4
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
Pages
Acknowledgement
i
Abstract
ii
Table of contents
iii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1
1.1. The background of the study
1
1.2. Aims of the study and research questions
1
1.3. The scope of the study
2
1.4. The significance of the study
2
1.5. The method of the study
2
1.6. The organization of the thesis
3


3.6. Summary
14 CHAPTER 4: PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA
15
4.1. Students‟ English language background
15
4.2. The connection of speaking to reading, listening and writing skills
17
4.3. Students‟ difficulties in speaking English
19
4.4. Students‟ opinions on methods of overcoming their difficulties in
speaking English
28
4.5. Summary
30 CHAPTER 5: SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUSION
31
5.1. Pedagogical Implications
31
5.2. Conclusion
38
5.3. Limitation of the study and suggestions for further research
38
References
40
Appendices

themselves in English is of great importance for their future career, especially in modern
society where working with foreigners often occurs. For example, a candidate will be
impressive to employers if he or she obtains good English proficiency. However, the sad fact
is that students‟ English proficiency especially their ability to communicate in English orally
does not really meet employers‟ demand. Vietnamese people may be mostly good at reading,
writing skills and doing grammatical exercises, whereas they meet difficulties in listening and
especially in speaking English. Thus, the research on the difficulties in learning speaking of
students and some suggestions for those problems was necessary.
1.2. Aims of the study and research questions
The study was conducted to investigate the current learning of speaking skill of the
second year part-time students at A2 campus at University of Languages and International
Studies - Vietnam National University. Basing on the current learning English of students at
the university, the difficulties of students when practicing English speaking skill were
discovered and some recommendations to minimize those difficulties were suggested. 7
The above aims can be realized through the research questions:
1. What difficulties in improving English-speaking skill do the second year part time
students, A2 campus at University of Languages and International Studies -
Vietnam National University meet?
2. What should be done to minimize these difficulties and help to improve English-
speaking skill of the second year part-time students at University of Languages and
International Studies - Vietnam National University?
1.3. The scope of the study
The study of difficulties, recommendations of other language skills such as reading,
writing and listening to ameliorate the quality of learning English skills would be beyond the
scope of this study. In addition, due to the time constraints and the narrow-scale study, the
study only involves in the number of the 2
nd

setting of the study, the participants, the instruments, the data collection procedure, the data
analysis procedure and a brief summary. Chapter 4: presentation and analysis of data presents
and discusses the difficulties of students in speaking English and some student‟s suggestions
to reduce their difficulties. Chapter 5: Suggestions and Conclusion presents the pedagogical
implications in teaching and learning speaking English and the conclusion of the study.
Besides, limitations of the study are pointed out and suggestions for further research are also
proposed. 10
Discourse competence refers to the ability to manage turn-taking in conversation such
as taking a turn of talk, holding a turn and relinquishing a turn, open into or closing a
conversation, keeping a conversation going or clearing up communication breakdowns and
comprehension problems (Scarcella & Rebecca, 1992). Effective speakers and listeners have
also acquired a large repertoire of discourse markers, expressions that speakers use to express
ideas, show relationships of time, and indicate course, contrast and emphasis.
Strategies competence allows effective speakers to stretch their ability to communicate
effectively in the target language. Canale and Swain defines strategic competence as “how to
scope in an authentic communicative situation and how to keep the communicative channel
open” (1980, p.25).
Strategic competence consists of using communication strategies which come into play
when the learners are unable to express what they want to say because they lack the resourses
to do so successfully. They compensate for this either by changing their original intention or
by searching for other means of expression.
The learners can use achievement strategies to explain what they are trying to say and
find the ways of compensating for their insecure or inadequate knowledge of English; as a
result, they keep the conversation going and may encourage the listener to provide the
necessary language.
Moreover, learners can use reduction strategies to avoid the forms of which they are
uncertain and select the perhaps structure which they know. The question arising is whether
strategic competence can be trained. Certainly teachers can help students early in a language
program by teaching them appropriate questions for requesting help (eg: what does it mean?
How do you say?), and the language to ask for vocabulary items (eg: what do you call the
person who…? What do you call the thing that…?). The teacher can also act as listener in
classroom interaction and respond to students‟ appeals for help, providing language at the
point of need
However, Faerch, Haastrup and Phillipson (1985) referred to fluency as a component

