VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FALCUTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ CHÚC QUỲNH

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS LEARNING
TO SPEAK ENGLISH AND THEIR CLASSROOM SPEAKING
PRACTICES AT NORTHERN WATER RESOURCE COLLEGE

(Nghiên cứu thái độ của sinh viên đối với việc học nói
tiếng Anh và việc thực hành nói trên lớp của họ tại
trường Cao đẳng Thuỷ lợi Bắc Bộ)

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410
Hanoi, 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

This paper is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Education. I certify that this thesis is the result of my own research, and
that it has not been submitted for any other degree. Ha Nam, September, 2013
Student‟s signature ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

Attitude plays an important role in language acquisition and it helps explain
linguistic behaviour. Learners may have positive or negative attitudes towards
learning a language. Language attitude has great influence on language learning and
acquisition as well as learners‟ choice and use of language. Besides, speaking is
considered the most important skill that almost all the language learners want to
master. However, not all language learners have positive attitude towards learning
this skill. This thesis was carried out to investigate the students‟ attitudes towards
learning to speak English and their classroom speaking practices at Northern Water
Resource College. The data of the study were collected through a survey
questionnaire which involved the participation of 100 randomly collected samples
and four class observations. The data collected then were analyzed and generalized.
The findings of the research revealed that the students hold a negative attitude
towards learning to speak English. From the findings, some suggestions were given
with the hope that they might be useful for the teachers at Northern Water Resource
College to improve their students‟ English speaking skill.
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v

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1. Students‟ awareness of the importance of English speaking skill………
19
Figure 2. Students‟ assessment of their English speaking ability………………
20
Figure 3. Students‟ feelings of speaking English…………………………………
20
Figure 4. Factors affecting students‟ learning to speak English…………………
22
Figure 5. Students‟ preferences for practising English
24
Figure 6. Frequency of students‟ speaking in English class……………………
27
Figure 7. Activities and methods teacher often uses in English speaking classes
29
Figure 8. Things teachers often do after giving speaking topics…………………

30
Table 1. Students‟ attitudes towards learning English…………………………….
18
Table 2. Students‟ willingness to speak English…………………………………
21
Table 3. Students‟ solutions to overcome difficulties in speaking English in class
23
Table 4. Students‟ ways to improve English speaking competence……………
24
Table 5. Students‟ expectations for learning to speak English………………….

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………
vi
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION………………………………………
1
1. Rationale of the study……………………………………………
1
2. Aims of the study……………………………………………
2
3. Research questions …………………………………………………
2
4. Scope of the study ………………………………………………
2
5. Significance of the study……………………………………………
2
6. Methodology………………………………………………………
3
7. Design of the study………………………………………………
3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT……………………………………
4
CHAPTER 1. LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………
4
1.1. Attitudes ……………………………………………………
4
1.1.1. Definitions of attitudes…………………………………………
4
1.1.2. Components of attitudes………………………………………
5
1.1.3. Functions of attitudes…… ………………………………

16
2.4. Data analysis procedure………………………………………
16
CHAPTER 3. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION …………
18
3.1. Questionnaires for students….…………………………………
18
3.1.1. General attitudes of students at NWRC towards learning English…
18
3.1.2. Students’ attitudes towards learning to speak English………
18
3.1.2.1. Students‟ awareness of the importance of speaking skill…
18
3.1.2.2. Students‟ assessment of their English speaking ability…………
19
3.1.2.3. Students‟ feelings of speaking English………… …………
20
3.1.2.4. Factors affecting students‟ learning to speak English…………
22
3.1.2.5. Students‟ preferences for practising English
24
3.1.2.6. Students‟ expectations for learning to speak English……………
25
3.1.3. Students’ classroom practices…………… ……………………
26
3.1.3.1. The frequency of students‟ speaking in English class ………
27
3.1.3.2. The things that students often do in English speaking classes…
27
3.1.3.3. Students‟ ways to speak English in classroom………………

