VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES
*****************************
CAO THỊ TRANG AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON FACTORS
AFFECTING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING PERFORMANCE
AT A VOCATIONAL SCHOOL IN THANH HOA CITY

NGHIÊN CỨU THĂM DÒ VỀ NHỮNG YẾU TỐ ẢNH HƯỞNG ĐẾN
SỰ THỂ HIỆN KỸ NĂNG NÓI CỦA HỌC SINH TRƯỜNG TRUNG
CẤP NGHỀ TẠI THÀNH PHỐ THANH HÓA M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

Hanoi– 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

DECLARATION
I certify that this thesis entitled “An exploratory study on factors
affecting students’ speaking performance at a vocational school in Thanh
Hoa city” is entirely my own work. I have provided fully documented
references to the work of others. The material in this thesis has not been
submitted for assessment in any other formal course of study. Hanoi, September 2014
Signature Cao Thị Trang ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

students’ performance. The focus of this research was to investigate the
factors affecting students’ performance in English speaking class room with
the first - year students at a vocational school in Thanh Hoa city. To achieve
these aims, both quantitative and qualitative research approaches were
employed. The data was collected via a number of instruments including:
questionnaires for students and teachers. In this study, 116 first-year students
from different faculties were chosen randomly as the participants. The major
findings of the research showed that the factors affecting students’ speaking
performance in English speaking classroom fall into of three categories:
students’ factors, teachers’ factors, classroom factors. The study also
demonstrated that among three main factors, the students’ factors were proved
to be the most affected whereas teachers’ factors were ranked as second.
Based on the findings of the study, some discussion and implications were
made along with recommended suggestion for further research.

iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

VSTH: The vocational school in Thanh Hoa city
CLT: Communicative Language Teaching

Figure 4 27
Figure 5 31
Figure 6 31
Figure 7 32
Figure 8 33
Figure 9 34
Figure 10 36

Table 1 20
Table 2 21
Table 3 22
Table 4 25
Table 5 26
Table 6 28
Table 7 29
Table 8 30
Table 9 33
Table 10 35
Table 11 37
Table 12 38
Table 13 39

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

1.2.3.1. Classroom atmosphere 15
1.2.3.2. Class size . 15
1.2.3.3. Classroom physical condition 16
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 17
2.1. Research setting 17
2.1.1. An overview of The Vocational school in Thanh Hoa city 17
2.1.2. The teachers 17
2.1.3. The students 17
2.1.4. The materials and syllabus 17
2.2. The participants 18
2.3. Data collections instruments 18
2.4. Data collection procedures 19
2.5. Data analysis procedures 19
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS 20
3.1. Data analysis of survey questionnaire for students 20
3.2. Data analysis of survey questionnaire for teachers 31
CHAPTER 4: MAJOR FINDINGS, DISSCUSSION AND
IMPLICATIONS 40
4.1. Major findings and discussion 40
4.1.1. The students 40
viii

4.1.2. The teachers 40
4.1.3. The classroom 41
4.2. Implications 42
PART C: CONCLUSION 45
1. Conclusion 45
2. Limitations and suggestion for further study 45
REFERENCES 47
APPENDICES I

important but speaking seems to be the most significant. All learners of
English want to achieve this skill. All teachers pay much attention on
speaking for their students.
However, the teaching and learning of English speaking in Viet Nam have
encountered many difficulties. In fact, although most of Vietnamese learners
can be good at grammar, reading and writing skill, few of them can speak
English correctly and fluently. It takes learners lots of time if they want to be
professional at it. Since, the learners are often reluctant in speaking English.
There have been variety of solutions given such as changing teaching method,
changing textbooks, upgrading teachers’ qualification and so on, the poor
performance of students in speaking remains a common problem in acquiring
the language.
As a teacher of a vocational school in Thanh Hoa city the researcher see that
most of her students facing these problems. They do not often enjoy speaking
English and they do not actively contribute to the speaking lessons. They feel
hardly to express their thought in English and the safe way they choose is
keeping quiet. With their poor performance in speaking English, they lost
their opportunities to get the good jobs of the competitive labor market.
All the above mentioned reasons have inspired the writer to conduct a 2
research entitled “An exploratory study on factors affecting students’
speaking performance at a vocational school in Thanh Hoa city”.
2. Aims of the study
The study is carried out to find out some factors affecting students’ speaking
performance at a vocational school in Thanh Hoa city.
3. Research questions
In order to achieve the above-mentioned objective, the study was
implemented to answer the question: What are the factors affecting students’

