6

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Teachers’ experience
Table 2: Teachers’ facts and opinions concerning large classes
Table 3: Difficulties in teaching speaking skill to large English classes
Table 4: Difficulty in managing class and monitoring students’ work
Table 5: Solutions to manage class and monitor students’ work
Table 6: Difficulty in promoting interaction in classes
Table 7: Solutions to promote interaction in classes
Table 8: Difficulties posed by students
Table 9: Solutions to deal with difficulties posed by students
Table 10: Difficulty in giving students maximum opportunities to show the product
Table 11: Solutions to help teachers give students maximum opportunities to show the product
Table 12: Difficulty in selecting activities
Table 13: Solutions to select activities
Table 14: Difficulty in teaching preparation
Table 15: Solutions to teaching preparation
1.1.1. What is a large class? .6
1.1.2. Challenges of working with large classes .7
1.1.3. Attitude towards teaching English in large classes .7
1.2. Teaching speaking skill .8
1.2.1. Concept of speaking .8
1.2.2. The importance of teaching speaking skill in the classroom .9
1.2.3. Characteristics of a successful speaking activity .9
CHAPTER 2: PRACTICAL RESEARCH…………………………………………………11
2.1. The English teaching and learning context ………………………………………… 11
2.2. Methods of the study ……………………………………………………………………12 8
2.2.1. Subjects of the study…………………………………………………………… 12
2.2.2. Instruments of the study………………………………………………………… 12
2.2.3. Data collection procedure……………………………………………………… 13
2.3. Data analysis and discussion ………………………………………………………… 14
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND RECOMMANDATIONS ………………………………25
3.1 Findings………………………………………………………………………………… 25
3.1.1. Teachers’ difficulty in teaching preparation…………………………………… 25
3.1.2. Teachers’ difficulty in managing class and monitoring students’ work………….26
3.2. Some recommendations…………………………………………………………………27
3.2.1. Creating a Small-Class Atmosphere in a Large-Class Setting……………………….27
3.2.1.1. Learn students' names………………………………………………………… 27
3.2.1.2. Give clear instructions………………………………………………………….27
3.2.1.3. Use a microphone………………………………………………………………29
3.2.1.4. Move around the classroom or lecture hall…………………………………… 30
3.2.2. Encouraging Class Participation…………………………………………………… 29
3.2.2.1. Divide the class into pairs/groups………………………………………………30
3.2.2.2. Give participation points……………………………………………………… 31

size and student performance. The results of some studies show no significant relationship
between class size and student performance (Hancock, 1996; Kennedy & Siegfried, 1997),
while other studies favor small class environments (Gibbs, Lucas, & Simonite, 1996; Borden
& Burton, 1999; Arias & Walker, 2004). Results vary based on the criteria used to gauge
student performance, as well as the class size measure itself. When traditional achievement
tests are used, small classes provide no advantage over large classes (Kennedy & Siegfried,
1997). However, if additional performance criteria are used (e.g., long-term retention,
problem-solving skills), it appears that small classes hold an advantage (Gibbs et al., 1996;
Arias & Walker, 2004).
c. Effectiveness of teaching methods
The traditional passive view of learning involves situations where material is delivered to
students using a lecture-based format. In contrast, a more modern view of learning is
constructivism, where students are expected to be active in the learning process by
participating in discussion and/or collaborative activities (Fosnot, 1989). Overall, the results of
recent studies concerning the effectiveness of teaching methods favor constructivist, active 10
learning methods. The findings of a study by de Caprariis, Barman, & Magee (2001) suggest
that lecture leads to the ability to recall facts, but discussion produces higher level
comprehension. Further, research on group-oriented discussion methods has shown that team
learning and student-led discussions not only produce favorable student performance
outcomes, but also foster greater participation, self confidence and leadership ability (Perkins
& Saris, 2001; Yoder & Hochevar, 2005). Hunt, Haidet, Coverdale, and Richards (2003)
examined student performance in team based methods. In contrast to these findings, a study by
Barnes & Blevins (2003) suggests that active, discussion-based methods are inferior to the
traditional lecture-based method. A comparison of lecture combined with discussion versus
active, cooperative learning methods by Morgan, Whorton, & Gunsalus (2000) demonstrated
that the use of the lecture combined with discussion resulted in superior retention of material
among students.


In short, although there have been a variety of books and researches on teaching and learning
in large classes, but there is inadequate research touching upon the issues of teaching speaking
skill to large English classes. Moreover, speaking skill is fundamental to people’s
communication. This fact leads me to do this study.

