1

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
*********************

PHÙNG THỊ HOA MƠ

ADAPTING SPEAKING ACTIVITIES IN TIENG ANH 11 TO
IMPROVE STUDENTS’ PARTICIPATION
AT DAN PHUONG UPPER- SECONDARY SCHOOL

(ĐIỀU CHỈNH MỘT SỐ HOẠT ĐỘNG NÓI TRONG SÁCH TIẾNG ANH 11
NHẰM TĂNG CƯỜNG SỰ THAM GIA CỦA HỌC SINH TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT
ĐAN PHƯỢNG)
M.A.MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD : ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE : 601410
SUPERVISOR : VŨ MAI TRANG, M.A

FIELD : ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE : 601410 HANOI - 2010
2

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
*********************

PHÙNG THỊ HOA MƠ

ADAPTING SPEAKING ACTIVITIES IN TIENG ANH 11 TO
IMPROVE STUDENTS’ PARTICIPATION
AT DAN PHUONG UPPER- SECONDARY SCHOOL

(ĐIỀU CHỈNH MỘT SỐ HOẠT ĐỘNG NÓI TRONG SÁCH TIẾNG ANH 11
NHẰM TĂNG CƯỜNG SỰ THAM GIA CỦA HỌC SINH TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT
ĐAN PHƯỢNG)

M.A.MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD : ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE : 601410
SUPERVISOR : VŨ MAI TRANG, M.A HANOI - 2010
6 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………
i
DECLARATION
ii
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………

4
1.1.2.1.3. Students’ language levels…………………………
5
1.1.2.2. Teachers’ factors…………………………………………
6
1.1.2.2.1. Teaching methods…………………………
6
1.1.2.2.2. Teacher’s knowledge…………………………
6
1.1.2.2.3. Teacher’s characteristics……………………
6
1.2. Adaptation is a necessary task in lessons…………………………….
6
1.2.1. What is adaptation?
7
1.2.2. The purpose of adaptation…………………………………………
7
1.2.3. Techniques for adaptation…………………………………………
8
7

1.2.4. Levels of adaptation………………………………………………
9
CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY……………………………………………………
10
2.1. Research setting…………………………………………………………
10
2.1.1. The setting of the study……………………………………………
10
2.1.2. Speaking materials…………………………………………………

29
3.5. Students’participation in experimental and control group in three lessons at
the end of the intervention……………………………………

36
3.6. Comparison of students’particpation before and at the end of the
experiment. …………………………………………………………………

37
3.7. Follow-up student interview…………………………………………
38
PART III: CONCLUSION
39
1.1. Summary of the study
39
1.2. Limitations of the study:
40
1.3. Suggestions for further study
40
1.4. Implications:
40
REFERENCES

8

APPENDIX 1
I
APPENDIX 2
IV
APPENDIX 3

9

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CLT: Communicative Language Teaching
MOET: The Ministry of Education and Training
TTT: Teacher Talking Time
STT: Student Talking Time

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1:
Topics in Tieng Anh 11.
Table 2:
Distribution of speaking activities in Tieng Anh 11.
Table 3:
Student talking time and teacher talking time in control and experimental
groups.
Table 4:
The reasons why students want to learn English.
Table 5:
Students’ learning styles in both groups
Table 6:
Students’ participation in speaking lessons.
Table 7:
Factors prevent students from participating in speaking in the class.
Table 8:
Students’opinions towards English speaking skills in the textbook Tieng Anh
11
Table 9:

projects on the reform of teaching methodology at upper- secondary schools. Especially, in
2006, 2007 and 2008 the introduction of new English 10,11,12 textbook to school
curriculum marks a dramatic change in the way English is taught. Four skills, namely,
speaking, listening, reading, and writing have been put in priority and intergrated in the
textbook alongside with linguistic elements such as grammar,vocabulary and
pronunciation. At the same time, the adoption of learner-centered approach,
communicative approach, and task-based teaching are emphasized and extensively
employed.
Although the books have shown a great deal of improvement as compared with
the old series of grammar-based it seems that not all activities or tasks in the books are
suitable to the different teaching and learning contexts of different localities within
Vietnam.
After 2 school years teaching new Tieng Anh 11 at Dan Phuong high school, I find
that there are some problems with some activities in the textbook. Some are too difficult
for students, some are not real communicative, some are too long …… All these reasons
greatly contribute to the demotivation of students from participating in the lessons at Dan
Phuong school. In this case, it is necessary for teachers to adapt the content of the core
books to make each activity and unit suitable and interesting for learners. In order to do
this, teachers need to evaluate every unit to see what the problems are, and then, try to
think about ways to adapt it. There are many things that teachers can do to improve the unit
such as looking for interesting extra materials from different sources, changing the
procedure of the unit, designing activities which can motivate learners, etc.
11

The above mentioned reasons have inspired the writer to conduct a research titled
“Adapting speaking activities in Tieng Anh 11 to improve students’ participation at
Dan Phuong Upper-secondary school.”
1.2.Aims of the study:
Firstly, the present study aims at investigating the reasons why teachers at Dan
Phuong upper-secondary should adapt speaking activities in Tieng Anh 11 from both

1.1. An overview of students’ participation:
1.1.1. Students’ participation:
There are several views on student participation. Howard, Short, & Clark stated that
participation is the student‟s active engagement in the classroom to promote effective
learning (Howard, Short, & Clark, 1996). The student‟s activities may include reciting
in class, having conversations with the instructor or their classmates, doing written
outputs, and sharing ideas with others (Howard, Short, & Clark, 1996; Howard &
Henney, 1998). It means a participative learner is one that is not passive. As Fraser
(1982) defines student participation as the extent to which students are encouraged to
participate rather than be passive listeners. Similarly, Sylvelyn, Judith & Paulin (2009)
define participation as students who actively engage in classroom discussions, rather
than be passive learners who simply take in knowledge. They affirm that in a
classroom-based learning, participation can be a positive feedback given by students
to either the lesson or the teacher which can lead to possible ways in the development of
an improved classroom learning experience.
Teachers of large classes have found that students‟participation can be identified in
terms of three kinds of interaction: students to their teacher, students to students and
students to material. The interaction between students themselves is established when they
are working in groups. The kind of interaction between students and material can be
understood as students‟ success in completing assigned reading activities. In term of the
interaction between students to their teacher, students who maintain good interaction with
their teacher always participate in the class discussion. They become involved in what is
happening in the classroom by asking more question, share personal ideas, opinion and
experience with their classmates. Thus, participation can be understood in more ways than
just come to class on time, take notes what teachers say and write down on the blackboard,
and stay in the class all the time and get to know the teacher. Students who are active and
attentive that means they work on the problem with the teacher during the class, laugh at
jokes, respond to the teacher‟s questions, often show great desire to learn and become good
students.


language. That is, motivation to learn a second language is seen as refering to the extent to
which the individual work or strives to learn the language because of a desire to do so and
the satisfaction experienced in this activity.
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Harmer divides motivation into extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic
motivation is caused by such outside factors as the need to pass an exam, the hope of
financial reward, or the possibility for future travel In contrast, intrinsic motivation is
caused by inside factors like the enjoyment of the learning process itself or by a desire to
make them feel better.
Motivation plays such an important role in the success in learning a foreign language,
so how can we initiate and sustain motivation? When starting to learn a foreign language
students may have in themselves some kinds of motivation either extrinsic or intrinsic
motivation which has fired them up. We, teachers, must be responsible for sustaining their
motivation.
In order to raise students‟motivation we have to understand motivation. According to
Harmer they can derive from the society we live in, significant others like parents, the
teacher and the method. Among these sources, the teacher and the method may be of the
most important.
Downs (2000) also points out some conditions that help increase students‟motivation.
He says that motivation increase when students feel acknowledged and understood, when
students are confident they can succeed, when language has a communicative purpose and
when students take responsility for their own learning.
Obviously, the degree of motivation is directly proportional to the level of involvement
in speaking tasks. In detail, the more motivated students are, the more actively they will
participate in oral activities.
1.1.2.1.3. Students’ language levels:
For Harmer (2001), in a class where students‟language levels are different, teachers
may have some difficulties choosing a suitable teaching method, language and activities
used in class. Harmer claims that some techniques and excercises are suitable for some

