VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
LÃ THỊ HƯỜNG USING DISCUSSION ACTIVTIES TO INCREASE MOTIVATION AND
SPEAKING PROFICIENCY OF SECOND-YEAR EFL STUDENTS AT
HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY: AN ACTION
RESEARCH STUDY

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤNG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG THẢO LUẬN NHẰM
NÂNG CAO ĐỘNG LỰC VÀ TRÌNH ĐỘ NÓI CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ
HAI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KINH DOANH VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ HÀ NỘI) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 6014.0111

Hanoi, 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

TESOL at the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages and
International Studies - Vietnam National University, and that it has not been
previously submitted to this University or any other institution in application for
admission to a degree, diploma or other qualifications. L Th Hường

H Ni 2014 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to acknowledge the debt of gratitude to my supervisor,
Dr. Nguyen Duc Hoat for his helpful suggestions, invaluable critical feedback and

Business and Technology. To achieve the desired aims of the study, an action
research was carried out. Class observation and survey questionnaires for students
were used to measure students' level of motivation before and after the
implementation. Besides, to clearly see the change in students' speaking proficiency
after applying discussion activities in speaking lessons, oral tests were also used as
data collection method.
The results of the study showed that discussion activities helped increase
motivation of almost all of the students in speaking lessons. In addition, the results
also revealed that after using discussion activities in speaking lessons, some of the
students could improve their scores in the post-test. Although there was not too
much change, it was proved that discussion activities played a certain role in
improving the students' speaking proficiency.
LISTS OF TABLES AND FIGURES

TABLES:
Table 1.1. Students' oral evaluation criteria 13
Table 2.1. The timetable of the action implementation 25
Table 3.1. Students' speaking opportunities during speaking lessons 32

2. Aims of the study 3
3. Research questions 3
4. Significance of the study 3
5. Scope of the study 3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT 4
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4
1.1. Speaking skill 4
1.1.1. The importance of teaching and learning speaking skill 4
1.1.2. EFL speaking processes 4
1.2. Characteristics of a successful speaking activity 6
1.3. Discussion and students' speaking proficiency 7
1.3.1. The role of discussion in improving students' speaking proficiency 7
1.3.2. Types of Discussion Activities 8
1.3.2.1. Brainstorming activities 8
1.3.2.2. Organizing activities 9
1.3.2.3. Compounding activities 11
1.4. Assessing speaking skill 12
1.4.1. Oral tests 12
1.4.2. Speaking proficiency testing criteria 13
1.5. Motivation 15
1.5.1. Definitions 15
1.5.2. Types of Motivation in language learning 16
1.5.3. Factors affecting motivation in foreign language learning 16
1.5.4. Techniques for improving students’ motivation in speakinglessons 18
1.6. Previous research 20
CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 22
2.1. Research design 22
2.2. Setting and subjects of the study 23
2.3. Research procedures 24
2.3.1. Conducting preliminary investigation 25

APPENDICES I 1

PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Statement of the problem and rationale of the study
One of the main purposes of studying English is to use it for communication.
According to O'Malley and Pierce (1996), among the four skills, speaking seems to
be an important skill that learners should acquire. Therefore, to teach learners of
English to be able to speak English well is said to be one of primary goals in
learning the target language.
However, for non-native EFL speakers it is not easy to communicate effectively
in English because learners of English have to master many important elements of
English including vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, fluency and comprehension.
This requires teachers of English to apply creative teaching methods to the teaching
and learning speaking skill so that they can motivate their students to take part in
speaking activities and also increase their speaking proficiency.
At Hanoi University of Business and Technology (HUBT), the teachers of
English have used a lot of activities with the aim to increase motivation of their
students and their speaking proficiency as well. Among the activities given in the
course book namely "Market Leader - Pre-intermediate", discussion activities such
as guessing, comparing, surveys or detecting differences are usually used in
speaking classes. During the teaching and learning English speaking for the
second-year EFL students, however, many problems arising have challenged the
teachers and their students to their goal. The most apparent problem is that some
students seem to have no or little interest in the discussion activities. Some do not

problems by putting those into social psychological laboratory and finds out the real
causes and remedies for those problems. Furthermore, because of the limit of time,
by using action research the researcher could find out an immediate and quick
solution of the problems.
All these conditions, henceforth, offered the researcher a chance to conduct a
study on "Using Discussion Activities to Increase Motivation and Speaking
Proficiency of Second-Year EFL Students at Hanoi University of Business and
3

Technology: An Action Research Study.”
2. Aims of the study
The study aims at finding out whether discussion activities are used effectively
in motivating the EFL second-year students at HUBT in learning speaking skill.
Besides, the study also investigates how discussion activities can increase speaking
proficiency of the students.
3. Research questions
To fulfill the aims of the research, the two following research questions should
be answered:
1. How effective are discussion activities in motivating the students in learning
speaking skill?
2. To what extent, do discussion activities increase speaking proficiency of the
students?
4. Significance of the study
It is hoped that the results of the study will provide the researcher as well as
English language teachers with the understanding of discussion activities, students'
motivation in speaking skill and their speaking proficiency. Secondly, the results of
the study may be useful for teachers of English at Hanoi University of Business and
Technology in particular and those in Vietnam in general to improve their speaking
lessons, which in turn, may result in the improvement of their students' motivation
in speaking skill and their English speaking proficiency.

