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TABLE OF CONTENT
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
1
2. Purposes of the study
2
3. Research questions
2
4. Scope of the study
2
5. Significance of the study
3
6. Method of the study
3
7. Design of the study
3
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Communicative Language Teaching
5
2.1.1. Characteristics of Communicative Language Teaching
5
2.1.2. Cooperative Learning
6
2.2. Speaking skills
8
2.3.5.4. Improving students’ ability of negotiating meaning
17
CHAPTER III: THE STUDY
3.1. Setting of the study
17 v
3.2. The study
18
3.2.1. Methodology
18
3.2.1.1. Subjects
18
3.2.1.2. Methods of data collection
19
3.2.1.2.1. Questionnaires for students
19
3.2.1.2.2. Questionnaire for teachers
19
3.2.1.2.3. Classroom observation
20
3.2.1.2.4. Interviews
20
3.2.2. Data analysis
20
3.2.2.1. Data analysis of students’ survey questionnaire and direct interview
20
3.2.2.2. Data analysis of teachers’ survey questionnaire and direct interview
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ABBREVIATIONS
CLT: Communicative Language Teaching
CL: Cooperative Learning
FICT: Faculty of International Cooperation and Training
HaUI: Hanoi University of Industry
IG: Information Gap
L1: First Language
L2: Second Language
STT: Student’s Talking Time
TTT: Teacher’s Talking Time
Table 6: trainees’ evaluation of the effectiveness of IG activities
Table 7: Teachers’ purposes of using information-gap activities in speaking lessons
Table 8: Teacher’s criteria for choosing a suitable IG activity
Table 9: Teachers’ adaptation of activities
Table 10: teachers’ grouping techniques for pair/group work (2)
Table 11: Teachers’ instructions
Table 12: Teachers’ monitoring during the activity
Table 13: Teachers’ scaffolding
Table 14: Teachers’ encouragement to trainees’ use of English in an IG activity
Table 15: Teachers’ difficulties in conducting an IG activity
Table 16: teachers’ evaluation of the effectiveness of IG activity
1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents the rationale, purpose, scope, research questions, significance,
research methods and design of the study.
1. Rationale
Nowadays, when Vietnam is on the way to regional and global integration, a demand for
training students as competent communicators has been made for Vietnamese education in
general and foreign language education in particular. A high proficiency of spoken English
becomes not only an academic goal but one of the crucial keys to access advanced science
and technology. However, there exists one problem that teachers and students of English in
Vietnam cope with: the target language is mainly used in the classroom and learners have
few opportunities to use English in authentic contexts outside the classroom. This problem
sets a challenging task for teachers of English in Vietnam; that is to design communicative
activities which can provide students with “real” contexts for negotiating meaning so that
they can develop communicative competence. This requires some changes in teaching
information-gap activities in speaking lesson
- To explore teachers‟ attitudes towards the implementation of information-gap
activities in speaking lesson
3. Research questions
a. What are pre-departure trainees‟ attitudes towards the implementation of
information-gap activities in speaking lessons?
b. What are teachers‟ attitudes towards the implementation of information-gap
activities in speaking lessons?
c. How effective is the implementation of teaching speaking through information-gap
activities to pre-departure trainees at Faculty of International Cooperation and Training?
4. Scope of the study
Learners‟ success or failure in learning speaking can be affected by many factors which are
closely related. Among these factors, their opinions about what the teacher implements in
speaking lessons need taking into consideration. However, this study only focuses on pre-
departure trainees ‟ opinions about the implementation of information-gap activities in
teaching speaking, particularly, their evaluation of the effectiveness of these activities in
terms of promoting their participation and encouraging them to use English in speaking
lessons.
The 200 subjects chosen for this research are pre-departure trainees at preparatory stage at
FICT – HaUI. Therefore, it cannot be said that the results of the study are general to all
Vietnamese non-English majors.
3
In addition, due to the time limitation, the researcher observes only two classes, it seems
not reliable enough to come to the conclusion.