warm, pleasant, approachable and tolerant.
In conclusion, students‟ participation can be affected by teachers‟ factors including
teaching methods, teachers‟ knowledge and characteristics.
Besides these factors mentioned above, some classroom factors including
classroom itself, classroom structure, and classroom atmosphere and other factors as the
place of examminations and tests also have effect on students‟participation in classroom
speaking activities. This is very important work as it provides us with basic theory to find
out techniques to overcome those factors and increase students‟participation.
1.2. Adaptation is a necessary task in lessons:
As Cunningsworth (1984: 89) has pointed out: no coursebook will be total suited to a
particular teaching situation. The teacher will have to find his own way of using it and
16

adapting it if necessary. So we should not be looking for the perfect coursebook which
meets all our requirement, but rather for the best possible fit between what the
coursebook offers and what we as teachers and students need.
1.2.1. What is adaptation?
There are several definitions of adaptations by different scholars:
Madsen and Bowen (1978: ix) claimed adaptation is an action of employing
“one or more of a number of techniques: supplementing, expanding, personalizing,
simplifying, modernizing, localizing, or modifying cultural/ situational content”. Ellis, M
(1986:47) considered adaptation as the process of “retaining, rejecting, re-ordering and
modification” and Tomlinson (1998b: xi) refers to “ reducing, adding, omitting, modifying
and supplementing”.
1.2.2. The purpose of adaptation:
There are always sound practical reasons for adapting materials in order to make
them as accessible and useful to learners as possible. However, reasons for adaptation have
varied and changed as the field has developed and views on language acquisition and
teaching practice have become better informed by research and experience. There are two
most frequently cited purposes for adaptation:

1.2.3.1. Adding:
When adding to published material the teacher is supplementing the existing
materials and providing more materials. The teacher can do this by either extending or
expanding.
- Extending: extending means the teacher supplies more of the same type of
materials, thus making a quatitative change in the material.
- Expanding: is to add some thing different to the materials. The change is
qualitative.
It is important to note that additions to materials can come at the beginning, at the end
or in the middle of the materials being adapted.
1.2.3.2. Deleting: subtracting and abridging
As with the technique of adding, material can be deleted both quantitatively
(subtracting) or qualitatively (abridging). For example, a teacher can decide to do five of
the questions practising the simple past tense instead of the ten in the coursebook. When
abridging, however, the teacher may decide that focusing attention on pronunciation may
inhibit the learner‟s fluency and decide not to do any of the pronunciation exercise in a
coursebook.

18

1.2.3.3. Simplifying:
When simplifying, the teacher could be rewording instructions or text in order to
make them more accessible to learners, or simplifying a complete activity to make it more
manageable for learners and teachers.
1.2.3.4. Reordering:
When reordering, the teacher has decided that it makes more pedagogic sense to
sequence activities differently. An example is beginning with a general discussion before
looking at a reading passage rather than using the reading as a basis for discussion.
1.2.3.5. Replacing materials:
When replacing material a teacher may decide that a more appropriate visual or text

study with the description of the setting of the study, the subjects, speaking materials. The
second part will offer a comprehensive analysis on the data collected from the observations
before and after experiment, teacher and student interviews, and student questionaires.
2.1. Research setting:
2.1.1. The setting of the study:
The study was conducted at Dan Phuong upper-secondary school, a rural school of
former Ha Tay province. The school has 35 classes with over 90 teachers of all subjects.
English is taught as a compulsory subject. Currently there are 10 teachers of English and
over 1500 students ranged from grade 10 to grade 12. Most of the students come from
villages and towns in Dan Phuong district.
Although most students are aware of the importance of learning, English is not paid
much attention by most of the students in school. Few students choose English as a subject
to take university entrance exam. Teaching English, especially teaching English speaking
has met some difficulties. The first is the large size classes. There are 45 students in each
class. It is hard for teachers to set up communicative activities, monitor class and give
feedback. The second is most students are not familiar with teaching in English. They
cannot understand lessons if teachers speak English all the time. The last is the lack of
materials. Materials for reference and self-study are not available. There is not a library for
students at all. Furthermore, some facilities needed for learning such as computers and
projectors…are not enough.
Normally, students have three periods of studying English every week. It is a
limited time for students to practice and develop skills as well as enrich their vocabulary
and structure capacity. What‟s more, English is hardly used to talk outside classroom. All
these factors have great effect on the students‟results in learning English especially in
learning speaking.
20

