VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
ĐINH THỊ THÚY USING GROUP WORK ACTIVITIES TO REDUCE
STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ANXIETY- AN ACTION
RESEARCH

Sử dụng hoạt động nhóm để làm giảm bớt sự lo lắng
của học sinh trong giờ học nói M.A. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE: 601410

Sử dụng hoạt động nhóm để làm giảm bớt sự lo lắng
của học sinh trong giờ học nói M.A. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE: 601410
SUPERVISOR: PHẠM MINH HIỀN, M.A
HANOI - 2012

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i
ABSTRACT ii

2.1.2 Student- selected grouping 13
2.1.3 Teacher- formed grouping 13
2.2 Procedures of group work 14
2.3 Common oral activities for group work 15
2.3.1 Opening- circle discussion 15
2.3.2 Role play 15
2.3.3 Information Gap Activity (IGA) 15
2.3.4 Problem- solving 16
2.3.5 Other picture card activities 16
2.4 Problems and solutions in using class group work 17
3. Summary 19
Chapter 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 20
2.1 Research questions 20
2.2 Description of data collection instruments 20
2.2.1. The rationale for using questionnaire 20
2.2.2 Questionnaire 21
2.3 Participants 21
2.3.1 The students 21
2.3.2. The teacher 21
2.4 Research method 22
2.4.1 Overview of action research 22
2.4.2 Procedure of the action research 23
2.4.2.1 Initiation 23
2.4.2.2 Preliminary investigation 23
2.4.2.3 Hypothesis 23
2.4.2.4 Intervention 24
2.4.2.5 Evaluation 25
2.4.2.6 Dissemination 25

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LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Table 2.2 Procedures of group work 14
Table 2.4: Problems and solutions in using class group work 17
Table 1: Students‟ evaluation on their anxiety in SEC 27
Table 2: Students‟ feeling when speaking in group work activities 29
Table 3: Student attitude to group work activities in speaking lessons 29
Table 4: Student‟s attitudes toward grouping strategies 30
Table 5: Students‟ preferences to group work activities in speaking lessons 33
Table 6: Students‟ self- evaluated participation in speaking activities in group 33
Chart 1: Students‟ evaluation on their anxiety in SEC 27
Chart 2: Factors making students anxious in SEC most 28
Chart 3: Students‟ favourite activities 31
Chart 4: Students‟ confident participation in group work activities 32
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS SEC Speaking English in classroom
DHHS Dong Hy High School
AR Action Research
MAM Making a mistake
BCM Being corrected mistakes as soon as they are made
BAS Being asked to speak without preparation
ADT A difficult topic
SFW Speaking in front of the whole class
AO Another one

English as a foreign language and be successful with it, the students must be helped
by the teacher to acquire skills in the four language art skills, namely: speaking,

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listening, writing, and reading. Of the four skills mentioned above, speaking is the
skills secondary school students need great support.
Recently, teachers in my school have introduced activities through which
they can help students go beyond the mastery of structures to the points and use
them to communicate more meaningfully in real situations. Also, group work
approach has also been applied in all kinds of lessons and has shown its
effectiveness. It is said that using group work is one of good ways to motivate
students in learning English. By grouping students, teachers enables students to help
one another study. Using group work has many advantages such as more language
practice in classroom, more purposeful communication, more students‟ involvement
and motivation, more chances for students to help each other, more chances for
students to foster responsibility, autonomy and independence. (Underwood, 1987;
Hyland, 1991; Ur, 1996)
Therefore, simply putting students together in a group is no guarantee that it
is beneficial. Without careful planning and facilitation, group work can frustrate
students and instructors and will be a waste of time.
In DHHS during the group work there, the better students contribute a lot
whereas some weaker ones become passive. I realized that there were much more
students who were anxious than those confident in speaking English in class.
Moreover, the anxious students have differently certain manifestations, for example
giving frequent communicative feedback such as (uh- huh) and playing with the
hair, clothes, or other manipulability objects. It seemed that studying on students‟
anxiety was really meaningfully important. As we all see “Anxiety is the rust of life,
destroying its brightness and weakening its power.” said by Tyron Edwards, a
famous American theologian of “New Dictionary of Thoughts”.
The wish to help her students to overcome the obstacles in speaking English

