VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
 NGUYỄN THỊ THU HẰNG
M.A. MINOR THESIS Adapting Speaking Activities in "Tieng Anh 10" - A Way
to Reduce Students' Difficulties in Learning Oral Skills –
A Case of Nong Cong II High School, Thanh Hoa
(Thiết chỉnh một số hoạt động nói trong sách “Tiếng Anh 10” -
cách để giảm bớt những khó khăn của học sinh trong việc học kỹ năng
nói - một trường hợp ở trường THPT Nông Cống II, Thanh Hoá)
Field: English teaching methodology
Code: 601410
Cohort: MA 18 – Thanh Hoa Field: English teaching methodology
Code: 601410
Cohort: MA 18 – Thanh Hoa
Supervisor : Dr. Tô Thị Thu Hương
Hanoi, 2011

iii

ABSTRACT
Teachers of English have faced many obstacles in developing students’ macro
language skill, and the desire of how to improve the effectiveness of English speaking lessons
is really a strong motivation for this study. The study aims at investigating the necessity of
adapting English speaking activities, finding how to adapt them and then suggesting some
appropriate speaking activities for ‘Tieng Anh 10’ to help the 10
th
form students at Nong Cong
II school have more changes to practice speaking and improve their speaking ability.
The subjects involved in the study are 125 10
th
form students and 7 teachers who are
currently teaching or have taught speaking to 10
th
form students. The data collected from
questionnaires, interviews, notes from classroom observation and then feedbacks from both
teachers and students reveal that it is vitally necessary to adapt English speaking activities to

3. Scope of the study 2
4. Research questions 2
5. Research methodology 2
PART II: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I – LITERATURE REVIEW
I.1. Material Adaptation 3
I.1.1. Definition 3
I.1.2. Categories of materials adaptation 3
I.1.3. The purpose of materials adaptation 5
I.2. Oral communication 5
I.3. Factors causing difficulties in learning oral skills 6
I.3.1. Linguistic factor 6
I.3.2. Socio-cultural factors 6
I.4. English speaking skills 7
I.4.1.The nature of language skills 7
I.4.2. The importance of teaching English speaking. 8
I.5. English speaking and speaking activities 8
I.5.1 Characteristics of a successful English speaking activity 8
I.5.2. Categories of English speaking activities 9
I.6. Problems with English speaking and speaking activities 13
I.6.1. Problems with English speaking 13
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I.6.2. Problems with English speaking activities 14
CHAPTER II – AN OVERVIEW OF THE MATERIALS AND CURRENT
SITUATIONS OF TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING AT NONG CONG 2 HIGH
SCHOOL, THANH HOA 15
II.1. Brief introduction of Nong Cong 2 high school 15
II.2. Students and their English background knowledge 15
II.3. General description of the curriculum and the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’ 16

ACTIVITIES 31
V.1. Role play 31
V.2. Information gap 32
V.3. Co-operative learning 33
V.4. Discussion 35
V.5. Interviews 37

PART III: CONCLUSION 38
I. Summary of the study 38
II. Limitations and suggestions for further research 39
III. Suggestions for further research 39
REFERENCES 41
APPENDICE I

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LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS
Figure 1. The four –macro language skills
Table 1: Description of teachers’ work experience
Table 2: Students’ background of English
Table 3: Students’ perceptions of their difficulties in English speaking skills

