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TABLE OF CONTENT Declaration i
Acknowlegements ii
Abstract iii
Table of contents iv
Part 1. Introduction 1
Part 2. The development of the research
Chapter I. Literature review 3
1. Theoretical background of speaking 3
1.1. Nature of speaking skill 3
1.2. Teaching Speaking skill in CLT Approach … 4
1.3 Communicative activities and features of communicative activitiies… 6
1.4. Problems with speaking activities 10
2. Group work 11
2.1. Definition of group work. 12
2.2. Group size 12
2.3. Group work activities. 13
2.4. The advantages of group work. 14
2.5. Some problems and suggested solutions in utilizing group work 15
2.6. Successfully implementing group work: Tips 16
Chapter II. The research 18
1. The context 18
2. The methodology 18
2.1. The participants. 18
2.2. Data collection. 19


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PART 1

INTRODUCTION
RATIONALE

Speaking is one of the most important skills that most learners of any foreign

communication among these students. The researcher decided to carry out the research work
entitled "Using group work to improve speaking skill of the first year students at the College
of Technology and Economics in Trade".

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study examines how to use group work to improve the speaking skill of the first
year students at the CTET.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The study aims to:
1. Find out the reasons for some problems in speaking lessons
2. Offer group work as a key to improve speaking skill of the first year students at
CTET.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. What are the problems in speaking lessons?
2. Can group work help to improve speaking skill?

DESIGN OF THE STUDY
The study will be designed as follow:
Part 1: Introduction which presents the rationales, the scope, the objectives, the
methods and design of the sudy.
Part 2: The development of the research
Chapter 1: Literature review
Chapter 2: The research
Part 3: Conclusion, suggestions, limitations
vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Accuracy if the focus of controlled and guided
activities with which students are also encouraged to attempt to use the language items they
have learnt in order to communicate accurately. Whereas, in Richards et. al (1993, pp.141-
142)‟s opinion, fluency refers to the level of communication proficiency which “includes (a)
the ability to produce written and/ or spoken language with ease; (b) the ability to speak with 9

good but not necessarily perfect command of intonation, vocabulary and grammar; (c) the
ability to produce continuous speech without causing comprehension difficulties or a
breakdown of communication”. Gower et. al (1995, pp.99-100) describe fluency as “the
ability to keep going when speaking spontaneously”. In order to get the message across,
language students need to make use of whatever knowledge, resources and ability they have
got, regardless of grammatical and other mistakes. They also need to employ different
strategies such as the use of natural-sounding „incomplete‟ sentences “I went to the cinema
last night. Did you? With whom?”; the use of common expressions like “I see/ Never mind”;
the use of fillers and hesitation devices “Well, let me think/ Let me see”; the use of
communication strategies such as for clarification; the ability to paraphrase; the use of useful
expressions such as “That reminds me… / By the way,……./ Anyway………/ Strange,
really………. ” when finishing with a topic; and “Well I must go./ Nice talking to you.” when
finishing a conversation.
1.2. Teaching Speaking skill according to CLT Approach
According to Nunan (2003), what is meant by teaching speaking is to teach ESL
learners to produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns, to use word and sentence
stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language, to select appropriate words
and sentences according to the proper social setting, audience, situation and subject matter, to
organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence, to use language as a means of
expressing values and judgments and to use the language quickly and confidently with few
unnatural pauses, which is called as fluency.

only designed to have certain characteristics of natural discourse. It also has the potential to
be more motivating of learners given they have a degree of interest in the subject matter.
While task-based learning is a more resolutely communicative application of CLT principles,
it advocates the use of a syllabus based on communicatively oriented tasks rather than
linguistics forms. And its aim is to help students to develop the necessary language skills in
order to negotiate meaning in various interactions. In practice, learners are progressing
towards a clear goal by undertaking different kind of language activities or real-word tasks in
classroom settings. Crookes (1986, p.1) defines task as “a piece of work or an activity, usually
with a specific objective, undertaken as part of an educational course, at work or used to
elicit data for research”. Long (1985, p.89) seems to hold the same view when he says that
“by task is meant the hundred and one things people do it everyday life, at work, at play and
in between”. According to Phillis (1981, p.932), task is “to help the student to acquire
appropriate patterns of behaviors”. The above definitions state that task-based language 11