and intonation, but also the choice of words and inflections in the right order to
convey the right meaning. He argues that speaking is a skill which deserves
attention every bit as much as literacy skills, in both first and second language. The
learners are often expected to speak with their high confidence to implement their
most basic transactions. Therefore, it is the vehicle of social relationships, ranking,
of professional advancement and of business. It is also a medium through which
much language is learned, and which, for many, is particularly conductive for
learning.
5

Speaking can be considered as one of the most important skills for EFL students
but quite difficult for them to master. There are many problems that EFL students
may have such as lack of vocabulary, grammar or too little practice. There are four
main problems in speaking as suggested by Ur (1996: 121) which are:
Inhibition
Unlike reading, writing or listening activities, speaking requires some degree of
real-time exposure to an audience. EFL students are often inhibited about trying to
say things in a foreign language in the classroom: worried about mistakes or simply
shy of the attention that their speech attracts.
Nothing to say
Even not being inhibited, students often complain that they cannot think of
anything to say.
Low or uneven participation
Only one participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be heard; and in large
groups, this means that each one will have only little talking time. This problem is
compounded by the tendency of some learners to dominate, while other speaks very
little or not a tall.
Mother tongue use
In classes where all, or a number of the learners share the mother tongue, it is
easier for them to use their mother tongue because it looks naturally, and because

contributions are fairly evenly distributed. Whether the task takes place among the
whole class or in small groups, a successful task should encourage speaking from as
many different students as possible. The task should be designed in a way so that
the outspoken students do not dominate discussions. When necessary, the teacher
may interfere to guarantee equal opportunities for students of different levels.
The third characteristic is that motivation is high. It means 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 contribute to achieving a task objective. Research has
shown that motivation is one of the most important variables in successful language
learning. Teachers can do a lot to increase and maintain the motivation of students
7

by the types of tasks that they organize in class. Students are eager to speak, when
the topic is interesting or there is a clear objective that must be reached. Again,
great care should be taken to make sure the task is in line with the students' ability
to deal with the task. If the task is too easy, the students may think it is childish and
thus lose interest.
Then the last characteristic is that language is of an acceptable level. Learners
express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to each
other and of an acceptable level of language accuracy. In a successful speaking task,
the language is at the right level. The task must be designed so that students can
complete the task successfully with language that they have. If the students lack too
much vocabulary, the task will become frustrating and the students are likely to give
up or revert to the native language.
In practice, however, few classroom activities succeed in satisfying all the
criteria mentioned above. Therefore, language teachers should make great efforts to
employ a variety of effective techniques to create some of the mentioned-above
criteria. The two discussion activities applied in this study - debates and layout
problems, can help increase students' participation in speaking tasks, and language
used in these activities is of an acceptable level because it is based on what they

fulfilling the task given to their groups. It can be summed up that the strong points
of discussion technique are students are able to promote their high-level thinking,
initiative learners, autonomous language users, caring students and high responsible
students.
In short, there are many other researchers sharing similar points of view with
the two authors that discussion has great effect in improving students' speaking
proficiency.
1.3.2. Types of discussion activities
There are a lot of activities used in discussion; however, focusing on
task-centred discussions Ur (1981: 25) suggests that the activities should be divided
into three sections - brainstorming, organizing, and compound.
9

1.3.2.1. Brainstorming activities
Brainstorming is the techniques whereby members of the group let loose a hail
of possible solutions or suggestions, in random order as they occur to them. There
are some common activities as the following ones:
● Guessing Games
Guessing is one of the simplest and most well-known brainstorming activities that
exist, and is very easily transformed into a group discussion game. There are always
two sides, called here the 'knower(s)' and the 'guesser(s)'. The guessing game lends
itself to use by classes whose English is comparatively limited, since it is based on
the simplest types of utterances: simple questions or statements, brief phrases,
single words.
● Finding connections
The thinking basis here is the search for common denominators or links between
different items. Unlike guessing games, these activities are unsuitable for the very
earliest stages language learning; they can be used only with students who have a
wide enough vocabulary to cope with the very extensive imaginative invention
required, and who have a reasonable mastery of the tense system.

