and support from the number of people who all deserve my profound gratitude and appreciation. First, I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Associate Professor Doctor Lê Văn Canh for his valuable guidance and advice throughout every stage of this study. His support has enabled me to develop an understanding of the subject and contributed to the fulfillment of the study. My sincere thanks also go to my colleagues at the Department of Foreign Languages of the PPA, who helped me build up solid theoretical background studies and research methods through their valuable lessons. I am especially grateful for their important instructions and advice at the final stage of my research. My sincerest thanks would also go to my dear friends in class QH.2018.1E3 who assisted me with many useful ideas as well as encouraged me greatly when I felt confused and all non-English major students in class N02D44 who were also very friendly and enthusiastic to help me conduct my research successfully. With such encouragement, I would like to express my thanks to all of them once. Last but not least, I would like to express my profound thanks to my family whose encouragement, support and love have strongly and consistently motivated me to reach the thesis‟s completion. ii ABSTRACT Speaking skill seems to be one of the most challenging productive skills for most of the students in the People‟s Police Academy (PPA). Regarding to the accomplishments of the Cooperative Learning (CL) program particularly done by thousands of teachers all over the world, the researcher decided to implement this approach in the context of teaching and learning English speaking skills for students in her workplace. Therefore, the study was carried out with the aim of examining how cooperative learning strategies work in improving non-English major students' speaking skills at the PPA, together with discovering students‟ attitudes towards this approach and pointing out some difficulties which the teacher met during the application. To be more specific, the research was conducted in an action research form and lasted for 12 weeks. Then, a set of questionnaires was delivered to students so that the data would be collected from different viewpoints. Moreover, after the post-intervention questionnaire, some semi-structured interviews were applied to get further information from some students who had finished the questionnaire. The research questions were also answered by interviews with the observing teacher and the teaching journal of the researcher. The result shows that there are some considerable improvements in the students‟ speaking skills quantitatively and qualitatively. Most of the students show their concern and interest in the activities based on cooperative learning structures. From the findings of this action research, some difficulties have also been investigated to draw out some pedagogical implications for those who are interested in applying CL to their teaching English speaking skills. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION .................................................................................................. i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................. ii ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................ iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................... iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS........................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS AND FIGURES ............................................ viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................... 1 1.1. Rationale of the study .................................................................................. 1 1.2. Objectives of the study ................................................................................. 3 1.3. Research questions ....................................................................................... 3 1.4. Scope of the study ......................................................................................... 4 1.5. Methods of the study .................................................................................... 4 1.6. Significance of the study .............................................................................. 5 1.7. Organization of the thesis ............................................................................ 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................... 7 2.1. Speaking skills .............................................................................................. 7 2.1.1. Nature of speaking ...................................................................................... 7 2.1.2. Speaking performance ................................................................................. 8 2.1.3. Teaching speaking in a classroom .............................................................. 9 2.2. Cooperative Learning (CL) ....................................................................... 11 2.2.1. Definitions of CL ...................................................................................... 11 2.2.2. Basic elements ........................................................................................... 12 2.2.3. Collaborative Learning and Cooperative Learning................................... 14 2.3. Cooperative Language Learning (CLL) .................................................. 16 2.3.1. Goals of CLL ............................................................................................. 16 2.3.2. Benefits of CLL ......................................................................................... 16 2.3.3. A model of CLL ........................................................................................ 17 2.3.4. Differences between CLL and traditional methods .................................. 20 2.3.5. Group formation ........................................................................................ 22 iv 2.4. Cooperative Language Learning strategies ............................................. 23 2.4.1. Language learning strategies ..................................................................... 