1

PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationales
Nowadays, English is used for international communication more than any
other languages in the world. English is recognized as a lingua franca for
communication across nations and cultures and is the most desired second or
foreign language in most countries in the world. English is used as a second or
foreign language in the workplace, international trade, global media, tourism,
education, aviation, business, technology and on diplomatic occasions. As a result,
the demand for speakers using English effectively is necessary in every
country. Teaching and learning English, except for the native language, is thus
crucial for communicative purposes to meet the demands of global economics and
to cope with the growing local, national and international demands for English
skills.
In Vietnam, English is becoming more widely used in every field of life and it
is an official and compulsory foreign language which has been taught in most
schools and universities all over the country for nearly two decades now. People
thus have a great concern about learning the language. Many people are aware that
English guarantees them good jobs if they are good at English. Among the four
language skills known as listening, speaking, reading and writing, speaking skill is
considered the most significant one that most learners of foreign languages need to
achieve. The crucial importance of speaking skill has been stated by many linguistic
researchers. For example, Ur (1996:120) states that of all four skills, speaking
seems intuitively the most important and people who know a language are referred
to as speakers of that language, as if speaking included all other skills of knowing
that language. Richards (2008:19) also says: “the mastery of speaking skills in
English is a priority for many second and foreign language learners. Learners
consequently often evaluate their success in language learning as well as the
effectiveness of their English course on the basis of how well they feel they have

The study was carried out at NWRC with the participation of 100 first-year
students to find out the attitudes of students towards learning to speak English and
their classroom speaking practices. Based on the findings, some suggestions were
given to the teachers to help them improve their students‟ speaking skills.
5. Significance of the study
The result of the study is believed to help teachers at NWRC understand more
about the students‟ attitudes towards learning to speak English and their
expectations of the teachers‟ speaking lessons so that the teachers have suitable
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methods to improve their students‟ speaking skills and encourage students to
practise speaking English in classroom.
6. Methodology of the study
To conduct this study, both quantitative and qualitative methods were used,
involving the survey questionnaires and classroom observations. The survey
questionnaires were delivered to 100 first-year students to investigate their attitudes
towards learning to speak English. Besides, class observations were conducted to
see how and what students often did during English speaking classes. Classroom
observations helped the researcher survey students‟ practices in real situations so
that the reliability and validity of the data collected for this study could be achieved.
The data collected from the questionnaires and the result of class observations will
be analyzed and generalized with a hope for offering some suggestions for the
teachers at NWRC to improve speaking competence for their students.
7. Design of the study:
This thesis includes three main parts as follows:
Part I: Introduction
This part includes the rationales, the aims, the research questions, the scope, the
significance, the methodology and the design of the study.
Part II: Development
This part consists of three chapters:

1.1. Attitudes
1.1.1. Definitions of attitude
Attitude is a complex concept and there have been many definitions proposed to
describe its essence. Eagly and Chaiken (1993:1) define attitude as “a psychological
tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of
favor or disfavor”. This idea seems to have something in common with Ajzen‟s
viewpoint (1988:4, cited in Baker, 1992:11) which defines an attitude as a
disposition to respond favourably or unfavourably to an object, person, institution or
event.
Allport (1954:45, cited in Gardner, 1985:8) states that, “an attitude is a mental
and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or
dynamic influence upon the individual‟s response to all objects and situations with
which it is related”.
Gardner (1985:9) claims that “attitude is an evaluative reaction to some referent
or attitude object, inferred on the basis of the individual‟s beliefs or opinions about the
referent”.
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Lambert (Lambert & Lambert, 1973, cited in Porkaew, 2004:70) defines
attitude as “an original and consistent manner of thinking, feeling, and reacting to
people, groups, social issues or, more generally, to any event in the environment”.
According to Baker (1992:10), “attitude is a hypothetical construct used to
explain the direction and persistence of human behavior”.
In my opinion, attitudes are the feelings, thinking and beliefs of an individual
towards everything around him/her.
1.1.2. Components of attitudes
Attitudes play an important role in study in general and in language learning in
particular. According to Reid (2003:33), “Attitudes are important to us because they
cannot be separated from study”. There is a considerable amount of research on the
effects of attitudes toward learning on students‟ behaviors. Positive attitudes toward

