Tài liệu Hiệu quả của việc sử dụng giáo cụ trực quan để phát triển kỹ năng nói cho học sinh lớp 12 tại trường thpt cẩm phả

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES NGUYEN THI DUONG THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING VISUAL AIDS TO PROMOTE SPEAKING SKILLS FOR THE 12TH GRADERS AT CAM PHA HIGH SCHOOL (Hiệu quả của việc sử dụng giáo cụ trực quan để phát triển kỹ năng nói cho học sinh lớp 12 tại trường THPT Cẩm Phả) M.A. THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 THAI NGUYEN – 2019 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES NGUYEN THI DUONG THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING VISUAL AIDS TO PROMOTE SPEAKING SKILLS FOR THE 12TH GRADERS AT CAM PHA HIGH SCHOOL (Hiệu quả của việc sử dụng giáo cụ trực quan để phát triển kỹ năng nói cho học sinh lớp 12 tại trường THPT Cẩm Phả) M.A. THESIS (APPLICATION ORIENTATION) Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor : Dr. Nguyen Thi Huong THAI NGUYEN – 2019 DECLARATION I hereby certify that no part of the thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other person’s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Quang Ninh, September 20th 2019 Trainee Nguyen Thi Duong This study was approved by i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The thesis could not have been completed without the help of many people to whom I am indebted. First of all, I am greatly indebted to Dr. Nguyen Thi Huong, my supervisor, for her invaluable guidance, comments, criticisms, corrections and for her kindly constant encouragement during the course of writing this thesis. Second, I would like to thank all lecturers at Foreign Languages Department, Thai Nguyen University for their valuable teaching and tremendous assistance that have enlightened my study path. Third, I am grateful to my colleagues at Cam Pha high school for their constructive suggestions about this research. Without their help and cooperation, the research would have been made impossible. I also would like to give my special thanks to the students at Cam Pha high school who have actively participated in my study. Last but not least, my sincere thanks go to my family, my classmates at the Master Course Class, my friends, especially my husband, who also encourages and shares the hardship with me. These people deserve all the credit. I highly appreciate all their support and contribution. Nguyen Thi Duong ii ABSTRACT This study is an attempt to investigate the use of visual aids in teaching speaking to 12 graders at Cam Pha high school. The main purposes of the study are to find out: the current English speaking teaching and learning situation at Cam Pha high school; activities and techniques of teaching with visual aids applied by teachers and students’ preferences; the difficulties in learning and teaching English speaking and then give some suggestions for teachers to stimulate students in speaking and overcome the difficulties they have to face with in teaching speaking English for students. The study adopts action research approach, with the use of mixed research methods involving both qualitative and quantitative data. Two hundred 12th grade students and four teachers took part in the study. The findings show that the use of visual aids significantly enhanced students’ interest and engagement in speaking skills. Students also reported their improvement in various aspects of speaking skills. The study proposes implications and suggestions for using visual aids in improving speaking skills. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................ DECLERATION ......................................................................................................... i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .......................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................ iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 1 1.1 Rationale of the study ....................................................................................... 1 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study ...................................................................... 2 1.3. Research questions ............................................................................................... 2 1.4. Scope of the study ................................................................................................ 2 1.5. Significance of the study ...................................................................................... 3 1.6. Design of the study ........................................................................................ 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................ 5 2.1 Speaking skills .................................................................................................. 5 2.1.1 Mỉco and macro skills of speaking .............................................................. 6 2.1.2 2.2 Fluency and accuracy ................................................................................. 7 Teaching speaking............................................................................................. 7 2.2.1 Teaching and learning speaking skills ....................................................... 7 2.2.2 Principles for designing speaking techniques ............................................ 8 2.2.3 Problems in learning speaking ................................................................... 9 2.3 Visual aids ........................................................................................................... 