VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
***************** NGUYỄN THỊ XOAN
A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING SPEAKING SKILL
FACED BY NON-ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS AT
HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY

Nghiên cứu về những khó khăn trong việc học kĩ năng nói của sinh viên không
chuyên Tiếng Anh tại trường Đại học Công Nghiệp Hà Nội

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410
Hanoi – 2012
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
*****************
iv
LIST OF TABLES
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
vi
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1
1. Rationale
1
2. Aims of the study
2
3. Scope of the study
3
4. Significance of the study
3
5. Methodology
4
6. Design of the study
4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
5
Chapter 1: Literature Review
5
1.1. Theoretical background of Communicative language teaching
(CLT)
5
1.1.1. Concept of CLT
5
1.1.2. Characteristics of CLT
6

2.1.3. Description of the teachers at HaUI
23
2.2. The study
24
2.2.1. Participants
24
2.2.2. Sampling
25
2.2.3. Research methodology
25
2.2.4. Data collection methods
25
2.2.5. Procedures
25
2.3. Data analysis
27
PART C: CONCLUSION
41
1. Summary of findings
41
2. Some suggestions to overcome students’ difficulties
42
2.1. Suggestions for teachers
42
6

2.2. Suggestions for students
43
3. Limitations of the study
44

HaUI: Hanoi University of Industry
CLT: Communicative Language Teaching
L1: First language
L2: Second language

8 LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Information about students participating in the survey
Table 2: Teachers’ years of teaching English and students’ years of learning
English
Table 3: Teachers’ and students’ opinion about the importance of English speaking
skill
Table 4: Teachers’ and students’ opinion about the importance of English speaking
skill in comparison with other skills
Table 5: Teachers’ and students’ opinions about students’ favor of learning English
speaking skill
Table 6: Teachers’ and students’ judgment about students’ speaking competence
Table 7: Students’ reasons for learning English speaking skill
Table 8: Teachers’ belief about CLT
Table 9: Students’ common difficulties in learning speaking skill

9

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. RATIONALE OF THE STUDY

difficulties in learning speaking skill by students at HaUI, especially by non-English
major students although it is a quite big university in Vietnam and the number of
non-English major students is also quite large. Being an English teacher for non-
English major students at this university, I would like to carry out a research to find
out the common difficulties in learning this skill by those students in order to help
them to improve the situation in the next semesters as well as to help me and my
colleagues to improve our teaching.
These above facts have provoked me to conduct a research with the title: “A
study on difficulties in learning speaking skill faced by non- English major students
at Hanoi University of Industry”.
2. AIMS OF THE STUDY
The study is carried out to find out non-English major students’ difficulties
in learning English speaking skill at Hanoi University of Industry from students and
lecturers’ points of views. Then, some solutions will be generated from the lecturers
at this university to overcome the problems. All these above aims can be realized by
answering three following research questions:
1. What are the difficulties encountered by non-English major students in
learning English speaking skill from lecturers’ opinions?
2. What are the difficulties encountered by non-English major students in
learning English speaking skill from students’ opinions?
3. What are suggested as solutions by lecturers for non-English major students
to overcome those difficulties?

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3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study aims at finding out the difficulties in learning speaking skill
faced by non-English major students at HaUI. There are many types of difficulties
that learners can meet when they study a foreign language. However, due to the

faculties and all chosen at random. The lecturers participating in the survey are
directly teaching English to non-English major students or have had some
experience in teaching non-English major students so that they can understand the
students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill. Those lecturers are also selected
randomly.
In this study, questionnaires for non-English major students and lecturers,
semi-structured group-interview with teachers will be used to collect data to
guarantee the accuracy of the data.

6. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
The minor thesis is composed of three parts:
Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, the aims, the research questions, the
scope, the methodology, the limitations and the design of the study
Part B: Development consists of three following chapters
1. Chapter 1: Literature Review presents the concepts relevant to the study.
2. Chapter 2: The Study presents an overview of the context of investigation,
summarizes non-English major most common difficulties and gives some
suggested solutions for them to overcome those difficulties
Part C: Conclusion addresses the key issues, limitations of the study and
suggestions for further researches.
13