2.1.2. Speaking materials:
The main material for English speaking of grade 11 is a new set of English
textbook- Tieng Anh 11 which was first introduced in 2007. Like Tieng Anh 10, Tieng

The post office
10.
Nature in danger
11.
Sources of energy
12.
The Asian Games
13.
Hobbies
14.
Recreation
15.
Space Conquest
16.
The wonders of the world
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Table 2: Distribution of speaking activities
1. Number of unit
16
2. Number of activities
50
3. Number of activities per unit
3.1
4. No. of information-gap activities
24
5. No. of information gap activities per unit.
1.5
Among the 50 speaking activities taught in Tieng Anh 11 only 24 are information-
gap activities (the term information-gap is used in this paper to refer to all types of

2.2. Research design:
This research was a quasi-experimental study, using observations “before” and “at
the end” of the experiment, questionaires for students and interviews with both the teachers
of English and 11 graders at Dan Phuong upper-secondary school.
The study adopted a quasi-experimental design for practical reasons. In the context
of the secondary school, it is impossible to conduct a true experimental research with
randomly selected samples. However, a quasi-experimental study remains valid because “It
is conducted under conditions closer to those normally found in educational context”
(Selinger& Shohamy, 1989: 149). Although the intact groups were used, both were grade
11, they were of comparable ability level.
For this study, two classes of 88 11th grade students at Dan Phuong upper-
secondary school were asked to participate in this experiment. One class was employed as
an experimental group. The other was employed as a control group. Each class consisted of
44 students. The researcher taught each group 3 lessons using the current textbook Tieng
Anh 11. The author was the teacher (herself) in two classes to ensure the designed lesson
plans were strictly followed. The teacher instructed the control group in the usual fashion.
The same lessons were taught to the experimental group with adapted activities. With the
assistance of the three other English teachers, before-experiment and at the end of
experiment observations were administered for two groups. The observers helped take
notes of students‟ talking time and teachers‟talking time as well as interaction patterns in
these classes. The purpose of before-experiment observations was to make sure that the
two groups had the same levels of participation. The end of experiment observations aimed
at measuring levels of participation of the two groups after three lessons.
After the experiment, the degrees of participation of the two groups were compared
and then some conclusions were drawn out about the relationship between the use of the
adapted speaking activities and the level of the students‟ participation in the speaking
lessons at Dan Phuong secondary school.
23

2.3.Participants:

control and experiment groups with the three same lessons were observed by the three
mentioned teachers . The control group was taught the original activities in Tieng Anh 11
while the experimental group was taught adapted activities. Then the researcher measured
24

the “students‟talking time” of both groups and then compared them to prove whether the
adaptation of textbook activities would be helpful in increasing the students‟involvement
in speaking lessons.
2.4.2. The teacher interview:
An interview to 6 English teachers who have ever taught Tieng Anh 11 at Dan
Phuong high school was conducted to get information about their evaluation on speaking
activities in the textbook, their evaluations on students participation and what they have
done to increase students‟participation.
2.4.3. Student questionaire:
The questionaire was delivered to students in two classes 11A7, 11A8 concerning
their evaluation on the speaking activities in the textbook, their participation and what
affected their participation in speaking class. The questionaire was the same to the control
and experimental groups because the researcher wanted to know if the two groups had
equal levels of motivation and participation before the intervention.
2.4.4. Follow-up student interview:
Ten students were randomly chosen from the experimental group and interviewed
to give their evaluation on the level of participation, attitudes towards the adapted activities
in the lessons they had been taught.
2.5. Data collection procedure:
First, the three other English teachers observed the two classes in three lessons to
know the degrees of students‟participation before the experiment. Then a survey
questionaire was distributed among the students of the two classes to find out more their
evaluation on speaking activities and factors affecting their participation in the classroom
speaking activities. To increase the validity of the data the researcher met and interviewed
6 English teachers who have ever taught Tieng Anh 11 for their attitudes and evaluation