10 2.4 Roles and functions of visual aids in language teaching and learning ............... 14 2.5 Use of visual aids in language teaching and learning ......................................... 15 2.6. Previous studies .................................................................................................. 17 iv 2.7. Summary ........................................................................................................... 18 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ......................................................................... 19 3.1 Research method ............................................................................................. 19 3.2 Research design............................................................................................... 20 3.2.1.Students ........................................................................................................ 23 3.2.2. Teachers ...................................................................................................... 23 3.2.3. Research procedure ..................................................................................... 24 3.3. Data collection instruments ................................................................................ 27 3.3.1. Questionnaire .............................................................................................. 27 3.3.2. Observation ................................................................................................. 28 3.3.3.Interviews ..................................................................................................... 30 3.4. Data analysis ...................................................................................................... 30 3.5. Validity and reliability ....................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS ................................................. 34 Questionnaires ........................................................................................................... 34 4.1.1.The reality of the current learning speaking English .................................. 34 4.1.1.1. Students’ purposes of learning speaking English ................................ 34 4.1.1.2.Students’ assessment on the importance of speaking English .............. 35 4.1.1.3 students' opinions towards speaking activities ...................................... 35 4.1.1.4. Students’ frequency of speaking English in speaking class ................. 36 4.1.1.5 Causes of students' reluctance to speak in class.................................... 37 4.1.2 Students' attitudes towards using visual aids in the speaking lesson ............... 38 4.1.3 Teachers' attitudes towards using visual aids in speaking lesson .................. 42 4.2. Observations.................................................................................................... 45 v 4.3.Interviews ............................................................................................................ 46 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ............................................................................... 49 5.1. Concluding remarks ........................................................................................... 49 5.2. Limitations ......................................................................................................... 50 5.3. Implications ........................................................................................................ 50 5.4 . Suggestions to further studies ........................................................................... 51 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................ 53 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................. I vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study Nowadays, English has an important role in the world. Most countries in the world use English as medium of communication in many aspects of life. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, English is considered as a foreign language. It also has been introduced to educational institutions, which is learnt from Junior High School up to university as a compulsory subject. Oral communication competence or speaking skills is the goal of English learning in many schools. Speaking skill is considered as an initial skill that leads learners to develop the other communication competences (reading and writing). However, it is assumed that developing speaking skill to 12th graders in our school is not easy because of the status of English as a foreign language in which it is not used in national or social life. With more than 8 years of experience in teaching English at Cam Pha high school, the researcher find that students have to learn English in 2 semesters in the curriculum. At the end of each semester, the students have to take a written tests and spoken tests. However, the result of spoken test is always lower than the one of written test. With my own teaching experience and what I have observed from my colleagues’ teaching, I found certain of reasons why students usually obtain unsatisfied achievement: 1. There are plenty of different levels of ability in learning English the class 2. As soon as we put them in groups, our students speak Vietnamese not English 3. The students always make too much noise 4. We would like to do more speaking activities, but our students just won’t cooperate 5. The students make so many mistakes that we cannot correct them 6. We do not have time to give