Part A: Intro du ctio n
1. 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.
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So what are the speaking difficulties for the teachers and non- English major students

- 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.
5. 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 1 reviews the theoretical background, which is relevant to the
purpose of the study.
Chapter 2 gives a brief introduction on the materials and current situations of
teaching speaking at THCCA.
Chapter 3 describes the research methodology, which focuses on the context
of the study, participants, the instruments and data collection procedure.
Chapter 4 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
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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

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
do 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.
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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

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 do 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
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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

- 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.
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encounter. Then appropriate techniques, particularly technique to deal with students’
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mistakes and problems would be mapped out. These questions are explained clearly in the
study.
1.2. Problems with speaking and speaking activities
1.2.1 Problems with speaking
Everything has bad and good sides. Speaking also has its own problems.
According to Brown (1994:256), the characteristics of spoken language can make
oral performance easy as well as in some cases difficult. There are following problems
with speaking.
* Clustering
Fluent speech is phrase not word by word. Learners can organize output both
cognitively and physically through such clustering.
* Redundancy
The speaker has an opportunity to make clearer through the redundancy of language.
Learner can capitalize on this featured of spoken language
* Reduced forms
Contraction, elisions, reduced vowel, etc all form special problems in teaching
spoken English. Students don’t learn colloquial contraction can sometimes develop a
stilted, bookish quality of speaking that in turn stigmatize them.
* Colloquial language
Colloquialism appears both in monologues and dialogues. If learners are only
exposed to standard English and / or “ text book” language, they sometimes have difficulty
in understanding and producing words, idioms and phrases of colloquial language.
* Stress, rhythm and intonation
This is the most important characteristic of English pronunciation because the stress-
timed rhythm of spoken English and its intonation patterns convey important massages.
But the fact that learners of English often find it difficult to pronounce English words, to
stress the right syllables, to follow the stress- timed rhythm and intonation patterns of
spoken English.

•
Mother- tongue use: In classes all, or a number of the learners share the same
mother tongue for many reasons: firstly, they may tend to use it because it is easier.
Secondly, they feel unnatural to speak to one another in a foreign language and
lastly because they feel less “exposed” if they are speaking their mother tongue. If
they are talking in a small group it can be quite difficult to get some class-
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particularly the less disciplined or motivated ones to keep to the target language.
(Cited from practical Course for Teaching English as a Foreign Language 2000: 56).
Through two sections above, we can know most of the difficulties that students often
encounter in learning speaking skill. Basing on these views, my research intend to
investigate what difficulties the teachers and non major students at THCCA encounter in
teaching and leaning speaking skill with the purpose of giving solutions to the identified
problems and improving the students’ speaking skill.
Chapter 2: An overview on the materials and
current situation of teaching speaking at THCCA
2.1. Brief introduction of Thanh Hoa College of Culture and Art.
Thanh Hoa College of Culture and Art has been in operation for 18 years. At the
beginning, its duty was to train only teachers of Art and Music, so English serves as a
means that provides students with basic knowledge about grammar and vocabulary. Since
2005, many new branches have been opened such as Tour Guide and Hotel Receptionists,
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Informatics Library, and Culture Management studies. Accordingly, English has become a
major subject for the students of these fields.
Every year our college admits more than 700 newly enrolled students for a course of 3 year
study, of whom 100 students are trained in the Faculty of Culture which is the biggest
section at THCCA. After graduating students of this field will become culture managers or
office secretaries because they are granted an additional certificate specialized in office
secretary. Therefore, the authority in our college has decided that English is the main
subject with the purpose of helping these non-major students to develop their English

