VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
*** NGUYỄN THỊ LAN ANH
AN INVESTIGATION INTO STUDENTS’ RETICENCE IN
ENGLISH SPEAKING LESSONS-
A CASE OF TOAN THANG HIGH SCHOOL
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AN INVESTIGATION INTO STUDENTS’ RETICENCE IN
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A CASE OF TOAN THANG HIGH SCHOOL
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First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor,
Dr. Đỗ Thị Thanh Hà, for her valuable advice, constructive comments, patient
support and encouragement in the completion of this M.A. Thesis.
I would like to send my sincere thanks to my informants in this study, whom
I selected as the target subjects of this research. Without their enthusiastic
contribution and cooperation, this research would certainly not have been
completed.
In the thesis, it is inevitable that the ideas of many other writers in this field
are reflected and developed. Their ideas have stimulated my thinking on doing this
paper. My debt to the authors listed in the references is equally great. To all these
scholars, I offer my sincere thanks.
Finally, I am greatly thankful to my family and friends, who are forever a
great source of support and encouragement.
iii

ABSTRACT

Realizing many 11
th
graders at Toan Thang high school being passive in
English Speaking classes, this study aims to explore students‟ perception toward
their reticence behaviour in real- world classes, factors contributing to it and
students‟ expectation. A total of 373 students enrolled in eight 11
th
grade classes,
were first observed in eight English Speaking lessons, and then filled in two sets of
open-ended questionnaire. After that, six of them were interviewed using semi-
structured format. A mix- method analysis is conducted to explore the findings.
From the study, it is revealed that students have strong willingness to participate in

1.2.2. Potential obstacles to students’ verbal participation 8
1.2.3. Teachers’ roles towards students participation 9
CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODS OF THE STUDY 11
2.1. Participants and setting of the study 11
2.1.1. Participants 11
2.1.2. Setting of the study 11
2.2. Data collection 13
2.3.1. Data collection instruments 13
2.3.2. Data collection procedure 16
2.3.3. Data analysis procedure 18
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 19
3.1. Findings 19
3.1.1. Students’ reticence behaviour in English Speaking classes 19
3.1.2. Factors affecting students’ behaviour 24
3.1.3. Students’ expectation 29
3.2. Discussions 30
v

3.2.1. To what extent do the students remain reticent in English speaking
classes, and what activities make them the most reticent? 31
3.2.2. What are students’ perception of their own learning behaviour and
factors influencing such behaviour? 31
3.2.3. What are students’ perspectives on whether, and how, to move the
classroom to a more interactive mode? 32
PART C: CONCLUSION 34
1. Conclusion 34
2. Pedagogical implications 36
3. Limitations of the study 37
4. Suggestions for further study 38
REFERENCES 39
LIST OF TABLES AND GRAPHS TABLE 1
Data collection procedure in brief
Page 18
GRAPH 1
Students‟ self evaluation- The frequency of
attending English Speaking Activities
Page 22
GRAPH 2
Students‟ real participation in class
Page 24
TABLE 2
Students‟ self evaluation- The frequency of
attending English Speaking Activities (with
Mean, Mode, Median, Standard Deviation, p-
value and Standard Deviation formula in excel)
XXXI
GRAPH 3
Students‟ evaluation of main factors affecting
their reticence
Page 26
TABLE 3
Students‟ self evaluation- The frequency of
attending English Speaking Activities (with
Correlation coefficient formula)
XXXII

This study was motivated by my concern about the apparent reluctance of
Toan Thang high school students to participate in English- speaking class
interactions. The decision to look into students‟ reticence at Toan Thang high
school was first inspired by my teaching and living experience with the students in
this school for more than three years. Such contact not only allows a valuable
rapport with members of this case but also encourages my interest in further
understanding students‟ perception and expectation. Initial observations at the
selected location reveals that spontaneous discourse was rare in many English
speaking classes and many oral interactions not only did not include any students‟
individual thoughts or elaborated responses but also fostered a great deal of
dependence on the teacher. As a result, both teachers and students have become
frustrated and often complained about the quality of the learning outcome. This
makes it urgent to examine this phenomenon to better understand the learning
situation at Toan Thang high school and ultimately enhance the learning and
teaching of oral English here. The second reason is my realization that students
themselves and students in different context (both educational context and
2

background) exhibit different behaviour and worldviews, which would contribute
diverse perspectives, experiences and insights into the topic of reticence. The above
reasons actually drive the researcher to a study thesis, namely “An investigation
into students’ reticence in English speaking lessons - A case of Toan Thang high
school”.
2. Aim of the study

The current study aims at:
 Exploring the nature of students‟ reticence in English speaking lessons at
Toan Thang high school and some common situations for reticence to
flourish,
 Investigating students‟ viewpoints of their own learning behaviour and