23 2.4.2. Cooperative Learning strategies ................................................................ 25 2.4.3. Cooperative Language Learning activities ............................................... 26 2.5. Previous studies .......................................................................................... 29 2.6. Summary of the chapter ............................................................................ 34 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ........................................... 35 3.1. The context of the study ............................................................................. 35 3.1.1. The context of learning and teaching English in the police training institution ............................................................................................................. 35 3.1.2. Materials .................................................................................................... 35 3.1.3. Participants ................................................................................................ 36 3.2. The research design.................................................................................... 36 3.2.1. Reasons for choosing an action research design ....................................... 36 3.2.2. The procedure of the action research ........................................................ 37 3.3. Instruments of data collection ................................................................... 41 3.3.1. Survey questionnaires ............................................................................... 41 3.3.2. Semi-structured interviews........................................................................ 43 3.3.3. Teaching journal ........................................................................................ 44 3.4. Data collection procedure .......................................................................... 45 3.5. Data analysis procedure ............................................................................ 45 3.5.1. Pre-intervention questionnaire and post-intervention questionnaire ........ 45 3.5.2. Semi-structured interviews........................................................................ 46 3.5.3. While-intervention teaching journal ......................................................... 47 3.6. Summary of the chapter ............................................................................ 47 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ............................................. 48 4.1. Findings ....................................................................................................... 48 4.1.1. Pre-intervention ......................................................................................... 48 4.1.2. Intervention and Post-intervention ............................................................ 52 4.2. Discussion of findings ................................................................................. 65 4.2.1. Students‟ attitudes towards the implementation of CL in English speaking lessons ................................................................................................................. 65 v 4.2.2. The effectiveness of CL to students‟ speaking skills ................................ 67 4.2.3. Difficulties of the teacher when implementing CL activities ................... 69 4.3. Summary of the chapter ............................................................................ 70 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ......................................................................... 71 5.1. Conclusion ................................................................................................... 71 5.2. Pedagogical implications for better CL application ............................... 72 5.2.1. For teachers ............................................................................................... 72 5.2.2. For students ............................................................................................... 73 5.3. Limitations of the study ............................................................................. 74 5.4. Suggestions for further research .............................................................. 74 REFERENCES .................................................................................................. 76 APPENDICES ...................................................................................................... I APPENDIX 1 ........................................................................................................ I APPENDIX 2 ..................................................................................................... III APPENDIX 3 ..................................................................................................... VI APPENDIX 4 ....................................................................................................VII APPENDIX 5 .................................................................................................. VIII APPENDIX 6 ...................................................................................................... X APPENDIX 7 .................................................................................................. XIV APPENDIX 8 ................................................................................................... XX APPENDIX 9 ............................................................................................... XXIV APPENDIX 10 ............................................................................................. XXVI vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Cooperative Learning : CL Cooperative Language Learning : CLL English as a Foreign Language : EFL People‟s Police Academy : PPA vii LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS AND FIGURES TABLES Page Table 1 Comparisons between Traditional approach and CLL Table 2 Instruments for data collection 41 Table 3 The meaning of mean score 42 Table 4 Results of section 1 in the pre-intervention questionnaire 44 Table 5 Results of section 2 in the pre-intervention questionnaire 46 Table 6 Results of section 3 in