The Application of communicative activities to
develop speaking skills for 10th graders in Son
Tay High School, Hanoi

Lê Phương Lan Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Teaching Methodology; Mã số: 60 14 10
Người hướng dẫn: Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Van
Năm bảo vệ: 2011 Abstract: In recent years, English has been considered one of the most important subjects, and is
a compulsory subject in Vietnamese schools. However, there are many problems facing the
students when they communicate. Among them, the problem of oral communication seems to be
the most serious one. The need to develop speaking skills for learners of English in general and
students at Vietnamese schools in particular, is greater than ever before. Son Tay High School,
one of the best high schools in Hanoi, for the last five years has encouraged its teaching staff to
apply the communicative approach in language teaching and learning. Much attention has been
paid to developing students’ listening and speaking skills by using communicative activities in
speaking classes. The application of communicative activities in teaching English speaking to
10
th
graders in this school has inspired my writing of this study report as an attempt to search for
more effective ways in developing students’ speaking skills.
Keywords: Phương pháp giảng dạy; Kỹ năng nói; Học sinh; Lớp 10

2. Aims of the study
The aims of the study are to address the following issues:
 The difficulties that teachers and students face in the process of teaching and
learning speaking skills;
 The application of some useful communicative activities to improve English
speaking ability for 10
th
graders.
3. Research questions
To achieve these aims, the following two research questions are addressed:
1. What communicative activities can make the speaking lessons more effective?
2. What obstacles have the teachers and students faced in their speaking lessons?
4. Scope of the study
This study is concerned with the application of communicative activities to develop
speaking skills to the students in grade 10
th
at Son Tay High School. The researcher is not
planning on studying a larger population of the whole students at Son Tay High School, just on
the students in grade 10
th
in order to find out what communicative activities are applied and the
obstacles experienced by these students and teachers of English then offer some
recommendations with the hope that teaching and learning speaking skills will be improved.
5. Design of the study
Apart from acknowledgement, abstract, table of contents and appendices, this thesis is
structured in three main parts namely: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion.
The first part “Introduction” presents the rationale, aims, research questions, scope of the study
and its design.

London: Longman.
Hoang Van Van, Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, Do Tuan Minh, Nguyen Thu Phuong, Nguyen Quoc
Tuan (2006). Tieng Anh 10. Hanoi: Educational Publishing House.
Ladousse, P (1987). Role play. Resource Book for Teachers. Oxford
University Press.
Littlewood, W (1990). Communicative language Teaching. An Introduction.
Cambridge University Press.
Littlewood, W (1992). Teaching Oral Communication. A Methodological
Framework. Blackwell.
Nambiar, S.A (1985). Suffer Students to Speak. Guidelines, Vol XII. No 2,
December.
Nation, P. (1991). Managing Group Discussion: Problem-solving tasks,
Guidelines, 13, 2, 1-10.
Nunan, D (1989). Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom.
Cambridge University Press.
Nunan, D (1991). Language Teaching Methodology. A Textbook for the Teacher.
E.L.T Prentice Hall.
Quan, Nguyen Hai. (2004). Learning to Use Songs to Teach Grammar.
Teacher’s Edition, 14, 57.
Richard, J.C & Rodgers, T.S. (1986). Approaches and Methods in Language
Teaching, Cambridge: CUP.
Rivers, W.M. (1983). Communicating Naturally in Second Language
Teaching, Cambridge: CUP.
Rivers, W.M. (1987). Interactive Language Teaching. Cambridge Language
Teaching Library.
Sheils, J. (1993). Communication in the Modern Language Classroom. Council of
Europe Press.