5. Significance of the study
The study is carried out with the hope to provide teachers of English at FICT – HaUI with
a deeper understanding about benefits of using IG activities in teaching speaking skill.
In addition, it is hoped that the study will be of great use in helping teachers find an
effective way to increase their students‟ participation as well as encourage them to use
information-gap activities.
2.1. Communicative Language Teaching
2.1.1. Characteristics of Communicative Language Teaching
The communicative approach (Communicative Language Technique or CLT) emphasizes
communication as the means and goal of foreign language learning.
The communicative approach aims to help students use the target language in a variety of
contexts. Its primary focus is to help learners create meaning rather than help them develop
perfect grammar or acquire native-like pronunciation. This means that successfully
learning a foreign language is assessed in terms of how learners have developed their
communicative competence. (Hymes, 1972)
The communicative approach is usually characterized as a broad approach to teaching
rather than as a teaching method. As such, it is most often defined as a list of general
principles. One of the most recognized of these lists is five features of CLT pointed out by
Nunan (1989):
- An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.
- The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
- The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language, but also on the
Learning Management process.
- An enhancement of the learner‟s own personal experiences as important contributing
elements to classroom learning.
- An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the
classroom.
These five principles show that the communicative approach is focused on the needs and
desires of their learners. Unlike L1 acquisition where the contexts for language use are
always available both inside and outside the classroom, when students learn a foreign
language or second language, they do not have such many opportunities to use the target
language outside the classroom. Therefore, bringing authentic materials into the classroom
is very important, and CLT meets this demand when it provides students activities which
have a close relationship to real communication everyday. In other words, CLT makes the
grouping students of different levels of language proficiency when working together on
specific tasks so that all of them can gain benefit from the “interactive experience”
6
As Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1994) state “cooperative learning is the instructional
use of small groups through which students work together to maximize their own and each
other‟s learning." In classrooms where collaboration is practiced, students pursue learning
in groups of varying size: negotiating, initiating, planning and evaluating together. Rather
than working as individuals in competition with every other individual in the classroom,
students are given the responsibility of creating a learning community where all students
participate in significant and meaningful ways. CL requires that students work together to
achieve goals which they could not achieve individually.
According to Johnson (2005), cooperation is not assigning a job to a group of students
where one student does all the work and the others put their names on the paper. It is also
not having students do a task individually with instructions that the ones who finish first
are to help the lower students. On the contrary, CL is a teaching strategy in which small
teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to
improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of the group is responsible not
only for learning what is taught but also for helping their partners learn, thus creating an
atmosphere of achievement.
Most teachers understand the value of collaborative work in classrooms and plan for their
students to work in pairs and groups. Students come to understand and extend the concepts
they need for their learning as they interact with each other and negotiate new learning.
Different learning activities have different purposes – for example, activities in which
students are asked to share different points of view or to reach a consensus help them come
to grips with a range of perspectives on a particular topic or concept. Such activities can
also support students‟ language learning. If teachers want their students to engage in
negotiation and interaction that promotes language learning, there are particular ways that
we can structure their learning tasks. Teachers are familiar with the use of the terms „task‟
and „learning task‟ to describe any piece of work a teacher assigns to students to advance
his ability of interpreting what is said to him.
In short, speaking skill can be considered as the ability to use language as a means of
communication. A person who has a highest level of speaking skill is the one who can
speak fluently, accurately and understandably every time, everywhere and in every
situation. That is what every learner wants to master. This is the reason why Bygate
(1987:2) considers speaking as “a skill which deserves attention every bit as much as
literary skills in both first and second language”.
8
2.2.2. Speaking skill in CLT
Among the four skills, speaking seems to be the most important that all learners want to
achieve mastery. A person who knows a language can be referred to as a “speaker” of that
language (Ur, 1996). Sharing the same opinion, Nunan argues that “to most people,
mastering the art of speaking is the single most important aspect of learning a second
foreign language”. That is the reason why it is necessary for a language course to involve
an essential component that is the classroom activities which can develop learners‟ ability
to express themselves through speech. Up to now, teaching speaking has called for great
concern of many pedagogic approaches. However, this research only focuses on teaching
speaking in the light of communicative approach.