the pre-intervention questionnaire 47 Table 7 Results of section 1 in the post-intervention questionnaire 49 Table 8 Students‟ preferences for CL activities 51 Table 9 Results of section 3A in the post-intervention questionnaire 53 Table 10 Results of section 3B in the post-intervention questionnaire 54 Table 11 Results of section 4 in the post-intervention questionnaire 56 CHARTS 19-20 Page Chart 1 Bar chart on students‟ preferences on types of CL activities 51 Chart 2 Pie chart on students‟ preferences in group forming in CL activities 52 Chart 3 Pie chart on students‟ preferences in group division in CL activities 52 FIGURES Page Figure 1 Stages in speaking lessons (Adapted from Harmer,2007) 10 Figure 2 Cyclical action research model (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1998 34 viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In this part, the problem and the rationale for the study, together with the aims, objectives, and scope of the whole paper are clearly stated and explained. Above all, this part also builds the research questions to work as clear guidelines for the whole research. 1.1. Rationale of the study Nowadays, we cannot deny the role of English in many fields including technology, economy, business, entertainment, and education. English is regarded as one of the most popular languages as it helps people communicate and interact with others even from the far-flung corners of the world. Vietnam once decided to step into the globalization process, introduced English as a second language to be taught in many schools from the very early days of the innovation era. Learning English as a second or foreign language has received a lot of attention because there are a lot of difficulties in countries where English is not their first language. EFL learners face a lot of difficulties in speaking English (Rababa‟h, 2005; Zang, 2009) which results from many factors like the learners themselves, the teaching strategies, the curriculum or inadequate strategies or methods to study. Therefore, teachers should always look for useful strategies to reduce the difficulties of teaching the English language (Long, 1969; Chen, 2007; Nunn, 2011) and they have to find some well-planned and organized ways to facilitate the process of learning and teaching. Right from the early days of establishment, the People„s Police Academy has recognized the importance of teaching and learning foreign languages. Foreign languages, especially English have been an indispensable subject in the training curriculum of the academy. At the People‟s Police Academy, full-time students are required to learn 3-4 semesters of English from Elementary to PreIntermediate level (equivalent from A2 to B1 level of CEFR framework). They have to pass the exam and get a certificate of English B1 competence as a 1 graduation requirement. Due to the necessity of foreign language competence, it is very essential for them to focus on studying English for their own career later. There are 155 full-time students of the course D44 studying English as a foreign language. Speaking, one of the productive skills seems to be challenging for most of the students in the PPA in general and students from D44 in particular. To students of the PPA, there are more difficulties due to the typical features of the academy when they have little motivation to study. The researcher has realized the problems of learning English in the PPA since becoming a teacher of English in 2015 when she was annoyed with the atmosphere of “silence” in speaking lessons. Although the students were always encouraged to speak, their participation was not achieved as expected and they showed unequal work when doing tasks together. In other words, there was no equal opportunity for students to participate actively in the classroom such as there were some students eagerly volunteered to answer and often dominated discussions, while others just listened, observed, and daydreamed while their classmates hold forth. As a result, the assessment is not adequate enough and the teacher cannot motivate all the students. The second problem is that English competence and communicative skills varied differently among students. In fact, in high school, they focus primarily on grammar and they do not have many chances to use practical English. Some students had a limitation in mastering vocabulary, also had difficulty pronouncing English words, did not feel confident to speak English in front of the class or public places and were not accustomed to working together with their partners or peers in studying English. The last one is they were also still dependent learners-they need teacher‟s help anytime. She kept on finding the methods to get all her students equally join in the speaking activities with the hope of improving their speaking skills in terms of vocabulary, grammar, fluency, etc. During the process of researching, she had found some books about implementing Cooperative Learning strategies to improve language learners‟ cooperation, participation and proficiency. She 2 realized that many cooperative learning programs have been carried out worldwide and likewise Vietnam. With regards to the successes of CL programs in improving students‟ learning in general and speaking skills in particular, there appears to be an urgent need to create a cooperative learning environment to enhance students‟ speaking skills and attitudes in which the teacher work as the facilitator and motivate creativity and cooperation among students. Therefore, taking all the above into account, the researcher would like to conduct an action research project on the field of learning speaking skills in her teaching context and choose the title for the graduation paper as: “Application of cooperative learning strategies to improve speaking skills for non-English major students in a police training institution in Vietnam” with the hope of successfully applying these strategies in achieving English speaking skill in particular and acquisition of English in general. 