speaking anxiety. On the basis of the analysis of the factors the students, who were
in one grade-10
th
form, stated, the researcher experiemented with some
interventions to address the problem. 12
IV. Methods of the study
- A quantitative method was used in this study with the questionnaire being
used as the only instrument of data collection. To be more specific, a pre-action
questionnaire and a post-action questionnaire were employed.
V. Design of the study
The thesis consists of three parts:
Part A – INTRODUCTION- presents the rationale, the aim, scope,
significance, methods, design of the study.
Part B – DEVELOPMENT- consists of three chapters.
Chapter one- Literature Review- deals with the theories related to the study:
speaking skill and its related concepts, concept of students‟ participation, group
works in a speaking lesson. definitions of anxiety in speaking English in classroom
(SEC), main factors causing students‟ anxiety in SEC, teacher‟s role to students‟
anxiety in SEC.
Chapter two- Research methodologies- presents the methodology performed
in the study. It provides information about the participants, the instrumentation.
Data collection and findings are also presented in this chapter.
Chapter three- Results and discussion- discuss the data of the study and
propose discussion for using group work activities to reduce grade ten students‟
anxiety in speaking lessons at Dong Hy High School.
Part C: CONCLUSION- summarizes all the key issues as well as the
limitations of the study and suggestions for further study.

theoretical and social knowledge, which will help them more confident and better at
reading and writing. In other words, when speaking skill is in progress, other skills
also become better.
Secondly, good speaking is said to be a good source of motivation for
students. It helps them use the language appropriately and flexibly an every day
communication.

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According to Harmer (1998: 8) also says that whatever kind of motivation
students have, it is clear that highly motivated students do better than ones without
any motivation at all. Another reason to say speaking is a huge source of motivation
is that it can help students express their ideas naturally and rapidly. In addition,
through speaking students may realize how much language they have mastered and
how they have used it. From that, they will study harder to improve their language
competence.
Thirdly, thanks to students speaking, teacher can get feedback from students
fast and exactly. Through students‟ speaking activities in class and outside class, the
teacher can know how much students understand the lesson, Therefore, she can
know what their weak and strong points are in language to have suitable solutions
and plans.
In conclusion, speaking skill plays a significant in teaching and learning a
foreign language. That is the reason why speaking skill should be taught and
practiced in the language classroom
1.1.2 Elements of speaking skills
Harmer (1999:269-270), presents three elements for oral production as the
following:
Connected speed: effective speakers of English need to be able not only to
produce the individual phonemes of English but also to use fluent “connected
speed”. In connected speed, sounds are modified (assimilation), omitted (elision),
added (linking), and weakened (through contractions and stress patterning)

what they are doing. They learn to negotiate, to listen to different opinions and
points of view. They participate more confident and in most cases, they feel free to
experiment and use the language.
1.2.2 Advantages and disadvantages of group work
Using group work in teaching and learning languages has some advantages
as follows:

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To promote interaction among students themselves, teachers of large classes
agree that a good first step is to create smaller groups. Some students are reluctant
to participate in a class of 50 will be ready to interact if the group size reduces to six
or eight. In spite of the fact that teacher has to invest much time and energy in
preparing teaching materials, this technique is likely to bring a positive effect on
teaching and learning process. The strong evidence is that, if teacher‟s talk in
traditional language classes is dominant and each student might get a few second of
class period to talk, then in group work students have greater opportunities to talk,
to practice in negotiation of meaning, to extend conversational exchanges, in
general, to develop communicative competence which is the goal of CLT. That is
the reason why group work is selected among other techniques for increasing
students‟ participation in communicative activities in large classes.
Group work has some disadvantages. Below are their common problems:
Brown (1994:106) foresawsome problems when group work is conducted,
such as: the teacher is no longer in control of the class; students will use their
mother tongue; students‟ errors will be reinforced in small group; teachers cannot
monitor all groups at once; and some learners may prefer to work alone. However,
according to Brown, group work can be conducted successfully if an appropriate
task is selected. Typical group work tasks include: games, role-play and simulation,
drama, project, interview brainstorming, information gap, jig saw, problems
solving, decision making, and opinion exchange. These activities will be more
effective if teachers follow some guidelines on organizing group works, such as

worried about something” (http:// www. Ldoceonline.com/ dictionary/ anxiety) this
definition is also quite broad. Moreover, as defined by Oxford Dictionary, anxiety is
“a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain
outcome” ( true). The third one gives a
specific and easy to understand definition of anxiety.
1.3.2 Anxiety in second language (L2) and in SEC
At first, Citing Horwitz et al., ElKhafaifi (2005: 207) defined L2 anxiety as
a „a distinct complex of self- perceptions, beliefs, feelings and behaviors related to
classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning
process”. What is more, Tanveer, M. (2007:11) found the centre of L2 anxiety was

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anxiety (feelings of tension or nervousness) in speaking and listening. That means
studying on reducing students‟ anxiety in SEC is a great idea.
Though there is no definition of anxiety in SEC found, though ones of L2
anxiety, anxiety in SEC can be understood as a felling of worry, nervousness, or
unease in SEC.
1.4 Main factors causing students’ anxiety in SEC
According to Horwitz et al. (1986: 128, cited by Tan veer, M. (2007:11),
“communication apprehension is a type of shyness characterized by fear or anxiety
about communicating with people‟, “test anxiety refers to a type of performance
anxiety stemming from a fear of failure”, and fear of negative evaluation was
defined as “apprehension about other‟ evaluations, avoidance of evaluative
situations, and the expectation that others would evaluate oneself negatively.”
Furthermore, this great author gave more details about these definitions and relation
between them as well. Accordingly, firstly, troubles in speaking the language in
pairs or in groups which were called oral communication anxiety and these in public
which were called stage fright were considered manifestations of communication
apprehension. Secondly, there were quite a lot of clear details about test anxiety.
However, because the present research does not study this type (due to having no

they would be active in speaking English and these environments could be done by
teachers friendly, helpful and co- operative behavior, making students feel
comfortable when speaking in the class. Indeed, these are very meaningful
conclusion and recommendation.
1.7 Teaching techniques to reduce students anxiety in SEC
One study which was conducted by Worde (2003) suggests many meaningful
measures as following:
- create a low stress, friendly and supportive learning environment;
- foster a proactive role on the part of the students themselves to create an
atmosphere of group solidarity and support;
- be sensitive to students‟ fears and insecurities and help them to confront
those fears;

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- use gentle or non-threatening methods of error correction and offer words
of encouragement;
- make judicious use of purposeful group work or collaborative activities;
- use relevant and interesting topics for class discussions and exercises;
- consider ways to layer and reinforce the material in an attempt to aid
acquisition and retention;
- give written directions for homework assignments;
- speak more slowly or consider using English to clarify key points or give
specific directions;
- attend to the learning styles or preferences of the students
- hear and appreciate the voices of students for valuable insights, ideas and
suggestions.
As this is an action research project, the researcher selected just one
intervention recommended in the literature to deal with the problem of students‟
speaking anxiety – the use of group work. This intervention, the researcher
believed, is more appropriate for two reasons. First, the class which she was


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Table 2.2 Procedures of group work STAGE
EXPLANATION
Preparation
Planning
stage
The teacher maps out the specific objectives of the
lesson, the task used
In the
classroom
Presentation
stage
The teacher introduces new concepts, language items
and equips necessary vocabulary, structures to
achieve the coming task.