involves realistic communicative language use in which learners are asked to focus on
meaning rather than language structure and gives possibility to acquire “the ability to perform
certain communicative functions through a new medium” (Coupland, 1984, p.12).
Task-based teaching is based on learners‟ communicative needs; therefore the use of
needs analysis is required. Needs analysis helps teachers to define the exact interests and
preferences of the target group. The information acquired enables the teachers to plan an
effective and motivating curriculum, for the interest of the learners. Prabhu (1987) suggests
three different task-based activity types including information-gap activities (each student has
a part of the total information that they have transferred verbally to each other), reasoning-gap
activity (students derive some new information from information through the process of
inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or a perception of relationship or patterns) and
opinion-gap activity (students are engaged in identifying and articulating a personal
preference, feeling or attitude in response to a given situation).

When applying communicative activities into speaking class, Brown (1994b, p.23)
reminds language teachers of “the eventual success that learners attain in a task is at least
partially a factor of their belief that they indeed are fully capable of accomplishing the task”.
Therefore, communicative activities must be sequenced from easier to more difficult.
Moreover, Maehr (1984) points out that certain activities are more motivating and interesting
to students than the others. Gagne (1985) states that students‟ motivation to participate in
activities is one of important types of motivation, it is essential to consider what kind of
activities can enhance students‟ motivation on learning language. At the same time, Lawtie
(2004, p.1) also strongly believes in the important role of the right activities in speaking class
when arguing that “if the right activities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be
a lot of fun, raising general learner motivation and making the English language classroom a
fun and dynamic place to be”. Indeed, students need to be provided with activities that they
are interested in solving, and they are most likely to solve them in a supportive, non
threatening environment (Sadow, 1982). Classroom activities not only need to be relevant to
students, they also need to be interesting and address multiple intelligences and creative
thinking. As every experienced teacher knows, learners do best at things that interest them
(Rubin, 1985). Moskowitz (1978) and Scarcella and Oxford (1992) point out that one of
meaningful and interesting activities which can motivate students to learn is so-called self 13

expression activities (SEA). Students have opportunities to express themselves in these
activities.
According to Glasser (1985)‟s Control Theory of motivation, everyone is motivated
by the need to satisfy one of five basic needs - survival, belonging, power, freedom, and fun.
Farris (1990) relates Glasser‟s Control Theory to student needs and possible solutions. To
satisfy students‟ need to belong, a classroom with an accepting atmosphere should be created,
and teaching should be in groups, using cooperative learning strategies. To satisfy the need
for freedom, Farris suggests involving students in rule-making, providing opportunities for

to understand the overwhelming advantages of some oral activities over the others in terms of
motivation and interestingness.
1.3.2. Features of communicative activities
As mentioned above, to provide students with motivating and interesting activities, the
understanding of features of successful communicative activities is a necessity. The features
summarized by Nation (1989) include roles, outcomes, procedures, split information and
challenges. They aim to fulfill two tasks, one of which is to assist the achievement of the
learning goal and the other is to arouse more motivation and engagement in the activity.
The use of roles has certain impact on the learning goal as roles allow and encourage
the use of language, which is difficult or sometimes even impossible to be made happen in
classroom situation. Roles also help to generate more participation and involvement. Nation
(1989) points out that if roles are not in use, it would be difficult to sustain interest for long.
He also adds that in discussion students could be given responsibilities to suggest solutions,
summarize others‟ views or disagree with certain students. It means that students are provided
chances to express their different opinions on discussion. This promises a lot of interesting
surprises and fun.
Another characteristic of communicative activities is the outcome, which gives the
activities themselves a clear sense of purpose and thus generates more interest. Basic
outcomes listed by Nation (1989) are direction providing, ranking, ordering or implication
choosing and listing, causes or uses, matching, classifying, distinguishing and data gathering.
The others are problem solving and material producing.
The third feature of speaking activities is procedure, which helps to divide them into
steps. This is expected to bring about more participation in the tasks and typical example 15

could be a pyramid discussion, in which students are first paired up to work out one solution
or completion, then grouped into a larger group and finally required to work with the whole
class.

