C VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
********************* TRIỆU ANH THƯ DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS THROUGH
PERSONALIZATION TASKS: ACTION RESEARCH ON GRADE 10
th
STUDENTS AT HOANG QUOC VIET HIGH SCHOOL

Phát triển kĩ năng nói Tiếng Anh cho học sinh qua các hoạt động cá nhân hóa.
Nghiên cứu hành động của học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Hoàng Quốc Việt
M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD : ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE : 60140111 Hanoi, 2014
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

DECLARRATION
I certify that the work presented in this study is the result of my own research and the
material has not been submitted either in whole or in part for any degree to any other
university or institution.
Signature Trieu Anh Thu
ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to show my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Le Van Canh, for his
encouragement and guidance through the research, without which this study can be
impossible.
My deep sincere thanks go to the administrators of Faculty of Post- Graduate Studies,
University of Languages and International Studies- Vietnam National University for giving
me the best environment to fulfill the thesis.
I would like to acknowledge to the support and assistance of my co-teachers as well as the
students at HQV high school.
iii ABSTRACT
One of the common problems faced by almost every teacher of English in my
school is the students‟ limited participation in speaking lessons. This thesis reports the
results of an action research project, which was designed in an attempt to resolve this
problem. The research was carried on 40 students in a class at grade10
th
of HQV High
School in six weeks following Nunan‟s (1992) five-step procedure. The aim of the study is


v

LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1. Student participants’ experience in learning English
Table 2.2. Students self-reported classroom participation
Table 2.3. Reasons for willingness in classroom speaking English
Table 2.4. Students’ suggested speaking topics
Table 2.5 Observed number of students participating in speaking activities per lesson .
Table 2.6. Time of each student in speaking lesson
Table 2.7 Students’ confidence in speaking English
Table 2.8. Table for students’ changes in their attitudes toward personalization
techniques
vi


2.1. Definition of Action Research 16
vii

2.2. Rationale of using an action research 16
2.3. Steps in doing Action Research 17
2.4. The school 17
2.5. Participant students 18
2.6. Research procedure 18
2.7. Findings 21
2.7.1. Changes in student‟s participation. 23
2.7.2. Observed time of each students‟ speaking per 45 – minutes lesson. 24
2.7. 3. Students‟ self- reported changes in their confidence in speaking English 25
2.7.4. Students‟ evaluation 26
2.8. Discussion 29
2.9. Reflection 30
2.10. Chapter summary 31
Part 3: Conclusion
3.1. Recapitulation 32
3.2. Concluding Remarks 33
3.3. Limitation of the study and plans for the next cycle 33
REFERENCES 35
APPENDICES I
1

PART A: INTRODUCTION
In this Part, the rationale, the aims and objectives as well as the research questions
and research design are presented. The structure of the thesis is also presented briefly in

solve this problem. However, I think, although we used what measure, which method, they
have the same goal that is to motivate students to learn.
As language teachers, we are aware that the learners need to be motivated in order to learn
successful.
This small piece of action research was designed to test the effectiveness of
applying some personalization techniques in teaching speaking skills in order to increase
the students‟ interest and their participation in classroom. The study was based on the
assumption that learners will participate better if students have chance to associate with the
learning materials in their daily lives.
2. Aims and Objectives of the study
The aim of this study is to find better ways of teaching speaking skills to the
students in a secondary school located in a rural area, where students do not seem to have
motivation to speak English due to the lack of opportunities to use English orally outside
the classroom. Basically, the aim of the action research reported here is to increase the
students‟ participation in English- speaking lessons and helping them to speak English in
the classroom more confidently.
This overall aim is specified into the following objectives:
1. To gain understanding of the extent to which the use of personalized activities
can help my grade 10
th
students to be more active in participating in speaking English in
the classroom; and
2. Find out the students‟ opinions of whether personalized speaking activities
helped them to speak English better or not.
3. Scope of the study
This is in fact a mini-scale action research project in which I designed some
classroom techniques to personalize the course book so that students‟ feelings, prior
knowledge, experience are used to motivate them to speak English in the classroom. The
3



7. Structure of the Thesis
The thesis is organized into three parts. Part One - “Introduction” - introduces the
rationale, the aims and objectives and the research questions. Information about the
research design and the scope of the study is also provided in this chapter. Part Two -
“Development”- is composed of two chapters. Chapter I reviews the relevant literature
with a focus on the use of personalization techniques in teaching English in general and
teaching speaking skills in particular. Chapter II provides information about the study
including the research design, the research procedures, and the research findings. Part
Three, “Conclusion”, summarizes the key issues in the study and the conclusions resulted
from the study. In this part, the limitations are acknowledged and information about how
the next cycle of the action research will be conducted is provided.