According to Scott (p70, cited in Johnson&Morrow, 1981), “a communicative approach to
speaking emphasizes the use of language above the level of the sentence”. This is the point
that makes difference between the communicative approach and the structural approach in
teaching speaking. While the use of language is the focus of communicative approach,
structural one is only concerned with the production of grammatically accurate sentences.
Although dialogues are also used in the structural approach, no attention is paid to who is
speaking and there is no clear reason for occurrence of the dialogue. Therefore, it can be
said that communicative intent is not included in structural dialogues and it is impossible
for us to identify what communicative operations the learner can engage in as a result of
facilitator.
- Even participation: A successful speaking activity is the one which can assure the equal
participation among students in the class. Classroom activities should not be dominated by
some talkative members but should involve evenly distributed contributions of all students.
- High motivations: According to Craft (1978), “motivation can be assumed up, briefly, as
the student‟s desire and need to learn, the driving force for that makes him work hard, pay
attention and so on”. Some of the sources of motivation may be interesting topics,
encouragements and rewords. Learners are eager to speak because they are interested in the
topic and have something new to say about it, or because they want to make contribution to
achieve a task objective rather than being forced to do so.
- Acceptable level of language: The fact that learners can express themselves in utterances
that are relevant, easily comprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of
language accuracy is important. In speaking activities, errors that do not hinder
communication should be accepted.
- The focus on communication skills: The communicative approach put stress on the use of
language for communicative functions not just free talk. Therefore, strategic competence
10
such as how to initiate, terminate, repair and redirect communication as well as the
appropriate language to use in certain situations should be taught to students.
2.2.4. Problems in teaching and learning speaking skill
Speaking skill is considered one of the most difficult skills which students need to acquire.
Therefore, in the process of learning and teaching this skill, some practical problems are
unavoidable. Ur (1996: 121) mentions four problems that teachers may encounter in their
teaching speaking skill:
- Inhibition: There are some reasons that lead to students‟ inhibition in class. They may
include their worry about making mistakes, a fear of criticism or losing face or the shyness
of the attention that their speech attracts.
- Nothing to say: Many students often claim that they cannot think of anything to say even
when they are not inhibited. It means that they have no motive to express themselves
If two students are looking at a picture of a street scene and one says to the other, “Where
is the dog?” When he knows that the dog is sitting outside the post office because he can
see it as clearly as his fellow student can, then this is not communicative. But if one
student has the picture of the street scene and the other has a similar picture with some
features missing which he must find out from the first student, then the same question
becomes real, meaningful and communicative. (Johnson and Morrow, 1981: 62)
2.3.2. Roles of information-gap activities
All language use has a certain purpose such as to give information, to express ideas,
opinions or emotions, etc. However, based on what is going in the classrooms where the
traditional method is employed, it is obvious that much of the language practice lacks the
communication purpose. In these classrooms, the students are mainly encouraged to
produce isolated grammatically accurate sentences. By contrast, the communicative
approach emphasizes the use of language in particular contexts. Of all techniques used in
the communicative approach, IG activities seem to be the most widely-used because “it
creates conditions which closely parallel real-life situations where the reaction of a speech
partner is never perfectly predictable” (Harly and Allen, 1990: 197)
Sharing the same point of view on the role of IG activities, Norman, Lewis and Hedequist
(1986) argue that using IG activities is “a step away from formal practice towards an
activity which more closely mirrors the use of language outside the classroom”.
The important role of IG activities is also confirmed by Nunan (1989: 122) when he stated
that “information gaps can, in fact, act as a nucleus around which a range of other task and
exercise types can be constructed”.
12
From the above-mentioned things, it is obvious that IG activities play an important role not
only in creating conditions that promote communication among students in the classroom
but also in helping to design other tasks for communicative classroom.