policies have made. The new set of textbooks, for example, has been modified and applied
officially in high schools nationwide. And up to now, the new textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’ has
been officially put in application for five years for 10th grade students. The pilot period
may be long enough for administrators and teachers to draw out some suitable adaptations,
especial speaking skill.
However, we can not deny a fact that many Vietnamese students after seven years learning
English at schools still feel confused when communicating with foreigners or they even
could not say a simple utterance like an offer. Obviously, the ability to communicate in a
foreign language clearly and effectively contributes to the success of the learner in school
and success later in every phase of life.
At Nong Cong 2 High School (NC2.HS), like many high schools in Vietnam, English has
been a compulsory subject in its curriculum for many years and the English speaking skill
is one of five official parts in a unit. However, due to the demand of the high school
graduation exam, which means little attention has been paid to the speaking skill.
Sometimes, they feel bored with the difficult and uninteresting topics in the textbook
‘Tieng Anh 10’. With 6 year – experience in NC2.HS, the author finds that the English
lessons with speaking activities adapted or designed by teachers always motivate students
and get them involved in speaking effectively.
Moreover, improving speaking skill for 10th form students proves essential because most
students have not learned how to speak English when they were at lower secondary school
and their speaking ability is extremely poor.
All the above mentioned reasons lead to the choice of the study ‘Adapting speaking
activities in ‘Tieng Anh 10’ - a way to reduce students' difficulties in learning oral
skills - a case of Nong Cong 2 High School, Thanh Hoa’.
II. Aims of the study
The aims of the study are:
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- to investigate students’ difficulties in learning English oral skills and the current situation
of teaching the speaking activities to the 10th form students by teachers at Nong Cong 2


3

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I – LITERATURE REVIEW
I.1. Material Adaptation
I.1.1. Definition
In reality, a textbook can never totally be an effective tool for teachers to follow without
any material adaptation because of its intrinsic deficiencies such as linguistic inaccuracies,
out-of-datedness, lack of authenticity or lack of variety. Material adaptation is to
compensate for those deficiencies.
Masuhara (2004) points out that materials adaptation involve changing existing materials
in some forms so that they become suitable for specific purposes, learners, teachers or
situations’. Similarly, from Tomlinson’s point of view (1998: xi), materials adaptation
means to ‘make changes to materials in order to improve them or to make them more
suitable for a particular type of learners. Adaptation can include reducing, adding,
omitting, modifying and supplement’. Another author, Ellis, M (1986: 47) considered
adaptation the process of “retaining, rejecting, re-ordering and modification”.
According to Madsen and Bowen (1978: ix), adaptation is the action of employing “one or
more of a number of techniques: supplementing, expanding, personalizing, simplifying,
modernizing, localizing, or modifying cultural/ situational content”.
Materials adaptation means matching materials with the learner’s needs, the teacher’s
demands and administration’s purpose. To adapt materials we have to consider four major
factors:
I.1.2. Categories of materials adaptation
I.1.2.1. Material adaptation as addition
Material adaptation does not always require a great deal of extra work of teachers. As
stated by Madsen and Bowen (1978) and Mc Donough and Shaw (1993), the most natural
form of adaptation is extemporization, that is, a spontaneous response on the part of the

I.1.2.4. Adaptation as deletion/omission
Deletion is an adaptation procedure which involves removal of some of the linguistic items
and activities which are found to be extra and unnecessary. So, deletion is a process in
which materials are taken out rather than added. Materials should be reduced through
omission when the following situations are faced such as learners are clear about a
language point and are competent in a skill. There are too many tasks on a particular
area/point which concerned is not a priority. The item/task is not well designed or not well-
suited to its aim(s). And the topic is not appropriate for learners.
More or less, most of the scholars’ viewpoints I base my thesis on agree on some kinds of
change and addition when mentioning “material adaptation”.

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I.1.3. The purpose of material adaptation.
In reality, a textbook can never totally be an effective tool for teachers to follow without
any adaptation because of its intrinsic deficiencies such as linguistic inaccuracies, out-of-
datedness, lack of authenticity or lack of variety. Thus, I favor Madsen and Bowen’s
(1978) and Tice’s (1991) view that is the purpose of material adaptation is to compensate
for those deficiencies.
Another purpose of material adaptation, as explained by McDonough and Shaw (1993: 85)
is “to maximize the appropriacy of teaching materials in context, by changing some of the
internal characteristics of a course book to better suit our particular circumstances.”
A very common technique of “maximizing the appropriacy of teaching materials” is
modifying them in such a way that they seem more relevant to learners’ interests and needs
and this is important to all teachers of English because it can activate learners and
stimulate their motivation, and increased motivation, in turn, is likely to create a more
conductive classroom atmosphere.
I.2. Oral communication
Communication between human is a complex and ever changing process. When
communication takes place, speakers/ writers, one of the forms of communication is oral