2. Rationale
Most teachers agree that teaching a small group of students is easier, more enjoyable, and less
time consuming than teaching a large group. Unfortunately, due to budgets, space, or lack of
teachers, many ESL schools only offer large classes. In some schools, large classes may
consist of up to 50 or more students and Thành Đô University is not an exception.
What Gorlach (1995) said is true in the case of Thành Đô University. Class size ranges from
forty to fifty students, which makes it difficult for teachers to arrange activities enabling
students to practice speaking. Over-sized English classes make speaking lessons stiff and
unmoving.

Speaking skill should be kept in mind to be the most popular and effective way of
communication. But how to teach speaking skill effectively when there are so many students
in a class is a matter of great concern. 12
The study is designed to find out the problems of large size English speaking teaching classes
and to suggest the use of some solutions to minimize the difficulties of this reality.
3. Objectives of the study
The objectives of the study comprise the followings:
a. To identify the practical problems of large size English speaking teaching classes at Thành
Đô University.
b. To discover suitable solutions to minimize the difficulties and enhance the effectiveness of
teaching English speaking skill in large classes at Thành Đô University.

Chapter 1, Theoretical background, presents the basic theoretical background on two issues:
Teaching English in large classes in general and teaching speaking skill in large classes in
particular.
Chapter 2, Practical research, consists of three parts:
The first part, The English teaching and learning context, provides the background information
about the university, the teachers, the students, the materials as well as facilities for English
teaching and learning.
The second part, Methods of the studies, shows how the research was carried out. Subjects,
instruments of the study, procedure of data collection, and methods of data analysis are found
in this part.
The third part, Data analysis & discussion, presents the results of the questionnaires and
classroom observations.
Chapter 3, Findings and recommendations, proposes the findings concluded from the results of
the third part of chapter 2 and some recommendations for teachers at Thành Đô University in
the hope of helping them to minimize the difficulties and maximize the benefits in large
classes which are not only common in Thành Đô University but also in Vietnam’s universities
and colleges. 14


classes (1988) in which they indicate that an average large class may be from 40 students.

1.1.2. Challenges of working with large classes
In large classes, students come from different backgrounds, areas and they are different in
learning styles, preferences levels of English proficiency, and general attitudes towards
English. Therefore, these classes are usually multilevel and cause various challenges for
effective teaching and learning English.
The most difficulty concerning classroom management in which teachers find it troublesome
and stressed is to control the whole class effectively and give students different learning styles
individually. In such large classes, students are easy to get bored, frustrated as stronger student
may feel held back while the weaker ones may feel pressured. Moreover, according to Ur
(1996: 303), teachers of large classes also face with the problems of discipline, correcting
written assignments, creating effective learning for all, finding suitable materials, and
activating all students, especially silent ones.
In large classes, teachers neither make sure if their students are learning effectively because
the tasks given are either too difficult or too easy for many of them nor they can find topics
and activities that keep all students interested because students are crowded and they are also
different. More seriously, teachers find it too difficult to activate students. They do not take
part in class activity, or they are silent, only few students appear to respond to teachers’
questions.
1.1.3. Attitude towards teaching English in large classes
"The issues raised by teaching in large classes are rarely addressed. Those teachers - and they
are numerous - who have to cope with classes that contain 50 or more learners are therefore
often ill-prepared to deal with the situation in which they find themselves in schools." (Hayes,
1999) Most English teachers tend to view teaching English in large classes rather negatively. 16
They often associate large English classes with disorderliness, lack of control, lack of students'
attentiveness, lack of teacher-student interactions, and therefore, lack in efficiency and

learner motivation and making the English language classroom a fun and dynamic place to be.
1.2.1. Concept of speaking
Speaking is fundamental to human communication. Different linguists have different concepts
of speaking, but they all agree with this idea.
Brown (1994) defines speaking as an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves
producing, receiving and processing information.
In Brown and Yule’s opinions (1983), spoken language consists of short, fragmentary
utterance in a range of pronunciation. Usually, there is a great deal of repetition and overlap
between one speaker and another. Speaker usually uses non-specific references. They also add
that spoken language is made to fell less conceptually dense than other types of language such
as prose by using the loosely organized syntax, and non-specific words, phrases and filters
such as oh, well, uhuh.