techniques, so they can not make full use of these facilities. In addition, English and music
classes are not situated in two different places; the noise from next- door music classes
affecting the English learning process is unavoidable.
In terms of materials, there is only one small library at THCCA, thus English books
for reference and self- study are not available and enough to meet the students and
teachers’ need. The problem is that due to the book shortage and limitation in the library,
students are required to read in the library instead of taking books at home.
As a consequence, together with the limitation of teaching method, the teaching
aids, students have almost no exposure to the real language that they are learning. It is not
altogether surprising then that some 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 most of time
learning three subjects: literature, history and geography in order to pass THCCA entrance
exam. So, they are real beginners at English when entering the first year of college and of
different language proficiency levels. Some of them have learned English for 7 years at
secondary and high school some have only learned English for 3 years and some others
have never learned English before. Students 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 influence of the Grammar-
Translation method, the emphasis of which is on the learning of the rules of the language,
not on the acquisition of language skills, especially those in speaking skill. As a result, they
can not speak fluently and most of them do not feel confident in communicating in
English.
Another element that should be taken into consideration is that many students don’t
have the habit of learning independently and tend to depend mainly on the given text books
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and the teachers for knowledge. These facts call for teachers to provide students with
language teaching methods in order to motivate them in speaking lessons.
2.5. Materials used for non- major students of culture management at THCCA.

this stage, those who want to have an additional office secretary certificate study the course
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book “English for office secretaries” designed by teachers working in English group at
THCCA. The ESP course book covers 8 units dealing with different topics “Receiving
visitors: visitors with appointments, visitors without appointments and special visitors;
Telephone calls; Telephone messages; Writing a letter; Writing a notice and fax; Dealing
with complaints; Making arrangement; Acceptance, Negotiation and Refusal ”. The ESP
syllabus is meant for one semester with the length of 75 periods and fulfilled within 15
weeks, thus students will have 5 periods per week. Each units lasts for 5 to 10 periods
depending on the length and difficulty of its content.
The purpose of teaching ESP is to develop the students’ communicative
competence so that they can communicate comfortably and confidently for their future
career. Accordingly, speaking skill is paid attention to at this stage and it accounts for two
thirds of the total time provided. However, other skills including reading and writing are
taught integrated in those speaking class hours.
In conclusion, this study is carried out at THCCA and limited to the second year
students of Culture management. Once again, within the size and scope of the study,
“English for office secretaries" textbook is chosen to conduct the study.
Chapter 3: Methodology
This chapter deals with the research methodology that has been employed for the
achievement of the aims and objectives of the study. The rationale for the method chosen
for the study presented in this thesis is also mentioned. The data gathering method utilizing
questionnaires are discussed in terms of their purposes as well as how they were developed
and used in the study.
3.1. Research questions
The research is aimed to find out speaking difficulties encountered by teachers and
non-English major students of Culture management Study at THCCA. Also the study
explores the solution to deal with the problem. In brief, its purpose is to answer the
following questions.
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(2) Students’ attitude towards speaking skill ( question 3 ).
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(3) Students’ difficulties in learning speaking ( question 4, 5 ).
(4) Students’ interest in speaking activities ( question 6 ).
With question 1, 2, 3, and 4 the students must only choose one answer while they can
choose more than one answers to question 5 and 6
* Questionnaire for the teachers
The second questionnaire which includes 8 questions, was delivered to 7 teachers at
THCCA. The purpose of this questionnaire was to identify:
(1) Teachers’ experience of teaching English ( question 1).
(2) Difficulties confronted by the teachers when teaching speaking to non- major
students at THCCA (question 2).
(3) Teachers’ solutions to the difficulties faced by them (question 3, 4 , 5, 6,7, 8)
To answer the question 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 the teachers can choose more than one options
3.4. Data analysis
Data from questionnaires were sorted and analyzed statistically to get answers for
the research questions raised in the previsous part. The information was then displayed in
forms of tables and charts
3.5. Summary.
This chapter presented the research questions, data collection instrument and
analysis. In the next chapter, the data analysis and discussion will be presented
Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion
4.1. Presentation and analysis of data
4.1.1. Questionnaire for the teachers
4.1.1.1. Their teaching experience
Years of teaching English N
0
of teachers %
1 – 4 3 42.9
5 – 9 2 28.6