them, their speaking ability maybe improved. In this case, learners have chance to notice
differences between their own use of language forms and those of the teachers, and can pay
attention to the correct forms. This provides the opportunities for intake and the further
development of the learner‟s interlingual systems. It is therefore possible, in the case of using 12
a cycle of preparatory and follow-up task to create a balance between accuracy and fluency
activity. An understanding of how learners use tasks can inform our decision-making about
how to incorporate them into language teaching program (Brumfit, 1984).
As communicative approaches have developed, teachers have been concerned to
ensure that students not only practice speaking in a controlled way in order to produce features
of pronunciation, vocabulary and structures accurately; but also practice using these features
more freely in purposeful communication. It has therefore become usual to include both
accuracy – and fluency – based activities from the beginning of the course.
The challenge for the communicative classroom is to find activities and procedures for
speaking which will prepare students for spontaneous interaction and which will aid the
acquisition process, though of course the two aims may usefully coincide. Since a particular
type of activity may provide for some of these things but not others, there is then the question
of how to create a varied program of activities which gives a range of opportunities for
speaking practice.
2.4. Speaking difficulties of language learners
Burn and Joyce (1997, p.134) identify three sets of factors that may cause reluctance
on the parts of students to take part in classroom tasks involving speaking. They suggest that
this reluctance may be due to cultural factors, linguistic factors, and psychological factors.
Cultural factors derive from learners‟ prior learning experiences and the expectations
created by these experiences. Students meet difficulties in communication when they are not
familiar with the cultural or social knowledge of the target language which required to process
meaning in communication.
According to Burn and Joyce, the linguistic factors that inhibit the use of the spoken

Nevertheless, teaching and learning English in non – English speaking environment
such as Vietnam, the learners do not have many chances to practice English outside the
classroom. This picture can be described as almost every student only speaks English, discuss
the English topics when they come to class. After the lesson, they come back to their real life
with their family and their work. The learners never speak English to their relatives or their
family members because all of them are Vietnamese and they only use Vietnamese in
communication. Therefore, when the learners use English in communicating to Vietnamese,
they may be laughed at and be thought that they are self-important. 14
Thus, in order to develop their second language proficiency, students should try their
best to overcome all their difficulties in learning English especially in speaking English. They
need to practice English as mush as possible such as participating in the widest possible range
of situations in which English is used as a mean of communication. For example, students
watch films in English, make friends with foreigners to communicate in English or gain
experience from their peers.
2.5. Summary
The chapter has briefly reviewed literature relating to the study. The definition of
speaking, the speaking competences, approaches in teaching and learning speaking skill as
well as speaking difficulties of language learners have been discussed. It is seen as the ground
for the study. In the next chapter, the methodology used in the study will be presented.
and then their teacher will correct these exercises in class. Apart from the textbooks, more
exercises which were such as reading, writing or use of English exercises are designed by
teachers and provided to students to help them self-study at home. After each three units,
students will have a review lessons and take a small test. However, in this stage; students must
also learn some theoretical subjects such as grammar, semantics and phonetics apart from
practicing the language skills and the second language, Chinese. As a result, the time for
practicing language skills is two lessons per weeks (Monday and Friday).

16
3.2. Participants
The total number of second year part time students at A2 campus is 127 into three
classes, about 40 students in each class. The students participated in the study are 120 students
which made up nearly 95% of the total.
Students come from different levels of personal background and they are both students
and work-people. Many learners are students who are currently studying at other universities
or colleges in Hanoi. Those are currently working in companies or state organizations. They
work or study at daytime and come to English classes in the evenings. Some people are neither
students nor work-people. They do not attend any courses at universities or colleges; they stay
at home and only take part in English course in the evenings.
Students are at different levels of English language proficiency, they are different.
Some of them have learned English for 7 years at junior and senior high schools; some have
only learned English for 3 years at high school. Although some of them study English rather
well, the rest are only good at grammar. They focus more on reading and writing skills,
meanwhile, not paid attention to speaking and listening skills. They are likely to do
grammatical exercises very quickly and well at their level but they cannot speak fluently even
with some common topics, and most of them do not feel self-confident or even a bit frightened
in communicating in English. Besides that, some students learnt other foreign languages such