* 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.
* Last but not least, mother-tongue use is also problematic. When all, or a number of
the learners share the same mother tongue, they may tend to use it. This happens because it is
easier, because it is unnatural to speak to one another in a foreign language and because or
because learners feel less „exposed‟ if they are speaking their mother tongue. Lawtie (2003,
p.2) also states that the problem would happen if the task or activity is not “pitched at the right
level for the students”. If the language is pitched too high they may revert to their first
language, likewise if the task is too easy they may get bored and revert to the first language,
too.
To deal with the problems, Lawtie (2004) believes that as a teacher maybe you need to
take a closer look at the type of speaking activities in order to make the activities interesting
enough to capture students‟ interest and create a real need for communication.
In a word, overcoming these obstacles in speaking class to create successful speaking
activities where learners talk a lot, participation is even and motivation is high certainly
Requires a lot of teachers‟ efforts in designing and carrying out speaking activities.

2. Group work.
The EFL literature indicate that to improve our students' speaking skill, we must
reducing learner anxiety and ensuring meaningful communicative exchanges in the classroom.
And group work is one of the valuable techniques can help achieve the above goals for the
purpose of fostering speaking ability. Group work can create a comfortable atmosphere and
the intimate community necessary for learners to take risks in speaking.

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complex semester long project may require the resources of a larger group (four to six
students) and there is enough time for the group to become effective.
2.3. Group work activities.
There are some activities for group work activities:
- Games
- Question construction
- Guided practice
- Dictation
- Role play
- Guess ahead
- Speculative question
- Discussion
- Project
- Information gap
- Jigsaw
- Problem solving
- Discussion making
- Opinion exchange.

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2.4. The advantages of group work.

The literature argues that group work creates and comfortable atmosphere and the
initiate community necessary for learners to take risk in speaking. So, how can group work

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2.5. Some problems and suggested solutions in utilizing group work.

Besides the aforesaid advantages, we must be realistic and assume that there might be
some problems. Killen (2006) suggests that it is common to have difficulties associated with
clarifying the goals of the groups, interactions within the groups, or motivations or emotions
of group members. He introduces Tiberius (1990) idea about the most common problems that
we may encounter and some solutions when implementing group work. These are:

- Some students may be more interested in talking about other things than becoming
involved in the group work. This may result from irrelevant activities or uninteresting topic.
To avoid it, teachers should plan carefully to make sure that the group work is relevant and
interesting for the students and they have been adequately prepared for it. Besides, teachers
should make sure that their expectations clear to students and occasionally speak quietly to
individual student to bring them back on task.

- One student may assume a dominant role in a group, either because she/ he wants to
lead or because the other students in the group are reluctant to participate. This problem
could be solved by developing the students‟ communication skills and by establishing clear
guidelines for how groups are to operate. By doing this we could encourage our students to
participate as equals. However, this takes lots of time to solve the problem, to help students
how to learn from the others.
Sometimes, it is useful to make the dominant student the group leader, but with a clear
guideline about the leader‟s role.

- On most occasions when we use small-group work we will want our students to
come to some conclusions which might be difficult. However, it is necessary to explain to
them that reaching conclusions is a process of making promises and that it is an important
part of working together.

this activity depends on teachers‟ error correction and suggestions, which can provided only if
the teacher circulates among the group (Hoekji, 1993). The second role of the teacher during
the activity is to assign roles to each member of the group.

A third consideration that the teacher needs to keep in mind to make group work
successful is to arrange for frequent group change. Maclnyre, et al. (1988) identify variables
such as learner personality, intergroup climate, and intergroup motivation as among various
causes which can affect students‟ involvement in group activities. Hyde (1993) adds that
students sometimes obliged to share activities with classmates who do not want to talk to, and
that some students do not pay attention to what their peer says, insisting on their own 22

judgments and that ‘this unhappy experience may well becoming something of a nightmare if
regular changing was not to occur in class’
methods, whereas the other students seem to get difficulties in learning English according to
the new textbook. These students mostly keep silent in English lessons.