Part A: Introduction, which presents the rationale, aims, scope and research
questions.
Part B: Development of the research which includes:
Chapter 1: Literature Review, which reviews theoretical foreground from the
previous studies on students‟ reticence behaviour in general and in English speaking
classes in particular.
Chapter 2: Research Methods of the Study, which composes of 3 parts: the
fitness of case study to the research purpose, participants‟ description and setting of
the study (the case), and data collection.
Chapter 3: Findings and discussion, which is the discussion of the findings
through an analysis of the data collected through means of researching:
observations, semi-structured interviews and questionnaire.
Part C: Conclusion, in which major findings of the study will be briefly
summarized as well as the acknowledgement of the limitations of the study will be
elaborated.
Besides, the classroom transcripts, interview transcripts, questionnaires and tables
of data analysis results are included in the Appendices.
4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1. Reticence behaviour in foreign language class

1.1.1. The concept of reticence

The terminology of reticence in academic writing was first introduced in
1965 with Phillips‟ article introducing to the field of speech communication and the
notion that some people had difficulty communicating across a range of situations.

Watson, 1989)
Second, reticence may imply too much inner speech overlapping one
another, which is conductive to depression, morbidity and anxiety (Tomlinson,
2001).
Third, reticence can communicate acceptance of the other person, but
without any doubt or any critical argument, which reveal passivity, lack of
creativity, shortage of knowledge, justification and inventive skills.
More often, reticence brings to light the fact that such people have no interest
on the situation they are involved. It can also be a token of not understanding, which
might be resulted from being involved in conversation or lessons with complicated,
difficult or above- level topics.
In addition, most people experience occasional feelings of shyness as a
transitory reaction when encountering certain difficult social situation. (Russel,
Cutrona & Jones, 1986; Zimbardo, 1977). Likewise, some individuals are fearful
and nervous of any unprepared situation that may cause unexpected results. They
can‟t risk themselves for any uncertain challenge. (Ely, 1986; Liu & Jackson, 2008)
Again, the above correlations between environmental factors and
communication reticence were detected and proved by many linguists‟ studies. The
results indicated that reticence is significantly influenced by antecedent
environmental factors, thus lending support to etiological explanations based on
learning theory and perception theory.
6 1.1.3. Consequences of reticence

In many cases, the reticence behaviour is not simply resulted from one or
several reasons in some certain situations, but more often, a final manifestation of
serial complicated reactions during interactions such as tension, inhibition,
awkwardness, painful self-consciousness, physical distress, and worry about being


1.2.1. Students’ participation in verbal interaction

In spite of the growing expectation for verbal classroom participation in
second and foreign language learning situations, reticence research has captured the
attention of language theorists and educators in recent decades. From his
observation and experience of teaching the EFL speaking skills for more than 15
years, Hilde (2009) has noticed that most of the students who enroll in the English
Department of Qassim University have revealed reticence in speaking activities.
Non English major students in Saudi Arabia, similar to learners in foreign language
contexts (Jackson, 2002; Howritz et al, 1986), have been observed to be either quiet
or to speak English with a trembling voice, make numerous unnecessary stops, or
having shaking hands or legs, etc. during English lessons or oral English tests. The
same problem has also been observed in other Asian countries. Dick and Robinson
(1995, p. 5) reported that Malaysian students “preferred not to say anything during
lecture discussion sessions” and “if an instructor asked a question, the class would
become deadly silent”. Korean students “speak only when invited by their
instructors” and Japanese students are “nervous about asking questions in class”
because they are unsure if a question was appropriate and they would choose “to
ask questions after class, only with teachers” (Chen, 2003, p. 267- 268).
In Vietnam, many students, after over ten years of schooling toward
intellectual maturity, have not demonstrated their basic communicative skills;
rather, there is an identifiable reticence, a reluctance to speak out in class and an
apparent unwillingness of students to express themselves which, to outsiders, may
be construed as a lack of motivation or shyness (Bao, 2013). In the classroom,
8

Vietnamese students‟ culture of learning can be described as one in which students
depend heavily on the pedagogical tendency of many teachers to transmit
knowledge about the subject content (Bui, 2004).

(4) the student has not learned the value or strategies of engagement or he/ she
does not appreciate or believe in that value.
Additionally, reticence can be the result of high tension beween the new
approach and learners‟ traditional perception (Jarvis, 1986; Little & Sanders, 1990).
To sum up, there are a variety of factors that lead students to being reticence.
These factors, however, may not operate in isolation and as Van Worde (2003, p.5)
affirms, but are likely to be intertwined.