causal, temporal or professional relationships between them. The group is given
several pictures, sentences or passages and asked to put them into some sort of
logical order. The picture-sequence exercise is more appropriate for younger or
more elementary classes while the sentence-sequence for older or more advanced
ones.
● Priorities
A specific application of the concept of ordering is that of defining priorities. The
language used consists mostly of comparisons, and lower-level classes may benefit
from a little practice in comparative and superlative constructions beforehand.
● Choosing candidates
This is another exercise which requires assessment and comparison, but here
participants are asked to choose only one item for a certain purpose. Many different
language functions may be needed and the number of different structures needed is
11

correspondingly large.
● Layout problems
These are exercises involving some preliminary reading, and are suitable for mature,
advanced students. The basic procedure is similar to that of Choosing candidates.
● Combined versions
This activity begins rather like picture differences, but here texts are used instead of
pictures, and the identification of differences is only the preliminary. The main task
before students is to compare the different variations and decide which is right, on
the basis of common sense and consistency.
1.3.2.3. Compounding activities
● Composing letters
The task is to compose appropriate responses to letters that are in some way
provocative: advising, insulting, appealing, complaining, threatening - anything, in
fact, which stimulates a reaction from the recipient. Such letters are not hard to
prepare, no specific set of language items need preparation, and also the

students were supposed to work in small groups and then discuss with the whole
class. The first activity is debates which may have some disadvantages including the
relative lack of participation. Therefore, to increase students' involvement in the
activities, the researcher - teacher divided that her class into three or four groups,
each of whom is given a motion for debates: two of these supporting different
points of view. This activity is suitable for multi-level students. The second activity
- layout problems may require students to have some preliminary reading before
working out the solution to the problems. By giving students some tasks at home
requiring them to search for and read the materials in individuals and in groups at
home, students will have something to say and discuss in class.
1.4. Assessing speaking skill
1.4.1. Oral tests
A question for a teacher is how students' speaking ability can be assessed in the
foreign language. In some points, testing speaking is not as straightforward as
13

testing grammar or vocabulary. So Sárosdy (2006, p.146) states:
"Testing speaking ability is an important aspect of language testing, but it is
very difficult to test, as it is a complex skill, moreover speaking skills cannot be
separated from the listening skills in many tests of oral production. This
interdependence of the speaking and listening skills makes it difficult to analyze
precisely and reliably what is tested at any one time."
In the project oral testing, Asif (2011) says that there are three types of oral tests
which are: monologue speaking, dialogue speaking, and multilogue speaking.
According to the author, a monologue (monolog) is implemented when the speaker
speaks his or her thoughts aloud, directly addressing another character or speak to
the audience, especially the former. The author also states that dialogue speaking is
the most common type of oral test which is used to test students' production dialog
material. In this type of speaking, hearing recitation of memorized dialogues was
the most often used. And the last types of oral test is multilogue speaking. In this


slight foreign accent
Good range of vocabulary,
occasional grammar slips, slight
foreign accent
4
Effective communication in
short turns
4
Wide vocabulary appropriately used,
virtually no grammar errors,
native-like or slight foreign accent
5
Easy and effective
communication, uses long turns
5
Total score out of 10:
Table 1.1. Students' oral evaluation criteria
Furthermore, Kent (2001) points out some oral evaluation criteria which are:
Fluency of speech, Grammar use, Listening comprehension, Pronunciation and
Vocabulary appropriateness and complexity. He also states that for each point of
evaluation, students are graded on a Likert-type scale (1: being poor, 2: below
average, 3: average, 4: above average, 5: excellent.)
It is also written in IELTS speaking band descriptors (published version) that
students' English speaking proficiency should be evaluated on four criteria such as:
fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy and
pronunciation.
In short, there are many criteria to assess students' speaking proficiency.
However, to choose a suitable technique to assess speaking proficiency is part of the
problem. For the evaluation criteria, it should be evaluated by the examiner at

learner's interest in and enthusiasm for the teaching method used in class, their
active participation or constancy with the learning task as indicated by levels of
concentration and enjoyment. Learning process can only make sense if students
enjoy activities and work hard. From the researcher's point of view, this definition is
exactly right for the motivation in this study.
It could be inferred from the definitions above that motivation is the effort,
enjoyment, enthusiasm and constancy that learners devote to the learning tasks as
well as the challenging activities conducted by the teachers to reach the setting -
goals in foreign language learning. Thus, when attempting to enhance learners'
16

motivation in learning a foreign language, different aspects or stages of motivation
and factors affecting it should be concerned.
1.5.2. Types of Motivation in language learning
Many kinds of motivation in foreign language learning have been studied by
researchers, however, this research only mentions to the main ones. The most
well-known classification of motivation has been made in cognitive terms as
whether it is internal or external to the learner. In this respect, according to Dornyei
(2001a, p.27) intrinsic motivation is to do with "behaviour performed for its own
sake in order to experience pleasure and satisfaction". Concerning learning, it can
be said that the drive or stimulation to learn comes from within the students, hence,
the teacher or instructor does not have to " manipulate" the student in any way in
order to make him learn. It is an inner desire of the student to fulfill a positive
learning outcome. Intrinsic motivation itself is goal related, therefore, it is
independent of any kind of external value.
Extrinsic motivation, as Dornyei (2001a: 27) indicates, is about "performing a
behaviour as a means to an end, that is, to receive some extrinsic reward or to avoid
punishment". This motivation arises from the use of external rewards of bribes such
as food, praise, free time, money or points toward an activity. These incentives are
all external, in that they are separate from the individual and the task.