Instruction
stage
The teacher gives clear, details instructions for the
task and models them, checks for clarification

Organization
stage
The teacher arranges the students in groups, assigns
roles to makes sure there is control and order


* Three stay- One stray: after a discussion in 4- member groups, one member
of each group moves another group to present their group ideas or decision on the
issue given. The mover is often the group‟s reporter.
* Three stray- One stay: The teacher may count and label each group
member a number, then those who get the same number will work one group and
share his/ her group‟s agreement to the new group.
* Pyramid grouping: Students work in small groups (of 2 or 3) on some
tasks, then two or three groups are combined to make a new communicative setting.
2.3.2 Role play
Put students in life- like situation, they will take roles to make conversations.
It is necessary to model the conversation of the context, assigning roles to students
and give the students time to prepare their roles before the conversation. The
teacher should consider the students‟ competence when assigning roles, easier tasks
with more simple expressions for the weaker, the other roles requiring more creative
and freer language use for more able students. The teacher can support the less
competent students by getting them to write down the questions, responses they will
need.
2.3.3 Information Gap Activity (IGA)
Information sharing is one of the most typical types of group work activities,
it helps to promote individualization of students‟ learning and develop their skills of
using the language and other social skills in cooperative tasks. There are often 2
steps to follow in an IGA: Step 1: Cognitive and comprehensive stage, students,
receiving materials from the teacher, process the input knowledge and information
provided in the materials;
Step 2: Exchanging ideas and information, students work with follow
partners, share the knowledge and information they have just perceived, try their

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best to make themselves comprehensible to the partners and they then have further
discussion on them.

careful preparation, specific instructions, and appropriate facilitation. Below are
some problems and solutions to them (Jacobs and Hall, 1994: 32, 2-13)
Table 2.4: Problems and solutions in using class group work
Problem
Solutions
1, Students are
resistant to group
work

Teacher may reiterate the reasons for using this particular
small- group task hold a plenary discussion about small
group tasks and allow students to air concerns developed in
response to experiences in past courses. Then outline how
the tasks are different.
2. Student talks too
much or dominates
the group
Teacher should explain privately that while you are pleased
he or she has a lot to contribute, you would be like other
learners to have more opportunity to think for themselves.
3, Students talk too
little or are
“freeloading”

Teacher should speak to the student privately to determine
the reason for lack of participation,
Teacher should remind students that the content of the group
work will be tested on a quiz or test. The teacher could
design a test question in which students must summarize
their group‟s results.

giving the same talk to three different listeners one after the other, but with four
minutes to give the first delivery of the talk, three minutes for the delivery of the
same talk to the second listener, and two minutes for the third” ( as rewritten by
Zhou 2006). In this technique the second feature which is “ the speaker repeats the
same talk” helps the speaker ” develop confidence in her ability to deliver the talk
and will have less difficulty in accessing the language she needs to deliver the talk.”
It can be inferred that the 4/3/2 technique is effective in reducing speakers‟ anxiety
in speaking English.
It is no doubt that the studies reviewed above emphasize teaching techniques
relating to the ways to reduce the anxiety. These are really meaningful to the present
research. Although a lot of measures were recommended, it seem that no researcher
did an experiment on a teaching plot which aimed to use of group work to reduce
students‟ anxiety in speaking lessons. The current researcher is keen on
supplementing this point.
3. Summary
In summary, this chapter is the review of the principal theoretical basis for
the study. The definitions of implementing group work have been introduced with
its possible benefits and challenges facing teachers. In order to be effective, the size,
duration, and composition of the group work must match the task. In addition, the
group work activity must be carefully planned and communicated to the students.
Group must be properly directed and supervised during learning activities. The
main stages in implementing group work activities in language class are presented
in this chapter. In addition, teachers play a vital role in the successful