and 116 students from the Vocational school in Thanh Hoa city.
7. Organization of the study
The study is divided into three parts: the Introduction, the Development and
the Conclusion.
PART A: INTRODUCTION - deals with the rationale, aims, research
questions, methods, scope, and organization of the study.
PART B: DEVELOPMENT including the following chapters:
CHAPTER 1: Literature review, presents the theoretical background of
speaking in which definition of speaking, the role of speaking in foreign
language teaching, approaches of teaching speaking; issues of students’
speaking performance including types of speaking performance and factors
affecting students’ speaking performance.
CHAPTER 2: Methodology gives overview of the research site, the
participants, data collections instruments, data collection procedures and data
analysis procedures.
CHAPTER 3: Data analysis provides the analysis of the survey
questionnaire for students and the analysis of the survey questionnaire for
teachers.
CHAPTER 4: Major findings, discussion and implications give some major 4
finding, suggestion and implications to improve students’ speaking
performance.
PART C: CONCLUSION - summarizes all the key issues of the study as
well as the limitations and suggestion for further study


the right sounds in the right patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also a
choice of words and inflections in the right order to convey the right
meaning”, (cited in Bygate, 1987:5)
In study of Brown and Yule (1983), spoken language consists of short,
fragmentary utterances, in a range of pronunciation. They also point out that
spoken language is made to feel less conceptually dense than other types of
language.
From some definitions above it can be concluded that speaking skill is always
related to communication. Speaking skill itself can be stated as the
productive, oral skill, using the language accurately to express meanings in
order to transfer or to get knowledge and information from other people in the 6
whole life situation.
1.1.2. Importance of speaking
Speaking plays an utmost important role among the four language skills since
it is the fundamental to human communication (Ur 1996:120). It can not be
denied that in our daily lives, people spend more time on speaking rather than
on writing. According to Hymes (1972) “The goal of language teaching is to
develop communicative competence. Pattison (1992) confirms that when
people know or learn a language, they mean being able to speak the language.
More than this, Ur (1996) shows that people who knows a language are
referred to as “speaker” of that language as if speaking included all other
kinds of knowing. The mastery of speaking skills in English is a priority for
many second-language or foreign-language learners (Jack C. Richards
2008:19)
Moreover, oral English can be very useful for development of reading and
writing skills. Rivers (1968) points out: “when we read and write, we call
upon what we know of the language orally”. (p.20) He goes on to say that

* Characteristics of CLT
According to Richards and Rogers (2001:161), CLT has a rich theoretical
base and some of the characteristics of the communicative view of language
are:
- Language is a system for the expression of meaning
- The primary function of language is to allow interaction and communication
- The structure of language reflects its functional and communicative use
- The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and structural
features but categories of functional and communicative meaning as
exemplified in discourse.
In brief, CLT is characterized with communicative competence, leaner’s – 8
centeredness and four skills integration. These characteristics will be the
principles for teachers to choose appropriate techniques as well as activities in
the classroom to improve students’ communicative competence.
1.1.4. Types of classroom speaking performance
According to Brown (2000), there are six types of classroom speaking
performance (p.271) :
Imitative: This types of speaking performance is the ability to practice an
intonation and focusing on some particular elements of language form. In
fact, it’s simply imitaion of a word or phrase or possibly a sentence. The
important thing here is focusing on pronunciation. Drilling is used in teaching
and learning process to help students get opportunity to listen and orally
repeat some words.
Intensive: This is the students’ speaking performance that is practicing some
phonological and grammatical aspects of language. It relates to
the production of short stretches of oral language designed to
demonstrate competence in a narrow band of grammatical, phrasal, lexical, or