1.1.3. Functions of attitudes
Different psychologists have different ways of classifying functions of attitude.
Although several functions have been identified, the conceptualizations scholars
offer are similar to the functions established by Smith et al. (1956), Katz (1960),
and Herek (1987). Daniel Katz (1960, cited in Wikipedia) classified attitudes into
four different groups based on their functions, including four functions as follows:
 Utilitarian: People adopt attitudes that are rewarding and that help them
avoid punishment. In other words, any attitude that is adopted in a person's
own self-interest is considered to serve a utilitarian function.
 Knowledge: People need to maintain an organized, meaningful, and stable
view of the world. Important values and general principles can provide a
framework for our knowledge. Attitudes achieve this goal by making things
fit together and make sense.
 Ego-Defensive: This function involves psychoanalytic principles where
people use defense mechanisms to protect themselves from psychological
harm. Mechanisms include denial, repression, projection and rationalization.
 Value-Expressive: this function serves to express one's central values and
self-concept and to establish our identity and gain us social approval thereby
showing us who we are, and what we stand for.
However, Smith et al (1956, cited in Fazio & Olson, 2003:145) proposed an
„object-appraisal‟ function, which can be thought of as a combination of Katz‟s
utilitarian and knowledge functions. The object appraisal function is conceptualized
as attitudes that form as immediate evaluations of attitude objects. Another function
which he called the „externalization‟ function is similar to Katz‟s ego-defensive
function. The last function of attitude in Smith‟s theory is termed the „social
adjustive‟ function. This function reflects the ability of attitudes to promote or
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maintain relationships with desired others or to highlight differences with disliked
others.

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In language teaching, we often talk about the four language skills (speaking,
listening, reading and writing). Among them, speaking skill is considered the most
important skill because speaking ability is considered to be the measure of knowing
a language. According to Richards (2008:19), the mastery of speaking skills in
English is a priority for many second or foreign language learners and language
proficiency is used to evaluate learners‟ success in language learning as well as the
effectiveness of their English course.
From Nunan‟s point of view (Nunan, 1991: 39), for many language learners,
“mastering the art of speaking is the single most important aspect of learning a
second language or foreign language, and success is measured in term of ability to
carry out a conversation in the language”. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers of
language to pay much attention to teaching speaking skills in a way that helps
learners participate confidently in transactions.
1.2.1. Definitions of speaking
There are many different definitions of speaking. According to Florez (1999,
cited in Bailey, 2005:2), speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning
that involves producing, receiving and processing information. It is often
spontaneous, open-ended and evolving.
Chaney (1998:13) states that speaking is "the process of building and sharing
meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of
contexts".
Brown (1994:245) defines speaking as a process of constructing meaning that
involves producing, receiving and processing information.
Bygate (cited in Mackey, 1965:266) shows that “oral expression involves not
only the use of the right sounds in the patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also
the choice of words and inflections in the right order to convey the right meaning”.
So, in the light of these definitions, in this study, the researcher will take the
idea that speaking is an interactive process of sending and receiving messages

Therefore, the teachers of English should pay much attention to teaching their
students speaking skills as well as offer them a rich language environment in class
so that the students can communicate meaningfully and fluently in English. This can
help improve students‟ ability to communicate in the target language clearly and
efficiently outside the classroom as well as contribute to the success of learners in
school and later in every phase of their life.
1.2.3. Problems with speaking skills
It is claimed that successful speaking ability should achieve a maximal student
talking time, even participation among students, students‟ strong motivation to
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speak and comprehensibility of students‟ language. However, Ur (1996:121)
pointed some problems in getting learners to talk in classroom as follows:
The first problem with speaking activities is “inhibition”. It is explained that
unlike reading, writing and listening activities, speaking requires some degree of
real-time exposure to an audience. Learners are often inhibited about trying to say
something in a foreign language in the classroom because they are worried about
making mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face, or simply shy of the attention
that their speech attracts.
The second problem in getting students to talk in the classroom is nothing to
say. Even if the students are not inhibited, the teachers often hear learners complain
they cannot think of anything to say. They may have no motivation to express
themselves beyond the guilty feeling that they should be speaking.
Moreover, uneven or low participation is among the teachers‟ obstacles. Only
one participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be heard. In a large group, this
means that each one has only very little time for talking. This problem is
compounded by the tendency of some learners to dominate the group, while the
others speak very little or not at all.
The final problem that is stated by Ur is the use of mother-tongue in classes. In
classes where all, or a number of the learners share the same mother tongue, they