5

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE
This chapter reviews the literature review related to teaching speaking skills and the

in Vietnamese high schools tend to be weak at speaking. This raises the need for teachers
to find ways to help their students to develop their speaking skills.
1.2. Nature, characteristics of speaking competence
It is obviously that speaking is one of the most important key to communication
and it seems to be involved in all other kills like reading, listening and writing. People
speak to each other to exchange their ideas, attitudes, thought, cultural values. Let imagine
that what would happen to our world if we did not speak? We only use gestures or signal to
communicate with others?
The communication will be difficult and our world will become as silent as grave.
Therefore, speaking skills become an essential part in language course and the classroom‟s
activities which have aim to develop learner‟s ability to express themselves through speech
are considered an important factor in language teaching.
There are some scholars who studying and discussing about the nature of speaking.
According to Burn & Joyce, (1997) and Brown (1994), speaking is an interactive process
of constructing mean that involves producing and receiving and processing information;
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 often spontaneous, open- ended, and evolving. To Hedge (2000),
speaking a foreign language competently involves the ability to make oneself understood
and to manage interaction. However, speaking is also unpredictable. Speaking requires the
language learners not only know how to produce specific points of language, such as
grammar, pronunciation, but also understand when, how and what ways to produce
language.
Brown (2001:27) said that in teaching oral communication, micro skills are very
important. He also mentions that the pieces of language should be given attention for more
7

that make up to the whole. He gives some features of micro skills of oral communication
that the speakers should to know:
- Produce chunks of language of different lengths.

According to Bygate, he showed that speaking is a reciprocal activity. This means
that in speech, in order to “make sure that communication is taking place, the speakers
have to adapt their message according to their listeners‟ reaction” ( Bygate, 1987:12)
The same opinion with Bygate, Nunan gave another characteristic of speaking skill.
It is “speaking is spontaneous”. He said that: “we all have routines, set of phrases and other
expressions that we use to assist us when speaking spontaneous” (Nunan, D. 1999: 227).
The third characteristic is Speaking consists of colloquial language. Colloquial
language appears in both monologues and dialogues. It will be difficult for the learners,
who only study standard language in textbook, to produce or try to understand about
words, idioms or phrases of colloquial language.
The following characteristic of speaking is Speaking depends much on language‟s
stress, rhythm and intonation. It is obviously that with a same sentence, if the speakers use
different stress, rhythm and intonation, the speech can be understand with different
meanings, in some cases, the listeners can misunderstand the original meaning of the
speakers. This is a very important characteristic of speaking because in speech, different
stress or intonation use can convey different messages.
The last characteristic of speaking is “Speaking is interaction process”. According
to Brown, H.D. (1994:93), he states that “ the greatest difficulties that learners have in
learning to speak is not in multiplicity of sounds, words, phrases and discourse forms that
characterize any language, but rather in the interactive nature of most communication”. It
means that speakers have to engage in process of negotiation of meaning with many
discourse constraints, so they have to be care of choosing what and how to say in what
situation.
9

1. 3. Challenges with teaching speaking skills
Ur (1996, p. 120) states,
Classroom activities that develop learners‟ ability to express themselves
through speech would therefore seem an important component of a
language course. Yet it is difficult to design and administer such activities;

and using language, which is meaningful to the learners. Objectives
reflect the needs of the learners; they include functional skills as well
as linguistic objectives. The learner‟s role is as a negotiation and
integrator. The teacher‟s role is as a facilitator of the communication
process. Materials promote communicative language use; they are
task – based and authentic. (Nunan,1989:194).
CLT is the learned- centered method and it emphasizes communication and real- life
situations. The role of the teacher in CLT is quite different from traditional teaching
methods. In the traditional method, the teacher is in charge and they often control their
students. In CLT, the learner is in charge of their own learning and the teacher often serves
as more of a facilitator. CLT is defined as a list of general features. One of the most
recognized of these lists is David Nunan‟s (1991a:279, cited in Bang, N & Ngoc, N.B).
Five features of CLT are given:
 An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target
language.
 The introduction of authentic texts into learning situation.
 The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also
on the learning process itself.
 An enhancement of the learner‟s own experiences as important contributing
elements to classroom learning.
11

