Some communicative activities to enhance
speaking skills for first year students of English
Department - University of Languages and
International Studies

Nguyễn Minh Hạnh

Trường Đại học Ngoại Ngữ
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: Dr. Tô Thị Thu Hương
Năm bảo vệ: 2010

Keywords: Kỹ năng nói; Giao tiếp; Tiếng Anh

Content:
INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
In the process of globalization and economic integration, there is a great demand for a
linguistic means of international communication. As a result, English has gained the most
dominant status among many existing languages in our world. It is widely used in all parts of the
world, in every aspect of life, in every branch of the world economy and in many other fields.
Therefore, in order to approach the modern world in a way with fewer obstacles, learning
English is necessary. In Vietnam, especially after the accession into WTO, there have been many
social and economic changes thanks to the cooperation with many countries. Obviously, English
has become more and more important in our life. High command of foreign languages helps
students so much in finding good jobs.
For students of foreign languages, the ability to communicate fluently and effectively in the
target language has been of great importance. However, the sad fact is that only a small
proportion of foreign language students can perform communication in foreign language well
after finishing college. The majority of them still remain embarrassed when they have a
conversation in foreign language.

the inadequacy of the concept of method in today’s ELT and the need to create a Postmethod
Condition for ELT (Kumaravadivelu, 2001). This condition, in Kumaravadivelu’s words (2001:
35), “opposed to the notion that there can be an established method with a generic set of
theoretical principles and a generic set of classroom practices”. It requires the ability to be
sensitive to the local educational, institutional and social contexts in which L2 learning and
teaching take place. It starts with practicing teachers, either individually or collectively,
observing their teaching acts, evaluating their outcomes, identifying problems, finding solutions,
and trying them out to see once again what works and what does not. Such a continual cycle of
observation, reflection, and action is a prerequisite for the development of context-sensitive
pedagogic theory and practice.
In such a circumstance, it is desirable that English language teachers at ED should put a
strong emphasis on working out the way to improve their students’ English speaking ability. As
such, this study will serve as a reference material not only for teachers of EDI, ED but also for
teachers elsewhere who wish to continually improve their English speaking lessons.
4. Scope of the study
Due to time constraint, this study only focused on the applicability of some useful
communicative activities to enhance English speaking abilities for first year students of the ED –
ULIS. Therefore, subjects of the study were teachers and students (main stream) at EDI of the
ED. Within the scope of the study, the following issues were addressed:
 The importance of, and the difficulties in using communicative activities in the
process of teaching and learning English in present-day Vietnam;
 The actual situation of learning and teaching English speaking skills to first year
students of the ED – ULIS with particular attention to the main challenges in using
communicative activities in teaching and learning the skill;
 The applicability of some useful communicative activities to improve English
speaking ability for first year students of the ED – ULIS

5. Methods of the study
The approach used in this study is mostly qualitative. Questionnaires and classroom
observations are used as data collection tools. The collected data are then analyzed qualitatively

teaching English.
Part 3: Conclusion summarizes the main points of the study and gives suggestion for further
study.

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