Beside the definition of pair work, Doff (1988:137) also defines group work as
a process that “the teacher divides the class into small groups to work together (four
or five students in each group), as in pair work, all the groups work at the same
time.”
Similar to pair work, group work also has advantages mentioned above. It is a
cooperative activity during which students share aims and responsibilities. Group
work is more suitable for discussion tasks. It is more dynamic and informative than
pair work because of the greater number of students involving in the task. When
working in groups, students may feel more secure and free to express their ideas and
they can help each other when they share the ideas about the task.
1.2.4.2. The activities in teaching speaking skills
Many researchers discuss classroom activities and a lot of activities are
designed based on the theory and characteristics of CLT. Richards and Rodgers
(1986:165) discuss that the range of exercise types and activities with a
communicative approach is unlimited, provided that such exercises and activities
enable learners to attain the communicative objects of the curriculum, engage
learners in communication and require the use of such communicative processes as
information sharing, negotiation which involves the participation of all students. It
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is suitable for discussion tasks which encourage students to share ideas and
knowledge.
Bailey and Savage (1995) design a lot of different activities to develop speaking
skills in the book New Ways in Teaching Speaking.
Among those activities, the followings are the most commonly used in the
speaking classes.
 Information gap activities
In this activity, students are divided into pairs or groups. Each speaker has a
part of information making up a whole. Because they have different information,
there is a gap between them. They have to work with each other to find the

language to express them. Harmer (1998:91) suggests that the best way of
encouraging discussion is to provide activities which force students to reach a
decision which is often the result of choosing between specific alternatives. “There are
many discussion possibilities. The important thing is that students need to be
Engaged with the topic. They then might do some study and move quickly to
Activate stages- which include the discussion itself. Almost certainly, however there
will be feedback, including Study, after the discussion is over”. However, during a
discussion, chaos may be an inevitable result and at the time the role of the teacher
as a controller becomes very important.
Discussion activities help learners practise what they have learned, find ways to
achieve objectives such as solving a problem, ranking objects, procedures and so
on. Through discussion, learners can also develop conversational skills such as how
to take turn, to change the topic of the conversation, to interrupt someone politely
and so on. Discussion in small groups also has some of the advantages as it does in
role play activities such as putting shy learners to ease to feel like speaking, giving
more opportunities for learners to speak, making learners more aware of their
responsibility to group success.
In short, the activities mentioned above do not cover all the activities teachers
use in the classroom. Many other activities can be used to encourage students to get
involved in the speaking lessons. It is necessary for language teachers to pay
attention to such speaking activities and exploit them effectively and suitably in order
to encourage students to take part in the speaking activities and develop their
speaking competence.
1.3. Review of previous studies on attitude
Many studies have been conducted to explore students‟ attitudes towards
learning a foreign language in general and learning English in particular in different
countries all over the world. Noursi (2013:22) has introduced many studies done by
researchers in different countries. For example, Musa (1985) investigated the EFL
students‟ attitude toward studying English in the United Arab Emirates using a five-
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related to speaking skill and techniques and activities often used by teachers during
speaking classes. Some previous studies in different contexts focusing on attitudes were
also covered in the chapter.
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CHAPTER 2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
2.1. The setting of the study
The study was carried out at NWRC which is located in Ha Nam Province. This
college specializes in irrigational construction engineering. The college has about
350 first-year students. The students here come from different provinces in the north of
Vietnam.
The college does not have special rooms for students to learn foreign languages.
The reference books are very poor in the college library. In addition, the class size is
large with about 50 to 60 students in each class. Consequently, the teaching and
learning of English is limited.
English is a common and compulsory subject at this college. The students have
to learn totally 150 periods, of which 120 periods are for General English and 30
periods for ESP. In this college, the book New Headway Pre-Intermediate written
by John & Liz Soars is chosen to be the main course book for all the students at the
early stage (General English).
When students enter the college, they are at different levels of English language
proficiency. Most of them have studied English for at least three years but their
English is not very good. However, students are not divided into different groups
depending on their levels of language proficiency, because there has never been an
official examination to classify them. Besides, because of their long time of learning
English at high school, they are not considered as the beginners of English.
Accordingly, all of them take the same course with Pre-Intermediate level. In
addition, the limited class time and large class size, lack of reference books, etc. are
big problems for effective teaching and learning.
Speaking skill at this college is considered to be unimportant and students do