I.3. Factors causing difficulties in learning oral skills
I.3.1. Linguistic factor
The speaking skill is so central to our thinking about language learning that when we refer
to speaking a language we often mean knowing a language. MacIntyre and Garder (1991)
point out that the skill which procedures most anxiety is speaking. This anxiety comes in
part from a lack of confidence in our general linguistic knowlegde. According to
Williamson (2011), this kind of knowledge or “Knowledge of the rules that govern how we
encode and decode linguistic utterances can be thought of as being organized into three
components: the semantic-syntactic knowledge base, the phonological knowledge base,
and the phonetic knowledge base”.
I.3.2. Socio-cultural factors
I.3.2.1. Social environment for L2/ FL acquisition
Environment, where the target language is not used as L1 in the community, provides l2/
FL learners only limited and sometimes faulty input. For such learners, the only input is
teachers’ or classmates’ talk – both do not speak L2 well. Learners in such environment are
exposed to the language only in the classroom where they spend less time in contact with
the language. The limited exposure to the target language and lack of opportunities to
practice speaking in such environments result into embarrassment or stress for them when
they are required to speak both in and out of the class.
I.3.2.2. Errors in social setting
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Although it is clear that language learners can not be without errors, errors can be a source
of anxiety in some individuals because they draw attention to the difficulty of making
positive social impressions when speaking a new language (MacIntyre & Gardner, 1989:
cited in Horwitz & Gregersen, 2002: 562). Errors in social settings are mostly overlooked
if they do not interfere with meaning because people consider it impolite to interrupt and
correct somebody who is trying to have a conversation with them. Interlocutors only react
to an error if they cannot understand the speech and try to adjust their speech with the
speaker in their effort to negotiate for meaning. It is only in the classroom environment that

and writing). All of them are integrated and supportive to each other.
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I.4.2. The importance of teaching English speaking.
It is observed that many Vietnamese teachers of English are good at teaching vocabulary
and grammar in order to translate texts and to prepare students for examinations. However,
organized lessons to practice speaking English can be a big challenge for both teachers and
teachers. Many teachers worldwide have to teach mainly grammar and vocabulary because
the areas are tested in examinations. This means that speaking is a neglected language skill
in many classrooms. Students may have a good knowledge of grammar and a wide range
of vocabulary, they can use this knowledge to pass the examinations, but they find it
difficult to speak English in the real-life situations.
A classroom is not only a place where we learn about the rules of language. It is also a
place where students can practice using the language in a supportive environment. As a
result, we, teachers have to try to speed up this process. This means that teachers have to
introduce new language and help students practice it often.
Teachers need to use lots of interesting ways to motivate students to speak and improve
their speaking ability. Teachers not only give them new words (vocabulary) and tell them
how to put words together correctly (grammar) but also give them opportunities to use and
practice the language they have learnt, also, providing extra speaking skills.
I.5. Speaking activities
I.5.1. Characteristics of a successful English speaking activity
According to Ur (1969: 120), a successful speaking activity consists of the following
characteristics:
- A lot of learners talk: learners speak as much as possible during the period of time
allowed. Time taken up with teacher talk or pauses is minimized.
- Even participation every learner takes part in the speaking activity. The
participants’ contributions are fairly distributed.
- High motivation: The topic makes them interested and eager to speak or learners
want to fulfill the task to get the goal.