1.2.2. The importance of teaching speaking skill in the classroom
a. Motivation
Many students equate being able to speak a language as knowing the language and therefore
view learning the language as learning how to speak the language, or as Nunan (1991) wrote,
"success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the (target)
language." Therefore, if students do not learn how to speak or do not get any opportunity to
speak in the language classroom they may soon get de-motivated and lose interest in learning.
On the other hand, if the right activities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a
lot of fun, raising general learner motivation and making the English language classroom a fun
and dynamic place to be.

b. Speaking is fundamental to human communication
Just think of all the different conversations you have in one day and compare that with how
much written communication you do in one day. Which do you do more of? In our daily lives
most of us speak more than we write, yet many English teachers still spend the majority of
class time on reading and writing practice almost ignoring speaking and listening skills. Do


concept of speaking by different linguists has presented. Additionally, the importance of
teaching speaking skill in the classroom has also mentioned. Finally, some characteristics of a 19
successful speaking activity have been reviewed. In next chapter, the English teaching and
learning context at Thành Đô University; research methods including subjects of the study,
instruments of the study, data collection procedure; and data analysis and discussion will be
presented.

CHAPTER 2: PRACTICAL RESEARCH

2.1. The English teaching and learning context

Thành Đô University was founded in 2004, switching from Thành Đô college of Technology.
As a new-born university, it has coped with many difficulties in teaching and learning.
In Thành Đô University, English teaching and learning activities are mostly carried out inside
the classrooms which are designed for lecture lessons with the only classroom equipment – a
chalkboard. The only type of teaching aid that the Foreign Language Department has is
cassette recorders. However, these cassette recorders are not in good condition due to their
oldness. Thành Đô University also has other equipments like projectors, video recorders,
television but they are used for the students of English only.
The materials for reference and self-study are not available for teachers and students at Thành
Đô University. In the library there are only some English book but they are not really helpful
for teachers and students.

In spite of difficulties and challenges, English is always considered of great importance by all

knowledge of English for their next years. The final test designed by the teachers of English at
the University assesses students’ listening, reading and writing in the first semester and plus
speaking in the second period.

2.2. Methods of the study
2.2.1. Subjects of the study
Teachers were the central unit of analysis in this study because in any teaching and learning
process, the teacher is the key factor, responsible for promoting or restraining students’
learning.
The subjects of this study are 20 teachers of English from Foreign Language Department at
Thành Đô University. Most of them are young and energetic. They are willing to devote their
time and enthusiasm to language teaching: researching and debating to find out an appropriate 21
and progressive way to teach English effectively. They are aged from 23-46 and graduated
from Hanoi University of Foreign Languages and International Studies- Vietnam National
University- and Hanoi University.
2.2.2. Instruments of the study
This study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods which helped to provide
qualified background data for finding out teachers’ difficulties in teaching speaking skill to
large English classes. Quantitative data were gathered through survey questionnaire to
teachers and qualitative data were collected via classroom observation.
a. Questionnaires
In this study, questionnaires were selected as one of the important data collection instruments
because it not only provides information gathered from a large number of participants but also
helps to obtain information about different kinds of issues.
Nunan (1992) points out that “A questionnaire is an instrument for the collection of data,
usually in written form, consisting of open and/or closed questions and other probes requiring
a response from subjects”. Richards et al (1994, p.10) also defines questionnaire as an


Each observation consisted of three steps: before the lesson, during the lesson, and after the
lesson. In before-the-lesson step, the author met the teacher to know his/her aims in teaching
the lesson, to read his/her lesson plan. In during-the-lesson step, an observation sheet was used
to record the teaching and learning to find out the difficulties and solutions the teacher used.
The after-the-lesson step was for discussion and exchanging ideas between the observer and
the teacher.

In all classes the researcher observed the class size in visible reality. The number of students
in the five classed observed were 55, 51, 50, 52 and 50 respectively. From the fact, we can see
that the class environment in observed classes is not suitable for a speaking lesson. This is a
problem which has great influence on English teaching and learning, especially on teacher’s
management.

2.3. Data analysis and discussion

Data Analysis Participants’ responses were analyzed descriptively by calculating percentages
in order to determine what trends in the data suggested about the teachers’ attitudes and
perceptions towards difficulties in teaching speaking skill in large classes.

a. Teachers’ experience 23
Years of teaching experience
N
o
of teachers
%
1-5

30
85
Table 2: Teachers’ facts and opinions concerning large classes

The table 2 shows that English classes at Thành Đô University are quite large. Seventeen
teachers (85%) consider a class of 30 students is large and 16 teachers (80%) have taught 70
students in a class. In fact, all English classes at the university start at around 40. So what are
the difficulties facing the teachers when they work with these classes and what solutions they
use to overcome this problem?