 An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside
the classroom.
The goal of language teaching is to develop communicative competence. In CLT, learners
are encouraged to contribute as much as they gain and learn in independent way.
1.4.2 Strategies for developing speaking skills
1.4.2.1. Using minimal responses
Learners who lack confidence in their speaking ability rarely take part in oral
interaction in classroom. They often keep silent and listen while others do the talking. One

Personalization is not a form of language practice, but it is the context and stimulus
for language learning. Moscowitz, (1978: 197) states,
In foreign language teaching, we customarily begin with the lives of
others, with whom students may not easily identify, and then expect
students to transfer the material to their own lives. However, transfer
to the textbook is easier when the content starts with the student
himself and then leads into the materials to be learned… Let the
students first discover what they can generate on the subject from their
own personal thoughts and feelings. By drawing on their own
experiences and reactions, the transfer to the textbook will be more
relevant and more apparent.
Similarly, According to Griffths and Keohane (2000: 1) ,
As language teachers, we are well aware that learners need to be
motivated in order to be successful. Personal involvement is one very
effective way of enhancing motivation. By this, we mean making
language learning content personally meaningful. If learners feel that
what they are asked to do is relevant to their own lives, and that their
feelings, thoughts, opinions and knowledge are valued, and crucial to
the success of the activities, then they will be fully engaged in the
tasks and more likely to be motivated to learn the target language.
13

These authors also list the following benefits of personalization tasks to language
learning. For them personalization tasks help in:
 Creating trust between class and teacher;
 Facilitating positive group dynamics with the class;
 Securing honest, helpful , and interesting feedback;
 Bringing humour into the classroom;
 Making language learning something the teacher and the students
will recall with affection;

and making the English language classroom a fun and dynamic place to be. Students are
willing to learn to speak and participate in speaking lesson.
The teacher works at drawing out the experiences and interests of the students. For
instance, teacher can ask students to talk about themselves, their hobbies or something
related to their lives. In personalization in a speaking lesson, the learners are center and the
teacher plays an active role in constructing their own lessons. The teacher is more
interested in what information students say rather than how they say it. Thanks to this,
students can feel more confident. In other words, personalized lessons are motivating
because it exploits the need and desire of learners to have interesting and meaningful
exchanges in the class.
The purpose of real communication is to accomplish a task, such as conveying a
telephone message, expressing a opinion. In real communication, participants must manage
uncertainty about what the other person will say. Moreover, to achieve their purpose,
participants have to clarify their meaning or ask for confirmation of their own
understanding. Therefore, develop communicative competence by creating appropriate
speaking activities in the classroom is essential for students.
The aim of applying personalization techniques is to encourage purposeful and
meaningful interaction between students, or make student more active in the classroom.
Besides, this method helps students become more confidently and creative in their real
situations. By using this method, students have more chances to speak English follow their
15

thoughts and their participation in speaking lessons will increase more and more.
Therefore, the success depends on what is done by teachers before the class begins and
what is done in the class. Using this technique, teachers can design many activities to make
students take part in speaking lesson.
Although personalization has been suggested as one of the possible solutions to the
enhancement of students‟ participation in speaking English in the classroom context (Ur,
1996), there has been little empirical evidence on the effectiveness of this teaching
strategy. This limited literature on personalization in developing students‟ English-

improvement and as a means of increasing knowledge about the
curriculum, teaching and learning. The result is improvement in what
happens in the classroom and school, and better articulation and
justification of the educational rationale of what goes on. Action
research provides a way of working which links theory and practice
into the one whole: ideas- in- action (p.5).
In sum, action research is stimulated by the problem the teacher is faced
with in the classroom and her motivation to address that problem. The results of
action research may help the teacher to improve her teaching practice and
possibly the students‟ learning.
2.2. Rationale of using action research