2.3.3. Kinds of information-gap activities
There are some ways to classify kinds of IG activities and each author has the reason for
their classification.
other about their families would be an example of unique information which learners
supply from knowledge they already possess. Long (1990), referring only to supplied-to-
the-learner gaps, hypothesized that two-way are better than one-way for promoting
negotiation of meaning and that both are better than when no information exchange is
required.
2.3.4. Roles of teachers and students in information-gap activities
2.3.4.1. Roles of teachers
According to Wright (1987), the teacher serves two major roles: the “enabling” function,
i.e. to create conditions for learning to take place and the instructional function in which
he/she communicates knowledge to the learners. To encompass these two roles of teachers
in communicative language teaching, Littlewood used only one term “facilitator”. Breen
and Candlin (1980) also hold the same view with Wright and Littlewood; they, however,
added another two roles of the teacher: to act as a participant, and an observer and learner.
As a facilitator, the teacher may need to perform some more specific roles simultaneously:
to provide students with linguistic forms or skills that they need, to organize the classroom
activities, and to give help if necessary.
The students may find it difficult to begin the communicative IG activity directly because
they may lack the knowledge in linguistic forms or skills, which compose communicative
ability. Therefore, it is the teacher who is responsible for providing them with a command
of the linguistic system. In addition, the role of an organizer in the classroom is very
important because according to Harmer (1991), good organization has a strong effect on
the success of many activities. He claims that:
A lot of time can be wasted if the teacher omits to give students vital information or issues
conflicting and confusing instructions. The main aim of the teacher when organizing an
activity is to tell the students what they are to talk about (or write or read about), give clear
instructions about what exactly their task is, get the activity going, and then organize
feedback when it is over. This sounds remarkably easy, but can be disastrous if teachers
have not thought out exactly what they are going to say beforehand.
Apart from this, the teacher should divide the whole class into pairs or groups, and decide
on procedures of pair, group or class work. When the information gap is being filled, the
meaning in situations in which one person has information that the other(s) lack(s).
- Learners often engage in role play or dramatization to adjust their use of the target
language to different social contexts.
- Learners‟ needs, styles and aims are focused on or accounted for.
15
- Learners are given some control; their creativity and innovation are encouraged.
All of these roles help to enhance learners‟ sense of competence and self-worth, a sense of
mastery of their learning and thereby add to their intrinsic motivation.
2.3.5. Benefits of using information-gap activities in teaching speaking skill
2.3.5.1. Increasing students’ motivation for speaking
One of the challenges that many second language teachers face is motivating their students
to speak in the target language. Therefore, they always try to find activities that are
effective in promoting their students‟ motivation for speaking. Among these activities, IG
activities seem to be a right choice. According to Brown and Yule (1983), we are usually
motivated to tell people things we assume they do not know; information gap activities,
then, can provide students with a reasonable purpose to communicate in the target
language.
2.3.5.2. Ensuring equal students’ participation
As shown above, a speaking activity is said to be successful when all students participate
equally in the activity. In an IG activity, each participant is responsible for giving the
missing information to their partner to accomplish a specific task. A task cannot be
complete unless all members work together. Therefore, participation is even among
students when they engage in IG activities.
2.3.5.3. Developing both accuracy and fluency of students
In terms of accuracy, an IG activity acts as an aid in reinforcing the vocabulary and a
variety of grammatical structures. They allow students to use language forms and functions
in communicative ways.