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
Chapter 1 briefly presents the overview of CLT and speaking skill: concept
of CLT, characteristics of CLT, concept of speaking, characteristics of speaking,
teaching speaking skills in CLT approach, the techniques in teaching speaking skills
and difficulties in learning speaking skill.
1.1. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
1.1.1. Concept of CLT

task-based and authentic”.
Nunan states that in communication process, learners are negotiators and
integrators whereas teachers are facilitators. Nunan’s definition of CLT represents a
particular view of understanding and explaining language acquisition.
According to Bock (2000) CLT is tailored to get at meaning and learners
negotiate meaning in class. Meaning is considered as what is communicated. The
negotiation of meaning can be implicated through pair work, group work in
problem-solving tasks. He also states: “Authentic materials, functional tasks, and
group and pair work are significant aspects of CLT”.
The definition above represents a particular view of understanding and
explaining language acquisition. It is socially constructed and must be seen as a
product of social, cultural, economic, and political forces.
1.1.2. Characteristics of CLT
Nunan (1991) points out five features of CLT: 1) An emphasis on learning to
communicate through interaction in the target language. 2) The introduction of
authentic texts into the learning situation. 3) The provision of opportunities for
learners to focus, not only on language but also on the learning process itself. 4) An
enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important contributing
elements to classroom learning. 5) An attempt to link classroom language learning
15

with language activities outside the classroom. These five features are claimed by
practitioners of CLT to show that they are very interested in the needs and desires of
their learners as well as the connection between the language as it is taught in their
class and as it used outside the classroom. In the CLT classroom, pair work and
group work are made used of to practice the fluency-based activities.
Brown (2001), in describing the key principles of CLT, promotes six
characteristics of CLT. The first one is that the goals of CLT are emphasized in all
of the components of communicative competence including: grammatical,
discourse, functional, sociolinguistic, and strategic. The second one is that language

accuracy.
Richards & Rodgers (2001, p.167) also affirm that CLT is associated with its
learner- centred and experienced-based tasks view of second language teaching. In
CLT context, learners are seen as active participants in the construction of
knowledge, rather than passive recipients of information provided by the teacher or
the textbook. In contrast, language teachers are no longer viewed as the authority of
the knowledge, playing a dominant role. Rather, they share different roles such as
communication facilitator, independent participant, needs analyst, counsellor, and
group process manager to create more fascinating experiences for the learners.
Besides the above features, Richards & Rodgers (2001) also describe other
significant characteristics of this approach including its efforts to make tasks and
language relevant to a target group of learners through an analysis of genuine,
realistic situations, its emphasis on the use of authentic, from-life materials, and its
attempt to create a secure, nonthreatening atmosphere
Littlewood (1981) describes the CLT approach that one of the most
characteristic features of communicative language teaching is that it pays systematic
attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language. In reaction to the
grammar-translation and audio-lingual methods, the CLT approach emphasizes the
communicative activities that involve the real use of language in daily life situation. 17

1.2. Speaking Skill
Speaking skill plays an important role in learners’ learning process. It is
considered an important criterion to judge learners’ achievement in learning a
language. They often evaluate their success in language learning by how well they
can speak that language. Therefore, if they cannot learn how to speak or do not get
any opportunities to speak in the language classroom, they may soon get
demotivated and bored with learning. On the contrary, if the teachers can apply

In Byrne’s view (1986), speaking skill is one of two ways of oral
communication process, and is the productive skill. The speaker has to encode the
message he wishes to convey in appropriate language, while the listener has to
decode (or interpret) the message.
According to Florez (1999) speaking is an interactive process of constructing
meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information. It is often
spontaneous, open-ended and evolving.
In short, there are quite many different definitions of speaking, each of them
has their own good points and strong points. However, in this study the researcher
decided to follow the concept of speaking by Bygate (1997 which means that
speaking not only involves grammatical competence but also sociolinguistic
competence.
1.2.2. Characteristics of Speaking
According to Bygate (1997), speaking involves two kinds of routines in the
process of communicating. They are information routines and interactional ones.
Information routines may be described to involve two sub-routines: expository and
evaluation. The former includes description, narration, comparison and instruction.
The latter consists of explanation, prediction, justification, preference and decision.
Interaction routines are routines based not so much on sequences of kinds of term
19

occurring in typical kinds of interactions such as telephone conversation, interview
conversations casual encounters, conversations at parties, lessons, radio or
television interviews, all tend to be organized in characteristic ways.
In Brown’s opinion (1983) speaking has three characteristics: the first one is
that its form and meaning are dependent on the context in which it occurs, including
the participants themselves, their collective experiences, the physical environment,
and the purposes for speaking. It is often spontaneous, open-ended, and evolving.
However, speech is not always unpredictable. The second one is that speaking
requires that learners not only know how to produce specific points of language

what’s said is necessary for what’s said next. Production enables reception: oral
production works in a way that helps Ss with their listening comprehension as when
they try to speak, they better adjust to understanding other people speaking in the
same context.
Brown & Nation (1997) think that teachers should give students practice
with both fluency and accuracy: teachers should provide students with form-focused
and meaning-focused speaking activities that aim at fluency and accuracy
development.
Nunan (2003) believes that teachers had better provide students opportunities
to talk (by using group work or pair work and limiting teacher talk), plan tasks
involving negotiation of meaning, design classroom activities involving guidance,
practice for both transactional and interactional speaking. Interactional speaking is
to both establish and maintain social relationship while transactional speaking is to
exchange goods or services. Interactional speech is much more unpredictable than
the other as it ranges over many topics with participants taking turn and
commenting freely while the latter encounters of a fairly restricted kind (e.g.
telephoning for a taxi). Students should be taught and guided to speak the targeted
language in both interactional and transactional settings.