reviewed here was based on their importance to the current study.
1.2.1 Students’ factors
1.2.1.1. Students’ motivation
Lower motivation levels or lack of motivation is another reason for hindering
the students from active participation in speaking activities. It leads to
reluctance in active participation in the speaking activities leading to poor
performance or no performance at all.
According to Lightbown and Spada “motivation in second language learning
is a complex phenomenon which can be defined in terms of two factors:
learners’communicative needs and their attitudes towards the second language
community”. In other words, motivation in the present context refers to the 10
combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language
plus favorable attitudes towards learning the language (Garder, 1985; 10). He
also considered motivation as “a key consideration in determining the
preparedness of learners to communicate” and indicates that motivation of
foreign language learning contains four aspects: a goal, effortful behavior, a
desire to attain the goal and the attitude. It can be understood that if students
have strong learning motivation take positive attitude towards study and make
great efforts to master English with clear goal and desire, they will gain better
grade than those who have not acquired motivation.
Besides, Lightbown and Spada (1999:57) also points out some conditions that
help increase students’ motivation. They says that if we can make the
classroom places where students enjoy coming because of interesting content,
challenging but manageable and clear goals, supportive and non-threatening
atmosphere, we can make a positive contribution to students’ motivation.
It is true that motivation plays an important part in the success of second
language learning. The degree of motivation directly affects to the level of

language into the target language.
Improper listening skills:
In the initial stages of language learning, beginning with listening activities
and following with speaking activities seems to be the most appropriate
sequence. Listening plays an extremely important role in the development of
speaking abilities. Usually, one person speaks and the other responds through
attending by means of the listening process. In fact, during interaction, every
speaker plays a duel role- both as a listener and a speaker. If one cannot
understand what is said, one is certainly unable to respond. So, speaking is
closely interwoven with listening skills.
All of these linguistics factors result in break – down in processing language 12
and communication.
1.2.1.3. Personality and anxiety
Personality
According to Brown (2000), personality is one of the affective factors that are
equally important for explaining different success among foreign language
learners. Personality can be divided into extroversion and introversion. While
extroversion is associated with risk-talking, introversion is subsumed under
the concept of self-esteem. Lightbown and Spada (1999:56) discussed a
number of personality characteristics that have a great influence on the
success of foreign language learners: extroversion, inhibition, self- esteem,
empathy, dominance, talkativeness and responsiveness. Moreover, he also
emphasize that it’s not the personality alone which dominate the outcome of
foreign language learning.
Students’ anxiety
Spielberger (1983:1) defines anxiety as “the subjective feeling of tension,
apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the

With an increasing concern about the CLT approach in foreign language
teaching and learning, in which learners are the centre of the lesson, the roles
of a teacher are different from those in the other different teaching methods.
Harmer (1999:57-62) listed the roles of a teacher as follows: controller,
organizer, assessor, prompter, participant, resource, tutor and observer.
1.2.2.2. Teacher’s method
The teacher’s teaching method refers to teaching techniques or activities used
in the classroom to get students involved in learning to achieve a goal.
Through the history we have experienced the existence and development of
many teaching methods that can be divided into Grammar-translation or
traditional method, Direct method, Reading method, Audio-lingual method, 14
Audiovisual method and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
(Stern;1983). In recent years, CLT appeals many language learners and
educators’ attention when the communicative skill is concerned. Teacher’s
technique turns from teacher – centered method into learner – centered
method. The teaching techniques consist of role-play, problem solving,
games, pair work, group work, interview and discussion, etc.
However, the activity that is particularly appropriate for one student may not
be ideal for another. There’s no teaching method that is the best one for all
learners as each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. Applying a
suitable teaching method require teachers’ careful consideration because it
will affect the way student gets involved in the lesson. Furthermore, choosing
the appropriate method can have positive effects on students’ learning and
participation in classroom’s activities.
1.2.2.3. Teacher’s characteristics
Teacher’s characteristics are vital factors impacting on students’ involvement
in speaking lessons. It can be understood that in order to involve students in

The number of students is a considering factor in foreign language class,
especially in speaking lessons. In a language class in which students’
participation contributes greatly to the success of the lesson, the number of
students should be kept small so that interaction between teachers and
students and between one student and another can be maximized. (Le Phuoc
Ky, 2002),
According to Hayes (1997), any class with over 40 students can be considered
a large class. Teaching in large classes is both difficult for both teachers and
students for many reasons. First, teachers can not pay equal attention to all
students, and students could not take equal opportunities to involve the
lessons. Next, large classes are often more difficult to control because of