In this study, the self-completion questionnaire was employed. The surveyees
completed the questionnaires by themselves without the assistance of the researcher. In using
the self-completion type, better cooperation from the part of respondent was sought as they
may complete the questionnaires, given sufficient time to think over the answers. In the
surveys questionnaires, there are multiple choices for them to choose in each however some
questions required for more than one option.
3.3.2. Class observation
According to Arthea & Verna (2005, p.22), observation is 'the act or practice of paying
attention to people, events, and/or the environment'. Therefore, observation serves as a useful
tool in doing research. It helps observer to watch people do and listen to what they say without
asking them about their views, feelings or attitudes (Robson, 1993, p.191). It is also an
appropriate technique for getting at 'real-life' in 'the real world'. This clarifies the validity of
the observed words. Moreover, by utilizing the observation instruments, the researcher will 18
maximize the usefulness of the hours he/ she spends in classroom observation and
participation (Arthea & Verna, 2005, p.19) to get data.
Classroom observation is a suitable method to obtain data for this study. First, it is
helpful to investigate the students' responses in the survey questionnaires if what they do in
practice is congruent with what they say. Second, through observation, the researcher actually
knows the way of cooperation and interactions between students and students and between
teacher and students, then to have a complete picture of teaching and learning language at the
university. Therefore, classroom observation was conducted to help doing the study
3.4. Data collection procedure
The questionnaires were administrated to 120 second year students at A2 campus. The
participants were asked to complete at class in 15–minute break during the time they did not
have lessons. Additionally, the purpose of the survey was to get firsthand information and it
took place in an informal atmosphere (at break time of their class), so they felt free and
comfortable to answer the questionnaire. All of the students stated that they were very happy
20
CHAPTER 4: PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA

4.1. Students’ English language background
Students‟ English language background focuses only on all four language skills such as
reading, listening, speaking and writing. Two first questions of the survey questionnaire are
“Which English languages skill(s) are you best at?” and “Which English language skill(s) do
you need to improve most?”
37.5
22.5
23.3
16.7
16.7

Important
A little bit important
Not Important
It is interesting that a similar percentage of students (87.5) general attached to speaking
a considerable importance. That is up to 66.7% and 20.8% of the students stated that speaking
skill is a very important and rather important skill respectively whereas only 12.5% of them
supposed speaking skill is little important. Such a high rating of the importance of speaking
may be connected with the demands of today‟s society where the ability to speak at least one
foreign language means a necessity. This requirement together with the position of English as
a world language may account for a strong position of speaking within language learning. A
good command of a language is considered an investment in a future life as it may extend
one‟s opportunities in looking for a decent and well-paid job in the further studies. There may
be an influence of popular culture with songs in English and English speaking media (e.g.
internet, TV and radio channels). Also, while studying, working or traveling abroad a good
speaking skill proves to be a great advantage. From this fact, it can be concluded that the
majority of the student are aware of the importance of speaking skill.
However, because of a lot of different reasons, students access their skill of speaking
English is respectively at low level in next question “How can you assess your English
speaking skill?”. The result was revealed in the figure 3. There are no excellent students at
speaking English. The number of students with good level at speaking English skill only made
up 17.5%. More than half of the students assume that they are not very good at this skill
(55%). 22
Figure 3: Students' assessment of their English speaking skill
0
9.1
57.5
30.8