1.2. Objectives of the study The thesis is conducted with the aim of examining how cooperative learning strategies work in improving non-English major students' speaking skills at the PPA, including discovering both students‟ attitudes towards the method, and difficulties which the teacher coped when using cooperative learning strategies at the PPA. With these research incentives in mind, the researcher formulated the objectives as follows: i) to find out whether the application of CL is able to improve students‟ speaking skills or not; ii) to investigate students‟ attitudes towards CL; and iii) to discover the difficulties the teacher encountered when implementing CL activities in speaking lessons. 1.3. Research questions In order to fulfill the purpose aforementioned, this paper is carried out to seek answers to the following questions: Question 1: What are students‟ attitudes towards the implementation of CL in English speaking lessons? 3 Question 2: To what extent does the use of cooperative learning strategies affect English speaking skills of students at the PPA? Question 3: What are the difficulties of the teacher when using cooperative learning strategies in English speaking lessons? It should be noticed that all these above research questions aimed at defining and solving the problems only in my research context. 1.4. Scope of the study Because of the limited knowledge and time from the researcher, this thesis cannot cover all fields of CL and all the students as well. Therefore, the researcher just focuses on some cooperative learning activities which can help students to get the highest benefits in their learning. Besides, it is intended to explore the students‟ attitudes towards CL, not teachers‟ attitudes. Moreover, a worthwhile thing to consider in this part is generalizability. Because it is a kind of action research conducted in a very specific educational context and a limited number of participants - a class of only one university in Hanoi, one police institution in Vietnam. This means that there is no generalization of findings can be made, or if yes, it has been made with caution with the same educational situations. The researcher also takes charge of the class from the beginning of the semester in the school year of 2018-2019. All the learning activities were designed to follow cooperative learning strategies, the curriculum, and the content of the book as well. 1.5. Methods of the study The research approach that the author employed is action research, following the procedures guided by steps in the action research cycle by Kemmis and McTaggart (1988). This study was carried out in form of an action research with both quantitative and qualitative methods, by these following data collection 4 instruments: Questionnaires; Semi-structured interviews (with students and one observing teacher); and Teaching journal. To ensure the reliability of the research, a combination of more than one data collection instrument was applied. To be more specific, two sets of questionnaires were delivered to 38 students before and after the intervention and semi-structured interviews with students and one observing teacher so that the data would be collected from different viewpoints on attitudes and effectiveness of CL. Moreover, some difficulties when applying CL into speaking lessons were also revealed through an interview with an observing teacher and teaching journal which the researcher took note during the intervention. 1.6. Significance of the study The study is conducted with the hope of improving the speaking skills of students, the teaching of English speaking skills and to serve as a useful source of reference for the colleagues at the PPA. The results of this study are intended to provide readers with useful information. In particular, this study is hoped to show evidence that the use of cooperative learning can enhance students‟ speaking skills. Therefore, the study would better inform the teachers in order to achieve a closer look in the situation of using CL in teaching speaking skills and gain the highest attendance of students by a student-centered approach to teaching such productive skills. 1.7. Organization of the thesis The thesis is divided into 5 chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction - gives the rationale, the objectives, the research questions, the scope, the methods, and organization of the study. Chapter 2: Literature review - provides the background of the study, including definitions of key concepts, and discussions of related studies. Chapter 3: Research methodology - describes the participants and instruments of the study, as well as the procedure employed to carry out the research. 5 Chapter 4: Findings and discussion - presents, analyzes, and discusses the findings that the researcher found out from the data collected according to the research questions. Chapter 5: Conclusion - summarizes the main issues discussed in the paper, the limitations of the research, several suggestions for cooperative learning adaptation, and further studies. Following this part is the Appendices. 6 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter is devoted to the literature review, especially to the key concepts and related studies to the research topic. At first, this chapter proposes a review of the literature related to speaking skills and cooperative learning. In the meantime, the writer tries to focus on the definitions and characteristics of the key terms in the scope of the study based on many related studies and researches around the world in general and in Vietnam in particular with a view to illustrating the concepts more clearly. 2.1. Speaking skills In real life situations, speaking is considered as one of the most challenging skill to achieve. In fact, the ability to speak is the language of speech. It is just about putting ideas in language to get others to understand the meaning. The word “speaking” in this study refers to one of four language-and learning-related competencies. There are many definitions of speaking according to experts and researchers. Speaking is a productive language skill (Siahaan, 2008:95). It means that speaking is a person‟s skill to produce sounds that exists at the meaning and be understood by other people, so that able to create of good communication. Moreover, speaking is the direct use of language and means by which people communicate (Fulcher, 2003). According to Bailey (2000:25), speaking is perceived as a process of interaction where speakers intend to build meaning through producing, receiving and processing information. It is also agreed that speaking is a skill to use a language approximately to express ideas, opinions or feelings in order to give or get information and knowledge from other people who do communication. 