them enough speaking practice 7. Some topics are not interesting. Supiyati (2011) stated that practically the use of visual aids is one of the appropriate techniques to develop students’ speaking skills. Actually, there are many 1 kinds of visual aids that the researcher will describe like pictures, graphics, charts, illustrations etc. Through visual aids, the students are more enthusiastic. Students enjoyed the process of teaching and learning more. Teaching speaking using visual aids gives a big chance to the students to speak. Due to the identified issues of speaking skills of high school students in Vietnam and the effects of employment of group work on enhancing the students’ speaking skill, this research employs the treatments of action research to conduct the research on: “The effectiveness of using visual aids to promote speaking skill for the 12th graders at Cam Pha high school”. 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study The overarching aim of this current research is to investigate the Vietnamese high school students’ speaking behaviors and performance under the effects of using visual aids in English speaking lessons in the context of public high school from the perspectives of both the EFL teachers as instructors and students. The following specific objectives will be supportive to the areas of research: 1 To find out the 12th grader’ attitudes towards using visual aids to teaching speaking at Cam Pha high school. 2 To evaluate the effectiveness of using visual aids in teaching speaking at Cam Pha high school. 1.3 Research questions Based on research objectives, there are three research questions as 1) How do visual aids promote speaking skills for the 12th graders at Cam Pha high school? 2) What are Cam Pha high school students’ perceptions of and attitudes toward using visual aids in speaking lessons? 3) What are Cam Pha high school teachers’ attitudes toward using visual aids in speaking lessons? 1.4 Scope of the study The study is carried out at Cam Pha high school. This study investigated the issues and changes that arise from an EFL speaking class. This study included 200 students of grade 12 at Cam Pha high school. Students are surveyed to find out the 2 effectiveness of using visual aids to promote their speaking skills. Furthermore, the researcher’s intention was to carry out classroom observation, and interview teachers and students to see if they workable and effective, and to make some suggestions to help the students better their speaking skill. The report has carried out in the first semester of academic year 2018-2019 with only 12th-grade students; hence, the respondents does not represent for all students who study English major in Vietnam. 1.5 .Significance of the study This current study is devoted to generate both theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, although there are certain number of studies previously conducting the investigation into the use of visual aids in the EFL context, the major concerns of these studies lie on other aspects of English as vocabulary or listening, not speaking skills. Particularly, in Vietnam there is a scarcity of research exploring the implementation of visual aids in English speaking teaching and learning at upper elementary level. There has been little evidence supporting the effectiveness and implementation of visual aids in an English class. Therefore, the study findings expect to fill the gap of literature in this aspect and provide valuable information for the researchers who are interested in cooperating visual into their teaching. Concerning the practical contributions, it is expected that the present study may benefit teachers and students at high schools, particularly, which have problems in instructing English speaking skills, contributing to the reform of English curriculum design and teaching pedagogy at upper elementary level. Most of the typical problems that the students of grade 12 face while speaking are that they cannot speak beyond short segments because of lack of vocabulary, poor grammar and pronunciation. Due to this problem, they cannot participate actively in conversation and activities based on daily life situations. They have frequent communication gaps and misunderstandings results in lack of communication strategies therefore they speak slowly and take a lot of time to compose sentences. All of these problems can only be solved by improving student’s speaking skills through visual aids. In the scenario of Vietnamese public school the teachers tend to see their role merely in terms of an instructor or a director. The implementation of visual aids in English speaking classrooms enables the teacher 3 to shift their teaching approach from teacher-centered to student-centered in alignment with the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) which has been promoted in English teaching in all educational levels in Vietnam. 1.6 Design of the study The study is divided into three parts: the Introduction, the Development and the Conclusion with reference to five chapters. Chapter 1: Introduction - deals with the rationale, aims, scope, methods, significance and design of the study Chapter 2: Literature Review- is intended to give some theoretical background related to speaking, speaking problems, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), visual aids, and previous studies relating to the topic of research. Chapter 3: Methodology- deals with research governing orientation, research methods and presents the situation analysis, participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures and data analysis. The detailed results of the survey and a comprehensive analysis on the data collected are focused. Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions- show major findings and discussions and offer some recommendation for teachers to motivate students to speak and overcome some difficulties they meet in teaching speaking through the employment of group work activities. Chapter 5: Conclusion- is a review of the study, suggestions for further research and limitations of the study. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW It is stated in the previous chapter that the purpose of this study is to improve the students’ speaking skills by using visual aids. Thus, in this chapter, to support this study, some theoretical descriptions on speaking and visual aids will be described thoroughly. 2.1 . Speaking skills There are many definitions of speaking by experts. According to Spratt, Pulverness, and William (2011), speaking is a productive skill, like writing. It involves using speech to express meanings to other people. When people speak, they use different aspects of speaking depending on the type of speaking they are involved in. That is why speaking is a complex activity. Brown (2004) defines speaking as a productive skill that can be directly and empirically observed. Speaking is the product of creative construction of linguistic strings, the speaker makes choices of lexicon, structure, and discourse. Thornburry in Harmer (2007) suggests various dimensions of different speaking events in order to describe different speaking genres. There is a distinctionbetween transactional and interpersonal functions. Transactional function has its main purpose conveying information and facilitating the exchange of goods and services, whereas the interpersonal function is all about maintaining and sustaining good relations between people. According to Riddell (2003), speaking is one of two things in a lesson. Speaking is not reading aloud (pronunciation), either reading the answer to a grammar question (accuracy). Speaking is neither reading the answer to a reading/listening question (comprehension). In each of these cases the aims are not speaking-related. It could be a speaking activity designed to give practice of languagejust learned or reviewed. From many definitions and explanations about speaking above, it can be concluded that speaking is actually a way of how people communicate and interact toeach other and convey the meaning they want the hearer to get. 5 2.1.1 Micro and macro skills of speaking In teaching speaking, teachers also help students to learn micro skills and macro skills of speaking, as stated by Brown (2004). The microskills and macroskills of speaking are listed as follow: Microskills 1) Produce differences among English phonemes and allophonic variants. 2) Produce chunks of language of different lengths. 3) Produce English stress patterns, words in stressed and unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, and intonation contours. 4) Produce reduced forms of words and phrases. 5) Use an adequate number of lexical units (words) to accomplish pragmatic purposes. 6) Produce fluent speech at different rates of delivery. 7) Monitor one’s own oral production and use various strategic devices (pauses, fillers, self-corrections, backtracking) to enhance the clarity of the message. 8) Use grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), word order, patterns, rules, and elliptical forms. 9) Produce speech in natural constituents: in appropriate phrases, pause groups, breath groups, and sentence constituents. 10) Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms. 11) Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse. Macroskills 1) Appropriately accomplish communicative functions according to situations, participants, and goals. 2) Use appropriate styles, registers, implicature, redundancies, pragmatic conventions, conversation rules, floor-keeping and yielding, interrupting, and other sociolinguistic features in face-toface conversations. 6 3) Convey links and connections between events and communicative such relations as vocal and peripheral ideas, events and feelings,new information and given information, generalization andexemplification. 4) Convey facial features, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal cues along with verbal language. 5) Develop and use a battery of speaking strategies, such as emphasizing key words, rephrasing, providing a context for interpreting the meaning of words, appealing for help, and accurately assessing how well the speakers’ interlocutor is understanding conveyed messages. Those micro and macro skills above can be a checklist of objective when assessing spoken language. Teachers should pay attention to these when they are teaching speaking skills. 2.1.2 Fluency and accuracy According to Riddell (2003), the ability to talk fairly freely, without too much stopping or hesitating is called fluency. It requires the listener understands what is being said, so there must be intelligibility and meaning. With accuracy the emphasis is on “correct English” – the right grammar, the right vocabulary. Both fluency and accuracy are equally important. But Riddell has different thought. It is actually depends on what the teachers are teaching. If they teach a high-level student who is about to take an exam to enter college, accuracy is very important indeed. On the other hand, when teaching beginners, or other very low levels, teachers cannot possibly expect fluency. Here, teachers really do have to help them build their language accuracy bit by bit until they reach the stage when they can speak more fluently. What is far more important is that they can make themselves understood, and can talk relatively fluently. Teachers need to give their students confidence when speaking and not to be obsessed with constant correction. 