21

1.3.2. The techniques in teaching speaking skills
Communicative drill is “one in which the type of response is controlled but
the students provides his or her own content or information” (Richard & Platt, 1992,
p.223).There are four kinds of activities that teachers can organize for their students.
The first one is practical situations: Students practice requesting and providing
information and situations i.e. asking for information in a city and ordering meals in
a restaurant. The second one is guessing games: Students do the games in pairs or
groups: Ask yes-no question until figure out a person/thing chosen, Teacher
provides short, incomplete story plot, only one student knows the real end, other

b. Sharing information with unrestricted co-operation: Communicating
patterns and pictures; Communicating models; Discovering differences;
Following directions
c. Sharing and processing information: Reconstructing story sequence;
Pooling information to solve a problem
d. Processing information: Problem solving tasks
In terms of Social Interaction Activities, Littlewood’s (1981) promotes
other set of activities with two different types. They are the classroom as a social
context and, simulation and role playing.
a. Considering the classroom as a social context, he suggests the following
activities: Using the language being thought to establish the classroom
management; Using the language being thought as teaching medium;
Conversations or discussion sessions; Basing dialogues and role plays on school
experience.
b. Simulation and role playing: Role playing controlled through cued
dialogues; Role-playing controlled through cues and information; Role-playing
controlled through situation and goal; Role-playing in form of debate or
discussion; Large-scale simulation activities; Improvisation
23

1.4. Difficulties in learning speaking skill.
Different scholars have different ideas about the difficulties in learning
speaking skill. Hymes (1974) stated that speaking skill includes linguistics
competence, socio-linguistics competence and discourse competence. Therefore,
students’ psychology, linguistics, culture, leaning materials, teachers’ characters,
class size, learning environment can affect students’ leaning to master
communicative competence. According to Larsen (1986), difficulties in language
teaching in general and difficulties in teaching speaking skill in particular may stem
from teachers, students together with objective factors affecting the teaching
process. And the researcher decided to follow this idea of Larsen in her study.

understanding of meaning and construction of the language to master language in
their conversation. It is argued that how correction should be expressed. Some
prefer nice, gentle and tactful correction while the others are in favor of assertive,
encouraging and frank one. Ur (2000) is in favor that the later as students may lose
their confidence and feel disappointed if teachers correct their errors in an
insensitive way. In short, teachers should be sensitive and tactful when giving
corrections so that students get their errors, recognize them and correct them
comfortably without any negative feeling causing them shy and embarrassed.
Inappropriate teacher’s roles
The roles of teachers in the classroom have been changing a lot. However, in
CLT approach, it is agreed that students are the centre of the language classroom,
not teachers. Still, teachers play important roles in the classroom. Teachers’ roles
can affect the success or failure of the classroom.
Harmer (1999, p. 57) suggests one of the clearest classifications of teachers’
roles in the CLT classroom is that the teacher can play a role as: a controller, an
25

organizer, an assessor, a prompter, a participant, a resource, a tutor and an
observer.
Byrner (1986, p.2) points out the roles of teachers according to three stages
of teaching speaking: the presentation stage, the practice stage and the production
stage. At the first stage, teachers play a role as an informant who prepares materials
and presents the language to the students. At this stage, teachers should be careful
about time management so that students can have enough time for the other
important activities. At the second stage, teachers act as a conductor who should try
to give all students as much time as possible to practice the presented language. At
the last stage, teachers play a role as a manager and a guide. Students are
encouraged to use language freely even though they may make many mistakes.
Teachers should make sure that students use the language for their free talk.
Teachers are expected to comment their students’ speaking activities performance at

The American linguist Sapir (192, p.60) maintains that language and culture are
dual entities: Culture representing what a society thinks and does, while its language
expresses and embodies the ideas of that society. In other words, if a learner expects
to speak a language well, he must appreciate the way it is used in social contexts.
Cultural factors can create students’ learning style. They can have affect on
students’ learning results. Keefe (1979) defines learning style as “cognitive,
affective and physiological traits that are relatively stable indicators of how learners
perceive, interact with and respond to the learning environment.” Willing (1987)
divides learners into four groups basing on their behaviors: the first one is concrete
learners who are interested in social aspects of language learning. The second one
is analytical learners who would rather work individually on reading and grammar.
The third one is communicative learners: are willing to communicate with other