1. 2. The textbook.
The main textbook for the first year students is Market Leader-Elementary. It includes
10 units with different topics which relate to business. The teachers have to cover the
textbook in 40 periods with 50 minutes for each period.

1. 3. The context of teaching.

Covering all the content of the textbook during the class hour is impossible for the
teacher. Therefore, they have to omit some simple parts and use them as students' homework
to focus on the main issues of the units. However, speaking tasks are never left out. Most of
the teachers pay a lot of attention to help their students to complete the speaking activities in
the textbook.

2. Methodology.
2.1. The participants.

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2.1.1. The students.
24 students in group 11CTA3 worked in 6 permanent mixed ability groups.
2.1.2. The teacher.
The reseacher participated in the reseach as an instructor, observer and interviewer.

2.2. Data collection.

for the problems.
The data on 4 activities (2 activities before intervention and 2 activities after intervention)
were systemised, compared and analysed. The data was interpreted to show the differences of
students' particiapation (cycle 1) and the overuse of Vietnames (cycle 2).

3. Action research process
PROCEDURES
1. Initiation
The problems the researcher found during speaking lessons was focsused on.
2. Preliminary investigation
The reasons of the problems were found by questionaire and teacher's observation.
* A questionaire.
The whole group responded to a questionaire which reveals for the problem.
* Teacher's observation.
The researcher observed two pre-intervention activities based on the checklist
3. Hypothesis
The collected data was analyzed to discover the main reasons which needed to be
given sollutions.
4. Interevention
To get more knowledge and suggestions, the researcher did literature. Then, a new set
of teaching strategies that helped to solve the problems was conducted. This set based on the
main reasons she found in the literature.
5. Data collection
To collect the data about the effects of the taken strategies, the researcher used
teacher's observation , follow-up interview and the groups' secretaries notes.
6. Data analysis and reflection
The collected data about two pre-intervention and two post- intervention activities was
systemized and compared with each other. With the results I reached the conclusion on
whether the strategies taken were effective or not.
The new problems which were discovered through teacher's observation and follow-up

silience in the speaking lessons:
1. Students were reserved and being worried about losing face
2. There were no clear rules in speaking lessons
3. The topics were complicated
4. Some students dominated the class

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3.1.4. Intervention
Basing on the reasons found, I decided to try out some solutions for the problems.
* For reason 1: where students were reserved and being worried about losing face,
they were asked to work in 5 permanent groups during the speaking lessons.
* For reason 2: There were no clear rules in speaking lessons, the students were
asked to followed the rules for working in group
- All members had to contribute to the group
- For each turn, student could give one idea of things only. If anyone had more
than one idea, s/he had to wait for the next turn.
- Cirles of voices: The turn order was not fixed in a circle providing that all
group members participated in the group work.
* For reason 3: The tasks were complicated for some reserved students
Because the speaking topics were considered fixed in the textbook and were also the
requirements of the course syllable, the teacher could not choose new ones. Therefore, to help
students to get familiar to the target topics, essential vocabulary was pre-taught and/or
reviewed before students worked in their own small groups.
* For reason 4: The dominance of some strong students
To control the dominant students, I did the following tasks:
- Private talking: I talked to the these students that I valued their active

they have now changed. When sitting together in smaller 'class' of 5 students, it seemed that
they felt more confident to speak out, they speak more.
* The newly arising problems
The more active class also meant a more noisy class. The students sometimes became
excited. And when walking round the class, I recognised that they used English when I was
somewhere nearby, and they used Vietnamese when I was far away from them.

3.1.6.2. The follow-up interview
A set of 7 questions were asked to find out the students' attitudes to group work and
how effective it was in reducing students' anxiety and encouraging real communication in
speaking class.
* Students' attitudes to group work.
Most of them liked working in groups in speaking lessons. They agreed that group
work activities created a positive effective climate. They felt more relaxed to talk in smaller
group than in front of the teacher or the whole class. 5 students said that they did not feel as
anxious as they had before. 21 students were more confident to express themselves.
* Effectiveness of group work