2.2 Teaching speaking 2.2.1 Teaching and learning speaking skills Kimble and Garmezy in Brown (2000) state that learning is a relatively permanent change in a behavioral tendency and is the result of reinforced practice. While teaching 7 is showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, giving instructions, guiding in the study of something, providing with knowledge, causing to know or understand. Brown (2000) breaks down the components of the definition of learning, and extract the domains of research and inquiry: Learning is acquisition or “getting”, learning is retention of information or skill, retention implies storage systems, memory, and cognitive organization, learning involves active, conscious focus on and acting upon events outside or inside the organism, learning is relatively permanent but subject to forgetting, learning involves some form of practice, perhaps reinforced practice and learning is a change in behavior. Brown also cites that teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the conditions for learning. Regarding the definitions about teaching and learning above, it can be concluded that both of them cannot be separated. Teaching and learning are two processes to achieve something. It is also a process of take and give, in this case, knowledge. 2.2.2 Principles for designing speaking techniques According to Brown (2000), there are seven principles for designing speaking techniques. They are stated as follows: 1) Using techniques that cover the spectrum of learner needs, for language-based focus on accuracy to message-based focus on interaction, meaning, and fluency; 2) Providing intrinsically motivating techniques; 3) Encouraging the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts; 4) Providing appropriate feedback and correction; 5) Capitalizing on the natural link between speaking and listening; 6) Giving students opportunities to initiate oral communication; 7) Encouraging the development of speaking strategies. In teaching speaking, it is very important for teachers to consider the speaking techniques. The tasks should include techniques designed to help students to perceive and use the building blocks of language. It is also needed to make any drilling as meaningful as possible. Teachers’ role is very crucial in teaching speaking becauseteachers should help the students to see how the activity will benefit them. It 8 usuallypays to tell them why we as a teacher ask them to do certain things. Another thing that is not easy to keep coming up with is meaningful interaction. Even it takes energy and creativity to devise authentic contexts and meaningful interaction, with the help of a storehouse of teacher material, it can be done. When it deals with teaching speaking, feedback and correction are other aspects to be highlighted. It is important that teachers take advantage of their knowledge of English to inject the kinds of corrective feedback that are appropriate for the moment. Many interactive techniques that involve speaking will also include listening. Teachers should integrate these two skills in teaching. A good deal of typical classroom interaction is characterized by teacher initiation of language. Part of oral communication competence is the ability to initiate conversations, to nominate topics, to ask questions, to control conversations, and to change the subject. The last, teacher should build the atmosphere so that the students can use the expressions for asking someone to repeat something, getting someone’s attention, and many others. 2.2.3 Problems in learning speaking There are so many problems related to speaking, especially speaking the foreign language. People have to consider about many things. Vocabulary, grammar, intonation, pronunciation and the meaning sense of what they are talking about. Brown (2000) states that there are some characteristics of spoken language that can make the speaker easily to convey the meaning, but in contrast, they also can make the speaker difficult to speak. 1) Clustering: Learners can organize their output both cognitively and physically (in breath groups) through clustering. It will be difficult for the junior high school students since they still confuse about the vocabulary used. 2) Redundancy: The speaker has to make meaning clearer through the redundancyof language. 3) Reduced forms: Contractions, elisions, reduced vowels, etc., all form special problems in teaching speaking. 4) Performance variables: One of the most salient differences between native and nonnative speakers of a language is in their hesitation phenomena. 9 5) Colloquial language: Students are not well acquainted with the words, idioms, and phrases of colloquial language. 6) Rate of delivery: Learners are difficult to achieve an acceptable speed along with other attributes of fluency. 7) Stress, rhythm, and intonation: The stress-timed rhythm of spoken English and its intonation patterns convey important messages. 8) Interaction: It is still difficult to find the creativity of conversational negotiation for students. 