1.2.3. Teachers’ roles towards students participation

Teacher is considered to be the key factors that influence students‟ behaviour
in class. Such conclusion is supported by a study of 100 Vietnamese university
students. More than 90% of the respondents had studied English for at least eight
years before completing the survey that focused on causes of demotivation in
learning English, which may lead to reticence behaviour: “The largest source of
demotives was related to teachers”, “within the four demotive categories related to
teachers, teaching methods provided the largest source of demotives” (Tran &
Baldauf, 2007). Reticence can be influenced directly by the teaching methods,
questioning methods, error correction, English proficiency and characteristics of the
teacher or indirectly by teacher‟s belief, the classroom habits that he/ she formed to
the students and what he/ she often teaches the students besides the English
knowledge.
First of all, the fact that teachers themselves have poor English language
competence leads to students‟ boredom, tiredness, doubt and finally students‟
reticence. Le (2002) reported that despite the strong promotion of CLT, the lack of
appropriate in- service professional development meant that “teachers are generally
incapable of teaching English communicatively in their real- world classroom.
Instead, they spend most of their lesson time explaining abstract grammar rules and
guiding their students in choral readings.”
10

and objectives of the study. It gives out thorough explanations of reasons for
choosing the research instruments, and clarifies specific way of getting information
through those instruments.
2.1. Participants and setting of the study

2.1.1. Participants

The voices to be heard in the study are those of 373 students, age between 17
and 18, from one intermediate level class (receiving four periods of English per
week) and seven preliminary level classes (receiving three periods of English per
week). Such levels were named by the school administration based on students‟
average score after each semester. The choice of 11
th
graders, which covered
between two and three years of learning experiences at this school, allowed the
students not only to discuss their present English classes but to reflect on the history
of studying in previous classes. Among 373 students being investigated, 193
students are male and 180 are female. Most of them come from poor or middle-
income families in the rural area. Due to the lack of information and technology,
students have little chance to access English in different ways. Almost all the 11
th

graders being investigated (96, 5%) have never met foreigners before and half of
them have no intention of continuing to use English after class or after graduation.
Only 21 per 373 students (5, 6%) plans to choose subjects in group D to enter
university and college. (Lương Trường Xuân, 2014)

2.1.2. Setting of the study

The analysis was carried out as a case study of Toan Thang high school. This

are studying. Everyday, they are watched by a group of teachers and students from
the school disciplinary team.
13

As far as the testing system is concerned, none of the examinations at this
school seek to measure communicative competence. This is the result of large- scale
non- communicative testing that continues to be the norm of Vietnam educational
testing system. Despite the aim of students achieving communicative skills, the
Ministry has institutionalised multiple-choice tests as the only testing method for
standardised high- stake tests. In these tests, pupils are tested in terms of phonetics,
grammar, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Speaking and listening are not
tested.
2.2. Data collection

2.3.1. Data collection instruments

For the purpose of this study, a triangulation of three different methods was
used for data collection. These included classroom observation, questionnaire and
semi-structured interviews.

- Classroom Observation:

According to Hopkins (cited in Mr Donough, J. & Mr Donough, S., 1997,
p.101), observation is a pivotal activity with a crucial role to play in classroom
research. In this study, observation is a helpful tool for the researcher in three main
dimensions: –to investigate whether reticence is the manner found in some specific
aspects and individuals or a frequent display among students in different classroom
circumstances; – to investigate the implementation of teaching methodology in
reality, which may contribute to students‟ reticence development; – to know the
way of cooperations and interactions between students and students, and between

willingness to answer of teenagers, I decided to administer it into two parts which
were delivered twice in each class. Part 2 seeks for factors affecting students‟
reticence behaviours while part 1 asks about the rest issue.
The rationale of this questionnaire originated from Burns and Joyce‟s
identification of three sets of factors explained in chapter 2 of this study (Burns &
15

Joyce, 1997) that might cause the reticence in class. Furthermore, it consisted of
items extracted from instruments used in previous studies, including:
-Bao Dat‟s questionnaires (Bao, 2013; Bao, 2014) to create the 2
nd
questionnaire of
this research;
- Chen Meihua and Wang Xuehua‟s questionnaire (Chen & Wang, 2013) to
construct question 3 in the 1
st
questionnaire;
- The second section of the questionnaire in Young‟s research (Young, 1990) with
twenty different in-class activities to set up question 8 in the 1
st
questionnaire of this
thesis.
However, the final set of questionnaires used in this study is a result of the
researcher‟s preliminary investigation rather than attaching other studies‟ outcomes.
A series of eight observations in the case context mentioned above as well as five
pilots carried out among 10
th
and 12
th
graders at Toan Thang high school and 11

The interview transcript, however, was made afterward to improve implication
process.

2.3.2. Data collection procedure

At the beginning of the second sememester, eight classroom observations
were conducted at the case context. These are all morning classes which vary from
the first to the fifth period. After two weeks of observation and three weeks of
study, the primary questionnaire and interview research were set up. Then, they
were tested to ensure their understandability, suitability and usefulness towards the
research‟s purpose. Five pilots were implemented at Toan Thang high school with
grade 10 and 12, and grade 11 at Tien Lang high school- a school located at the
same district. The questions and designs were tested, refined and modified at the
same time to ensure the timing and budgeting issues. To prepare for the main
course, 13 teachers and administrators were asked for permission to let the
reseacher administer the investigation in 8 eleventh- grade classes twice, each time
for 30 minutes. The two questionnaires were delivered one week apart in order for
each student to attend one more Speaking lesson and have a thorough rethink before
deciding their answer. The aim of the questionnaires was introduced to the students
so as to collect information relating to a „communicative class model‟ (Mô hình lớp