Conversation provides a means for sharing experiences and solving problems.
Teachers can capitalize on the critical role of conversation in students’ lives and use it to
enhance their language learning. Through, experiences with the language processes,
students can discover a steadily expanding series of topics and purposes for conversation.
Students should have opportunities to talk about a variety of topics such as projects, books,
characters, television programs and videos. In conversation, it is important for students to
have useful vocabulary. Clarity and precision are the keys to effective word choice in
conversation. Teachers should not expect perfection from students in the use of unfamiliar
or difficult words, but rather should develop a supportive environment and group rapport
the encourage students to experiment with unfamiliar words.
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 Discussion
Discussion differs from conversation in that it generally has an identifiable purpose, such
as coming to clearer understanding of characters’ roles in a drama or exploring the
possibilities for publishing student writing. Discussion is similar to conversation with
regard to listening carefully, considering what others say, being courteous, and speaking so
that all can hear. Many of students’ conversational abilities will transfer to discussion
situations.
Discussion assists students in the development of reasoning, critical thinking, and
problems-solving skills. It gives them practice in expressing ideas orally in an organized
manner and enables them to arrive at conclusions, clarity or modify ideas, resolve
differences, and find alternative solutions. In group discussions, students many encounter
viewpoints different from their own. They come to see that there are many problems for
which no one finds appropriate solution. As well, discussion can serve as a means of
building consensus among group members.
Groupings of three to five are good for effective discussion. Everyone is able to contribute
to the discussion as a listener and as a speaker. In addition, a small group draws out quieter
students who many not contribute to larder group discussions.
 Storytelling

Making announcements can serve as useful oral speaking practice at any grade level. As
with other types of speech activities, criteria for making announcements should be
developed by the class. These criteria should address the recommended format and manner
of presentation and serve as guidelines for the students.
After the announcements are made, peers or the teacher might write the student announcer
an informal note, commenting on the strengths of the presentation and including one
suggestion for improvement.
 Role play
Role play provides the opportunity for students to develop and revise their understanding
and perspectives by exploring thoughts and feelings of characters in given situations. The
teacher may take a role, becoming an active participant in promoting independent thinking
and co-operative learning.
Role play helps students to develop empathy as they examine others’ ideas, feelings, and
points of view as well as oral expression and interpretation skills as they use language to
describe perceptions, emotions, and reactions In addition, it also helps students to improve
decision-making, problem-solving skills as they gain experience independence thinking
and co-operative learning.
 Interviews
An interview is a good way to gain information and provide the participants with practice
in proving speaking and listening skills. Results of interviews can be prepared for
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publication in reports or in the school newspaper, thus supporting the writing component of
the language arts program.
Students might interview people from the community who have firsthand knowledge
regarding topics being studied at school or they might interview visitors, fellow students or
teachers. It is important that the interview has a definite purpose.
 Informal Debate
Students who participate in debates have an opportunity to explore, listen, and enjoy
learning. Debates gave students additional opportunities to hear their classmates’ views

 Redundancy
The speaker has an opportunity to make clearer through the redundancy of language.
Learner can capitalize on this feature of spoken language.
 Reduced forms
Contraction, elisions, reduced vowel, etc all forms, special problems in teaching spoken
English. Students don’t learn colloquial contraction can sometimes develop a stilted,
bookish quality of speaking that in turn stigmatizes them.
 Colloquial language
Colloquialism appears both in monogues and dialogues. If learners are only exposed to
standard English and/ or ‘textbook’ language, they sometimes have difficulty in
understanding and producing words, idioms and phrases of colloquial language.
 Stress, rhythm and intonation
This is the most important characteristic of English pronunciation because the stress-timed
rhythm of spoken English and its intonation patterns convey important massages. But the
fact that the learners of English often find it difficult to pronounce English words or stress
the right syllables, to follow the tress-timed rhythm and intonation patterns of spoken
English.
 Affective factors
In the process of learning speaking, students often encounter the risk of saying out things
that may be wrong, stupid and incomprehensible. At those times, they tend to be anxious
because they do not want to be judged by other learners.
 Interaction
The greatest difficulty that the students face in learning to speak originates from the
interactive nature of most communication. Engaged in the process of negotiation of
meaning with any discourse constraints, learners have to do the complex task of choosing
what to say, how to say, when to say Learners are also affected by their interlocutors’
performance.
I.6.2. Problems with English speaking activities
Classroom activities that develop learners’ ability to express themselves through speech is
an important component of a language course where CLT is applied. However, it is more
15