2.1.1. Nature of speaking As mentioned above, speaking is one of the four language skills learned. In the process of learning English, four basic skills are often integrated with 7 each other. For example, when teachers speak, students listen and then, write to take notes or read materials and respond to teachers by speaking. Through speaking, students will express their thoughts, views, and their emotions in expression to the listeners. When students want to speak, they have to focus on what is spoken and acknowledge the participation in the complement of knowledge in certain language components, such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and fluency. The majority of language learners around the world study English to improve their speaking skills because of the roles of the discussion including sharing ideas and views, planning, bargaining, overcoming a specific problem, creating and developing interpersonal connections and partnerships, or other occupational reasons and it seems natural to say that the ability to speak plays a major role in this overall competence. 2.1.2. Speaking performance In this study, the term “performance” here means students‟ practice and their ability to perform speaking skills, not the underlying knowledge of speaking. Gower, Phillips, and Walters (2005) state the two main aspects of the speaking skill including accuracy and fluency. It is agreed that accuracy involves the correct use of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Burkart (1998) asserts that speaking is an activity that involves the areas of knowledge, namely pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. It is the use of the right words in the right order with the right pronunciation. Clark and Clark (1997) suggest that in certain systems specifying meaning of units and of sentences, a speaker expresses his thought and feeling in verbs, phrases, and sentences. Students are encouraged to try and use the linguistic materials they learned to communicate accurately with controlled and guided activities. In terms of fluency, fluency in Richard and Plat's research (1993) refers to the levels of communication skills that (a) the ability to produce written and/ or spoken language with ease; (b) the ability to speak with good but not necessarily 8 perfect command of intonation, vocabulary, and grammar; (c) the ability to produce continuous speech without causing comprehension difficulties or a breakdown of communication. In summary, it can be concluded that speaking is the ability to express something which involves utilizing words in correct order and pronunciation, right grammatical form, and meaningful context (fluency) and making a good choice of words (vocabulary) in the process of interpreting and negotiating meaning in conveying messages to establish and maintain social relationships. In addition, the responsibility of teachers is providing activities that involve interaction among learners. O‟Malley and Pierce (1996) propose that different kinds of speaking activities are appropriate at different levels of proficiency. Therefore teachers should give practice at all levels so that learners can express and produce spontaneous language. In terms of fluency and accuracy, Byrne (1984) also states that oral fluency, the ability to express reasonably, accurately, and without hesitation, should be the primary goal in teaching the productive skill of speaking. 2.1.3. Teaching speaking in a classroom A basic model for teaching productive skills was given by Harmer (2007). He points out that teacher‟s management role is a key element to success in classroom tasks in speaking lessons. The procedures for speaking class include the following activities as described in Figure 1. Firstly, in the lead-in stage, teachers have to involve and make students aware of the topic based on students‟ background knowledge or concerning certain contexts. In presenting the task stage, teachers should give clear instructions about what they expect from the students. Once students have started, the teachers need to monitor the task, go around to observe and give support if necessary. This intervention does not necessarily involve the correction of mistakes, but rather to ensure students‟ progress according to the objectives of the lesson. When students finish, feedback is given by teachers and 9 members of the class. Finally, teachers could move on from the task with follow-up activities to reinforce the activities in the lesson. Figure 1. The stages in a Speaking Class (Adapted from Harmer, 2007) Lead-in Set the tasks Observe Give feedback Followup 2.1.4. Assessing speaking Speech can be broken down into pronunciation and intonation, accuracy, and fluency, or it can be categorized in terms of strategies, or it can be regarded as a form of interaction and analyzed using the methods of pragmatics or discourse analysis. The problem is that in the course of a normal conversation, all of these aspects are important. If testers try to separate the strands, they may well find that the ecology of speaking is different in different successful speakers. This means that the accurate speaker may communicate effectively, but slowly, whereas the fluent speaker may sacrifice accuracy for the sake of rapid communication (Skehan, 1998). Testing of speaking skills is a method to measure students‟ strengths and weaknesses in their oral skills. From the results of testing, teachers know about the situation of their students‟ speaking skills, and teaching technique is also designed based on each specific level of students. In this thesis, the researcher used the result of the final test in module 1 (the module before the intervention) to have an overall background information on students‟ level, in order to choose and design suitable speaking activities which follows Cooperative Learning approach. 10