Regarding fluency, IG activities is a good solution since every student is given the chance
to speak in the target language in a natural way. In addition, engaging in IG activities,
17
CHAPTER III: THE STUDY
This chapter elaborates the setting of the study, the informants involved in the study and
18
- Make questions to ask for further explanation or clarification from Australian
lecturers
- Join in small teams, express points of view and show agreement or disagreement
- Pass the end-of-semester reading and writing IELTS 3.5
As trainees are tested in all four skills, four language skills are taught at FICT with the aim
of providing trainees with knowledge to pass the exam as well as basic skills of English for
their future jobs. However, of the four skills being taught, speaking is considered the most
difficult one to be acquired. The difficulty lies not only in helping trainees generate or
organize ideas, but also in increasing their participation and motivating them to use English
in speaking lessons. In classroom interaction, the trainees are more enthusiastic when
familiar subject matters are presented in Vietnamese, except when they are asked to use
English by their teacher. In explaining new words, new concepts and new structures,
English is rarely used because of the fact that the trainees would not understand if they
were explained in English. By and large, in English speaking lessons, there is a
predominance of teacher-talk.
In order to help trainees improve their speaking skill, the faculty tried to choose a suitable
course book that can provide trainees with opportunities to practice their speaking skill
through communicative activities and the material chosen in the preparatory phase is New
Headway elementary – third edition (Liz & John Soars, 1999). This book includes four
skills in each lesson.
3.2. The study
This section will focus on the main components of the study: the methodology and data
analysis.
3.2.1. Methodology
3.2.1.1. Subjects
The participants in this study are the teachers and pre-departure trainees from Faculty of
International Cooperation and Training, Hanoi University of Industry.
Pre-departure trainees are from six classes K15VAT1, K15VAT2, K15VAT3 and
K15VAKT1, K15VAKT2 and K15VAKT3 from both majors Business Administration and
3.2.1.2.2. Questionnaire for teachers
The second questionnaire was delivered to 30 teachers of English at the research site. The
purpose of the questionnaire was to investigate the current practice of IG activities
speaking lessons by the teachers at FICT – HaUI who are teaching speaking to the pre-
departure trainees and to explore teachers‟ opinions of the effectiveness of IG activities. It
consists of four parts:
Part I was to elicit personal information of teachers including their gender, age and
20
teaching experience.
Part II was given to know how often the teachers use IG activities in teaching speaking.
Part III investigated how IG activities are implemented by teaches at FICT –HaUI.
Part IV examined teachers‟ evaluation of the effectiveness of IG activities.
All the questions were written in English.
3.2.1.2.3. Classroom observation
Apart from the survey questionnaires for trainees and teachers, classroom observation was
employed to obtain the most truthful information concerning the teachers‟ current practice
of IG activities at FICT – HaUI as well as to examine the trainees‟ participation and their
use of English in speaking lessons.
3.2.1.2.4. Interviews
In order to get better insight into the research questions, 15 trainees and 5 teachers were
randomly selected for the interview.
The questions in the interview were basically based on those in the questionnaire, but were
extended to include more open-ended questions to get more thorough understanding of the
reasons behind trainees and teachers‟ choice. The interview for trainees was done in
Vietnamese but the data were then transcribed and translated in English.
3.2.2. Data analysis
This part of the thesis is the treatment of all the data collected from the survey
questionnaires conducted on 30 teachers and 200 pre-departure trainees of FICT, HaUI,
from the direct interviews with 10 trainees and 5 teachers and from the classroom
in speaking class, the statistic is shown in the following chart:
Chart 2: trainees’ opinions of the sufficiency of IG activities in creating motivation
The chart demonstrates that nearly half of trainees (96 trainees) are satisfied with IG
activities. In the interview, some of the trainees claimed that:
“In my opinion the frequent use of IG activities is really enough to create motivation for
me as well as my classmates because in speaking lessons I find that when my teacher gives
us any kind of IG activities, especially games, we are very interested in them.”
“I feel very eager to participate in IG activities”.
Some of the trainees (34 out of 200 trainees) believed that IG activities are not enough to
motivate them in class. One of them said:
“In order to motivate us in speaking lessons, using IG activities seem to be insufficient. I‟d
like to have chances to participate in more motivational activities”.
The rest (70 trainees) said these activities‟ capability of creating motivation is reasonable.
This result implies that IG activities are quite interesting to trainees because they can
motivate them in class.
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