CHAPTER II – AN OVERVIEW OF THE CURRICULUM AND THE TEXTBOOK
TIENG ANH 10 AND THE CURRENT SITUATIONS OF TEACHING ENGLISH
SPEAKING AT NONG CONG 2 HIGH SCHOOL, THANH HOA

II.1. Brief introduction of Nong Cong 2 high school
Nong Cong 2 high school is located in Nong Cong district which is in the rural area of
Thanh hoa. It has three grades: 10, 11, and 12, in each of which the number of students is
nearly the same.
As in every high school, English is one of the compulsory subjects in Nong Cong II high
school which is taught in every three forty-five periods per week. As for classroom
arrangement, the class size is averagely 42 -45, therefore, it is difficult to carry out a
communicative task in such a mixed –ability large class. The school also has a room with
an overhead projector and a computer with is occasionally used by teachers of all subjects
in teaching festivals that are held twice an academic year.
Concerning the teaching staff, there are nearly seventy teachers of all subjects, nine of
whom are teachers of English whose ages range from 30 to 52. Four of them graduated
from the English Department of Hong Duc University, Thanh hoa. One of them graduated
from French Department and she got English as the 2
nd
Degree. The rest were from Vinh
University, Nghe An. They all have at least 5 years of teaching experience. The teachers
mostly speak their mother tongue a habit, even in speaking classes. This results in the fact
that they face difficulties in pronunciation and expressing themselves in the target

including the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
- To have an appropriate, systematic and basic knowledge of English for upper secondary
school learners.
- To create a communicative environment or set for students to acquire English by using it
through activities in class.
- To broaden learners’ general understanding of and positive attitudes toward the language,
countries, people and cultures of some English countries, thus enrich their knowledge and
pride of their own culture and language.
The textbook is theme-based designed in which language and the skills are structured
round a certain topic or theme. The theme provides a context in which language is used so
as to help students be able to use the appropriate language structures in different
communicative situations.
The topic and vocabulary are recycled in guided group discussion (i.e. speaking practice)
before students listen to a lecture or tape (i.e. listening comprehension). A writing task
taking the form of narrative, letters or reports concludes the theme-based activities. Thus,
all four major language skills together with note-taking, analytical and interpretive skills,
etc can be practiced.
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II.3.2. Approaches of the textbook
The need to use English in actual communicative context is beginning to emerge as
educators realize that the traditional learning and teaching styles do not help learners’
communicate with foreigners, both native and non-native speakers of English. The shift
toward a new way of learning with more opportunities to use the target language, not only
in classroom but also in reality has brought a livelier atmosphere to learning and teaching
English in high secondary schools.
The new textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’ based on two popular approaches in contemporary
English teaching. Grammatical phenomenon is considered important to the development of
communicative skills, learner-centered approach and communicative approach. The two
oriented methods of teaching English is considered by task-based teaching. The new

lesson are to develop learners’ speaking skills on given topic. In each speaking lesson,
there are 3 or 4 tasks, Task 1 and task 2 focus learners’ language input and develop
language competencies as well as language specific functions such as expressing
preferences, talking abour the uses of computer, giving instructions, expressing opinions,
asking for and giving information, expressing agreements and disagreements, and making
comparison and contrast etc. Task 3 – 4 get students synthesize specific competencies
and develop a text for 1-2 minute speaking practice with or without the guidance of the
teachers.
Although designed to renovate the teaching and learning of English in Vietnam, the
textbook Tieng Anh 10 is not without faults. Teachers and students report that sometimes,
it is very difficult for them to just follow the pre-designed speaking activities in the
textbook. This points to the need to investigate into this problem. The current study is such
an attempt.
The next chapter presents the methodology used in this study.