• Difficulties from the educational system.
Chart 2: Difficulties from educational system
Regarding hindrances from the educational system reported by the teachers gave us
an interesting fact that 42.9% of the teachers complained large class size and lack of
facilities were real obstacles to their teaching while 100% found it hard to teach speaking
because of lacking authentic materials. Additionally, the majority of the subjects (85.7%)
assumed that multi-level classes prevented them from implementing speaking task and
activities. The rest confronted by 28.6% of the teachers were unsuitable timetable and too
little time to carry out speaking task and activities. In my opinion, these are not only the
difficulties of teachers at THCCA but also the difficulties of English language teachers at
almost non- language major universities and colleges.
• Difficulties from the teachers.
Options N
0
of teachers %
Lack of training in teaching speaking skills 0 0
Lack of specialized knowledge of office secretaries 7 100
Deficiency in strategic and sociolinguistic competence in
English
4 57.1
Table 2: Difficulties from the teachers
Among difficulties from the teachers, their lack of specialized knowledge of
office secretaries appeared the problems to all of the teachers. In addition, 57.1% claimed
that they had deficiency in strategic and sociolinguistic competence in English when
teaching speaking to non-major students for a longtime and none of the teachers thought
they lacked of training in teaching speaking skills.
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The result from survey questionnaire indicated that the causes of teachers
difficulties are related to partly the students factors and partly the education system and the
teachers ourselves.

• Solutions to students’ low motivation in learning
Options N
0
of teachers %
Create interesting topics which are suitable for their level 6 85.7
Give encouraging and positive correction and feed back
on students’ mistakes
6 85.7
Encourage the students by giving the additional mark 3 42.9
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for their voluntary speaking
Use authentic materials ( songs, films, games,….) 4 57.1
Do brainstorming exercises so that they have something
to talk about
3 42.9
Get them to speak by giving some prompts 2 28.5
Explain the importance of speaking in the classroom to
the students
0
0
Table 4: Teachers’ solutions to students’ low motivation
For the students’ low motivation, nearly all of the teachers (85.7%) selected the
remedies either to give encouraging and positive correction and feedback on students
mistakes or to create interesting topics which are suitable for the students’ level., However,
for 57.1% of the respondents, using authentic materials ( songs, films, games,….) might
motivate their students to speak to some extent. It is also noticeable that 3 subjects
considered doing brainstorming exercises and giving encouraging and positive correction
on students’ mistakes as good ways. In the other option, no subject
favored explaining the importance of speaking in the classroom to the students.
• Solutions to students’ use of Vietnamese during groups work or pair work

Use praise when the students volunteer to speak 4 57.1
Encourage the students to share their ideas with the teacher 2 28.5
Organize group work or pair work 2 28.5
Give the students assignments 3 42.9
Table 6: Teachers’ solutions to students’ passive learning style
For students’ passive learning style, 85.7% of the teachers regarded creating a
variety of activities to have the students participate in as a good solution. Using praise
when the students volunteer to speak (51.7%) and giving the students assignments (42.9%)
were chosen by many of the teachers. Nevertheless, a small number of the subjects
(28.5%) believed in encouraging the students to share the ideas with the teachers as well as
organizing group work or pair work to deal with the problem.
• Teachers’ solutions to the lack of authentic materials
Options N
0
of teachers %
Find authentic teaching materials on the Internet,
magazines, newspapers,………….
4 57.1
Borrow authentic teaching materials from your
friends at home and abroad.
5 71.4
Ask groups of students to find out required authentic
teaching materials and then give them mark
2 28.5
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Encourage the students to take part in speaking forum
on the Internet
6 85.7
Table 7: Teachers’ solutions to the lack of authentic materials
In respect of the lack of authentic materials, most of respondents (85.7%)