c. Difficulties in teaching speaking skill to large classes
This section reports on the responses of the teachers to difficulties when they teach speaking
skill in a large class as well as the solutions they used to minimize the problems. The results
from questionnaires will be presented in general with main difficulties, and then the results
will be mentioned in detail with each difficulty and solution in combination with the
classroom observations to show how much the observations reflect the teachers’ options from
the questionnaire. 24 Difficulties in teaching speaking skill to large English classes
N
o
of
teachers
%
Promoting interaction
15

of
teachers
%
Managing class
and monitoring
students' work
Organizing the activities
8
40
Giving students equal opportunities to participate in
the activities
16
80
Providing appropriate pace of lessons
15
75
Managing discipline
15
75
Being able to give support and advice to individual
students at the same time
18
90
Selecting ways of evaluation and feedback giving
17
85
Table 4: Difficulties in managing class and monitoring students' work

discipline
Setting up and follow rules in class consistently
20
100
Solutions
Options
N
o
of teachers
%
Giving feedback
Using oral feedback
20
100
Taking note the error then giving that
note to students.
4
20
Giving positive feedback, verbally
(praise) and non-verbally (make eye-
contact, smile, nod)
13
75
Evaluating
Carefully observing the groups and
their members
16
80
Giving participation points
10

observations. All the teachers observed choose this way to organize the activities. The
observations show the teachers’ pair and group formation as well as the teachers’ supervision
during group work:
 Teachers’ pair and group formation
Out of 5 teachers, three of them asked students to sit in a desk of four. Therefore, it was easy
for them to have students worked in pair. The other 2 teachers let students sit freely. Students
scattered everywhere in the class, even some desks there were only one student. When the
teachers wanted students to work in pair, they had to invite some to move their seats. This is
time-consuming.
All the teachers asked three students who sat nearest o one another in a desk to be a group. For
groups of four the teachers asked two student of front back to turn back and combine with 2
students of next desk. This way of random grouping could save time, as the students did not
have to stand up to change their seats and the teacher and easily control the group.
 Teachers’ supervision during group work
Two teachers went round the class from group to group to see if every member was working,
but did not interfere at the beginning to let her students work on their own. Then she assisted
weaker students with vocabulary and structures, pronunciation, or assign additional tasks for
Encouraging peer teaching and
students’ self-efforts
12
60 27
groups who finished earlier. However, they often corrected students’ errors of pronunciation,
the use of new words and grammar. This distracted the students’ thought and seeking. By
supervising the groups in this way, the teacher played a role of a facilitator and a resource
rather than a controller.
As for the three other teachers, after giving instructions, instead of circulating the classes to
help students, they just stood still and observed. Even they sat at teacher’s desk until the

necessary oral
communication skills
Questioning
20
100
Responding
Explaining
Clarifying
Showing agreement and disagreement with
reasons
Asking for repetition
Giving examples
Things teachers should do:
Learning students' names
14
70
Moving around the classroom or lecture hall
16
80 28
Table 7: Solutions to promote interaction in classes
The second difficulty facing teachers is promoting interaction (75%) in the class of which 40%
29
using their name, the teachers just used the pronoun “you”. Calling students by their name is
necessary to enhance the relationship between teachers and students.

Difficulty
Options
N
o
of
teachers
%
Difficulties
posed
by students
Students’ limitation of vocabulary and expressions
10
50
Students’ limitation of background knowledge
8
40
Students’ low motivation in speaking lessons
15
75
Students’ unequal participation
15
75
Table 8: Difficulties posed by students


students’ low motivation in speaking lessons (75%) and students’ unequal participation (75%)
seem the thorny problems. Surprisingly, to deal with these obstacles, they used solutions such
as giving participation points, but only 50% of the teachers selected this method to encourage
students’ participation, occasionally requiring an individual product based on group work
(30%) and raising students’ awareness of the benefits to form the habit of using L2 (40%). 30
Through the observations, the observer can know that many students did not actively
participate in the activities. They were reluctant to say some English sentences with the
partner when stood next to them and the speaking would stop when the teachers moved to
other parts of the class. Exchanging ideas with the observer, three teachers said many students
like only learning grammar and then doing exercises in the textbook, they do not like
speaking. The problem of students’ unequal participation happens in mix-ability group where
strong students dominate the activities.
The two least-selected-difficulties are students’ limitation of vocabulary and expressions and
students’ limitation of background knowledge. This was proved by lesson observations.
Before asking students to carry out the activities, all teachers provide students necessary
vocabulary, expressions and some basic information of the topic

Difficulty
Options
N
o
of teachers
%
Giving students maximum
opportunities to show the product of
Group discussion
14

gained. They all selected the two suggested solutions are: save time by setting up some rules