are a lot of new words and phrases. First of all, teachers have to introduce the title or the main
idea of the reading exercise, and then instruct students how to read and how to employ the
reading topics. Sometimes teachers can give some questions relating to the reading task. Five
minutes or more might be for this process. After that, students maybe spend some time to read
and gain its main meaning. While reading the task, they should think over to understand. It
will take this process at least 15 minutes. Finally, students maybe spend much time doing the
reading exercises and discussing the reading contents because each student has their own
attitude. Sometimes, there are some students who cannot finish the exercises because of
shortage of time, so it is more difficult for them to catch up with or understand the teacher‟s
explanation. Therefore, thirty minutes is not enough for them to study each skill. Moreover,
students will be exhausted or boring if they have to learn all four language skills each lesson.
To overcome the difficulties of development unequally among four language skills,
each language skill should be taught in particular. Because second year students of English
learn practicing language skills only on Monday and Friday, it takes learners two weeks to
master four language skills if they are taught a language skill per lesson. Otherwise, speaking
language relates to three other skills, teachers can combine speaking with other skills in each
lesson such as speaking – reading, speaking – writing and speaking – listening, which helps
students practice speaking English skill regularly as well as concentrate more time on other
language skills. For example, in a two-hour lesson, teachers can coordinate speaking and
writing. At first, in pre-writing part, students can discuss about the topic, it takes them some
minutes to give outline by exchanging their ideas and then express themselves in front of the
class. Each group will share the main ideas or the supporting ideas to each other in order to
give the perfect outline for writing task. After that, each student will complete their own
writing essay basing on using conjunction. Hence, students can learn two language skills in
each lesson with the balance of time. This suggestion is better than the presented method and
maybe used to improve students‟ speaking English skill.



25
Students were possibly not encouraged to speak in their English classes. The importance of
speaking English was not appreciated.
6.1
27.2
34.2
16.7
53.5
37.7
13.2
19.3
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
A B C D E F G H
Figure 5: Students' diffculties in speaking English
A. Students are not used to speaking English
B. Students lack cultural knowledge
C. Students are ashamed when they make mistakes in speaking English
D. Students are introvert
E. Students lack motivation
F. Students are at low English proficiency (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation …)
G. Teachers do not appreciate importance on practicing students‟ English speaking
H. English speaking topics are not interesting
I. Others: ……………………………………………………

practice. The time in class was not enough for them to speak English well because they had to
learn other language skills. With regard to researcher‟s observation in speaking lessons at
classes, when students at the same group discussed about the received topics, some of them
spoke in English but the rest spoke in Vietnamese because they did not understand all English.
Especially, sometimes students who spoke in English were mocked at by the peers. However,
this data made up a small part in the total number. It meant that these students never practiced
English at home even if they did like that in classes. It is the fact that a few students lived in
language environment. Some students had chances to practice English with their colleagues if
they worked in foreign or non-government organizations. As a result, learners should self-27
study at home by listening to English songs, watching films in English or others programs in
English.
One additional problematic area related to students is their lack of cultural and social
knowledge. Statistics from figure 5 revealed that more than one third of the students have to
cope with the gap in cultural knowledge. This is perhaps, although students nowadays have
more chances to take easy accesses to information about various fields in the life via numerous
channels that is TV, radio, newspaper, magazines and especially internet. They only paid the
most attention to relaxation area with brief news, (i.e. the latest news of results of football
matches, the emergencies of computer games, the sensational news of film stars, famous
singers, …) whereas other fields are paid less attention to and/ or even are neglected.
Therefore, their understanding of society or culture or life-related areas is poor. Consequently,
they found it difficult to express themselves in English when discussing topics related to such
issues as generation gap, the achievement in information technology, famous brands and
products, the main shopping centers in the world and in their country.
A more important source of student reticence in oral English classes was concerned
with traditional cultural beliefs which emphasized modesty and respect for the old and
superior. Vietnamese people, consistent with Confucian ideology, generally showed respect to
elders and people in authority. This was truthfully reflected in the classrooms where teachers

and could give the excellent outline in Vietnamese but when presenting in front of the class in
English, they could not. This was the current situation of Vietnamese students when studying
English. Some students had knowledge of vocabulary but not grammar, so that when having
presentation, they could talk unconnected words, and they did not use conjunction to make
their speech better.
However, the number of students at low English proficiency made up only one third of
the total. It can be understood that nearly 60% of the students could have good knowledge of
English proficiency and they could study English well. According to the researcher‟s
observation at English classes, students were eager to discuss the given topics. They always
had a good outline to explain to other students and the teacher. For example, teachers often
divided the whole class into 6 groups after giving speaking topics. Then they would discuss
and gave their own ideas. In each group, almost of students were enthusiastic but some others
did not pay attention to and said nothing. To solve this problem is the responsibility of both