The procedures used by the teacher can be summarized as follow:
The lesson started as usual with warm-up. In the warm-up, the teacher wrote an
incompleted net work about “post office services” on the board. Students worked in group
of 4 to find as many services as possible. Within 3 minutes the group has more answers
would be the winners. In the first stage of the lesson, students in both classes took part in
group work rather well. After that teacher introduced the new lesson: Unit 9: B-Speaking.
Students continued the lesson with task 1. They were told to work in pairs (two students
who sat next to each other worked in a pair) acting out the dialogue. Two good students
read the dialogue as model. After 3 minutes of pairwork, some pairs were required to stand
up and read aloud the dialogue. Teacher corrected their pronunciation and got students to
answer the question “What service is the customer taking in the dialogue?” and look for
26

examples of requests and responses to requests in the dialogue. Then the teacher gave
students some other structures to express requests:
Would you mind…
Would you please……
May I…
I‟d like…
Turn to task 2, teacher explained the tasks and some new words:
To install (v), installation (n)
Registration (n)
Teacher elicited some useful structures about prices, saying address, etc. She puts
students in pairs (same pairs as task 1) and got them to write the dialogue together based
on the information given in the task. Teacher went around to help and encourage all pairs
to work.
She then asked students act out the dialogue together and in front of the class. She
elicits feedback from the class and gives her own feedback. Some pairs worked smoothly
but some did not. They still didn‟t know how to ask and answer about fee and installation
process.

27

From the all four lessons, it can be seen clearly that the level of participation in
classroom speaking activities of two classes at Dan Phuong upper-secondary school was
almost the same and quite low. Students talking time made up approximately nearly one
third of the total time in each class.
During the observations the researcher also found out that even the teacher had
tried to provide useful guide and necessary structures when students were asked to work in
pair or group a few of them worked seriously. In fact, most of their talks lasted a few
minutes and then they did something else instead of concentrating on their work. There
was another funny situation that the researcher investigated. Some students had a bad habit
of discussing with each other in Vietnamese and then they translated them into English and
wrote down their “discussion” in the notebooks. After doing these steps they read what
they had written to make a “dialogue”. If they were called by the teacher to practice their
dialogue in front of the class they held their paper and read again what they had created. At
that moment they seemed not to care about what their partner said or answered.
The teacher tended to dominate the class. She talked a lot for fear of students not
knowing how to speak and she tried to get students involved. Moreover, the teacher had a
worry of not finishing teaching tasks on time. At upper-secondary school if in one period
teacher couldn‟t finish their tasks on time she or he would be evaluated not a good teacher.
The awareness of the importance of adapting textbook activities to make them suitable to
their students‟levels and interests to activate students‟participation should be made among
the teachers.
In conclusion, the students‟participation in classroom speaking activities was very
poor. So it is urgent that teachers find out teaching techniques to increase
students‟participation. However, in order to have suitable teaching techniques we must
understand the reasons of the students‟ low involvement.
3.2.Results from students’ questionaire:
3.2.1. Personal information:
The first and second questions were to gather the participants‟ information of

50.6%
f. interest in English language, people and culture
20%
As it is indicated clearly in the table that the most common reason ( 57 % of the
learners) is students “have to” learn English. Clearly, these students knew the role of
English in the modern life. Over than a half (50.6%) of students want to learn English to
get a good job in the future. The high percentage of these students having this reason for
learning English implies a low motivation among them. Meanwhile, only 20 % of the
students learn English because they were interested in English. With the low level of
interest in the subject, it is difficult to say that these students will actively participate in
class activities. The lower percent of students (14%) affirmed they were learning English
because they wanted to get good marks. The lowest percentage of the respondents (4%)
claimed that the reason they tried to study English is to study aboard.