9) From the characteristics of spoken language above, it can be said that those characteristics haven’t been achieved by the students. They can be problems for the students since they were not getting use to English in their daily life. 2.3 Visual aids This section refers to the contributions and descriptions some authors give to the concept of visual aids, their description and classification. Visual aids have been used since the beginning of learning and teaching. Most early reviews were concerned with the meaning of visual aids. As there are many authors who refer to visual aids, this literature review attempts to define them from manifold different points of view, thus provide the audience with complete and varied information. Moreover, this paper defines visual aids in different aspects; use, design, function, and the advantages of using them in the teaching-learning process. Gilbert Weaber and Elroy Bollinger (1949) define visual aids as “any specifically prepared drawing, illustration, model, motion picture, film strip, or other device that will expedite learning through the sense of vision” (p. 1). Current thinking contends that “[. . .] educational media or aids refer to all forms of information carriers that can be used to [. . .] store, preserve and transmit or retrieve information to promote and encourage effective teaching and learning activities” (Babalola, B., 2013, p. 108). Therefore, visual aids yield in improving the teaching-learning process. Visual aids are intended to help both the teacher and the students in order to make the contents better understood, to contextualize vocabulary and make it meaningful for the learners. 10 In this respect Yi-Hsun Lai (2011) maintains that using visual aids “not only stimulate students’ learning interest, but students can also interact with these visual aids, and can relate them to their past experience or their daily life experience” (p. 3). This leads us to confirm that using visual aids properly in the teaching-learning process stimulate students to participate and be familiarized with their own experiences. Not exempt of defining visual aids, M, Jessa (2008) claims that they “refer to graphs, maps, pictures etc. used as aids in learning” and these can be separable into four categories: - NON-Projected 2D: wall board, roll-up board, picture, poster, chart, cartoon, cue sheet, flannel board, flash card; - NON-Projected 3D: cut-out, model, mock-up, puppet, marionette, diorama, vocabulary wheel, keyboard, teaching machine; - Projected 3D: slide, transparency sheet, film strip, microfilm, video cassette, CD; - Verbal: text book, supplementary reader, workbook, magazine, document, duplicated materials, reference book, newspapers, and clippings. (p. 93) Regarding this categorization Callista (1938) suggests how visual aids contribute to the teaching-learning process pointing out that visual aids firstly “provide for the learner a concrete picture of the situation in question” (p. 4). Visual resources accompany what is verbally said and help to understand ambiguous situations. Moreover, the school and the teacher must provide interesting sources to offer attractive educative experiences to the students. Callista (1938) also asserts that “another significant value of visual aids is economy of time” (p. 3). Teachers in general must be aware of the time while teaching, and in order to make use of it according to the contents and the learning outcomes it is necessary to manage every single activity and save as much time as possible in order to fulfill the objectives of the lesson. Aina (2006) establishes useful characteristic of visual aids and makes suggestions to prepare and use them inside the classroom. The author includes some12 features of visual aids as well. The characteristics Aina (2006) contends are the following: - The pictures, maps and charts should be attractive and with suitable colors. 11 - Writing must be large enough and clear enough to be easily read from the back of the class. - The charts and posters should be accurate in spacing and planning. - The figures and the letters should be well formed. - Objects and pictures should be big enough for children to see from their sitting places. - There should be a great deal of pictures or materials to go round the children if possible. - Apparatus must be accurately prepared and be ready before the lesson. - Let all pupils first see any materials or apparatus before individuals or agegroup can see [them]. - All pictures on the television must be clear and the radio should have a clear sound. - When preparing apparatus, the correct, accurate language and spelling mustbe considered. (p. 28) Aina (2006) also outlines that these characteristics are essential when using visual aids properly because they “transmit information in such a fashion that will modify the attitude, habits and practices of students” (p. 35). The fact that the students are interested in an activity provides teachers with a useful tool that teachers must take advantage of. There are a range of types of visual aids used in language learning which use different media, but the researcher limits the visual aids including picture and video. Picture Pictures are aids that can help the teachers in the teaching learning process. Pictures are the simplest and commonly used. Pictures are very effective. Pictures provide associations for the learning of new words. But we cannot use pictures for every unknown or abstract word as they cannot be illustrated easily. The more concrete a word is, the easier it is to find and uses a picture for its illustration (Ariningsih, 2009). Callahan (2006) stated that one of visual instructional media that is going to be used in this research is picture. Pictures are aids that can help the teachers in the 12