HA NOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY N0.2
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FACULTY

TRẦN HÀ ANH

A STUDY ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INFORMATION GAP
ON THE TENTH-GRADE STUDENTS' PARTICIPATION
IN SPEAKING CLASSES AT NGUYEN HUE HIGH SCHOOL
(SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE
DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF PEDAGOGY IN ENGLISH)

HÀ NỘI, 2016


HA NOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY N0.2
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FACULTY

TRẦN HÀ ANH

A STUDY ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INFORMATION GAP
ON THE TENTH-GRADE STUDENTS' PARTICIPATION
IN SPEAKING CLASSES AT NGUYEN HUE HIGH SCHOOL
(SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE
DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF PEDAGOGY IN ENGLISH)

SUPERVISOR: NGUYỄN THỊ THU THỦY, M.A.

HÀ NỘI, 2016


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


ii


STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
Title:
A STUDY ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INFORMATION GAP ON THE TENTHGRADE STUDENTS' PARTICIPATION IN SPEAKING CLASSES AT NGUYEN
HUE HIGH SCHOOL

I hereby certificate that the work submitted in my research is entirely of my own hand,
or, where copied from any other person‟s work has been acknowledged in reference and that
the report is originally written by me under instructions of my supervisor.

Date submitted: Wednesday, 4th April, 2016

Student

Trần Hà Anh

Supervisor

Nguyễn Thị Thu Thủy, M.A.

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LIST OF TABLES AND GRAPH
Tables

Table 1: Times of students‟ on-task participation in Unit 9 ........................................29

TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................................................................................................... v
PART ONE................................................................................................................................ 1
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1
I. Rationale ................................................................................................................................. 1
II. Objectives of the research ...................................................................................................... 2
III. Research questions ............................................................................................................... 2
IV. Research scope ..................................................................................................................... 2
V. Research methods .................................................................................................................. 2
VI. Significance of the research ................................................................................................. 3
VII. Design of the research work................................................................................................ 3
PART TWO .............................................................................................................................. 4
DEVELOPMENT ..................................................................................................................... 4
CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................ 4
I.1. Previous studies .................................................................................................................... 4
I.2. Speaking ............................................................................................................................... 6
I.2.1.What is speaking?............................................................................................................... 6
I.2.2.What is teaching speaking? ................................................................................................ 7
I.2.3.What are techniques for teaching speaking? ...................................................................... 8
I.2.3.1. Story completion ............................................................................................................ 9
I.2.3.2. Role-play ........................................................................................................................ 9
I.2.3.3. Simulation .................................................................................................................... 10
I.2.3.4. Discussion .................................................................................................................... 10
I.2.3.5. Information gaps .......................................................................................................... 11
I.2.3.6. Story-telling.................................................................................................................. 11
I.2.3.7. Interview ...................................................................................................................... 11
I.3. Participation ....................................................................................................................... 12
I.3.1.What is participation?....................................................................................................... 12

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II.2.2.1. Rationale behind the use of classroom observation .................................................... 23
II.2.2.2. Construction of observation sheet: On-task behavior (Appendix C) .......................... 23
II.2.3. Self - report .................................................................................................................... 24
II.2.3.1. Rationale behind the use of self – report .................................................................... 24
II.2.3.2. Construction of students‟ interaction self-report sheet (Appendix D) ........................ 25

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II.3. Research context ............................................................................................................... 25
II.4. Participants ........................................................................................................................ 25
II.4.1. Teacher........................................................................................................................... 25
II.4.2. The observers ................................................................................................................. 26
II.4.3. The student subjects ....................................................................................................... 26
II.5. Research procedure ........................................................................................................... 26
II.5.1. Identifying the problem ................................................................................................. 26
II.5.2. Collecting the initial data .............................................................................................. 27
II.5.3. Analyzing data and generating hypotheses ................................................................... 27
II.5.4. Planning action ............................................................................................................. 27
II.5.5. Implementing action ..................................................................................................... 27
II.5.6. Collecting data to monitor change ................................................................................. 28
II.5.7. Analyzing and evaluating students‟ participation after action plan .............................. 28
II.6. Data analysis ..................................................................................................................... 28
CHAPTER THREE................................................................................................................ 29
RESULTS ................................................................................................................................ 29
III.1. Results of pre-action stage ............................................................................................... 29
III.1.1. Students‟ on-task participation ..................................................................................... 29
III.1.1.1. Result from observation ............................................................................................ 29
III.1.1.2. Result from students‟ self-report ............................................................................... 30
III.1.2. Students‟ attitudes to speaking skill and current speaking classes .............................. 30

APPENDIX H ......................................................................................................................... 83

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PART ONE
INTRODUCTION
Chapter one discusses the rationale, the research questions, the objectives, the scope,
the significance, the methods and the design of the study.
I. Rationale
English is certainly to be the most common international language all over the world
due to the fact that English is used in many sectors including Economy, Policy, Diplomacy,
Tourism, Medicine, Science and Technology, etc. While there are hundreds of different types
of languages spoken in hundreds of countries resulting in the language barrier, English serves
as a bridge to connect people all over the globe. In addition, English can also be used as a tool
for individuals to express their ideas and get others‟ intentions; using English to communicate
is an effective way to associate with people who not only are native speakers of English but
also are able to use it as a second language. Hence, being capable of communicating well in
English is a crucial point for anyone to join a wide community and for any country to
integrate with the whole world.
Taking those reasons into consideration, nowadays more and more people desire to
become skilled at English speaking. Of four main skills named speaking, writing, reading and
listening, Bailey (1993) says that speaking as the center skill and the most demanding.
However, for many high schools in Viet Nam in general and Nguyen Hue high school in
particular, even when students are excellent at writing, reading or listening, speaking is not a
favorite skill for many of them. In fact, to speak English precisely and fluently appears to be a
big challenge indeed. During the time being a trainee teacher in Nguyen Hue high school, the
researcher observed the classes she taught and discovered that students, especially the tenth
grade students at Nguyen Hue high school are quite passive in speaking classes. This finding
was supported by ideas from other teachers that speaking classes were often ineffective

1.

What are the reasons for students‟ poor participation in speaking classes?

2.

Can information gap improve tenth grade students' participation in speaking classes?

IV. Research scope
The focuses of the study are the factors leading to students' poor participation in
speaking classes and effectiveness of information gap on the tenth grade students‟
participation in speaking classes. Students‟ participation in speaking class is expressed in
various ways, nevertheless, with the scope of this minor graduation, only oral participation
when students speak or interact in English was studied.
The subjects of the study are 44 students of class 10E at Nguyen Hue high school.
V. Research methods
In order to set up a firm theoretical background for the study, relevant publications are
critically reviewed.
To collect the data, the following techniques have been applied: Survey
questionnaires, classroom observation and self-report.

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VI. Significance of the research
After the research, it is hoped that the results will be helpful for the teachers in
identifying the problems preventing students from joining activities in the speaking classes
and using information gap righteously to increase the students‟ involvement throughout the
classes.
For the students, the research is expected to help them realize the barriers that hold


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PART TWO
DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter involves the literature review in brief, some issues related to speaking
and participation.
I.1. Previous studies
Meyers, D.M. (2003) in “The Impact of Virtual Office Hours on In-class
Participation” highlighted the need for teachers to continuously adapt to the ever-changing
nature of the learner. In an era where students are increasingly deficient in interpersonal skills,
it may prove useful to leverage the new technologies that have replaced casual conversation.
Meyers suggests that teachers might reach out to students via the Internet to promote studentteacher interactions outside the traditional classroom. He poses the idea that students may feel
more comfortable expressing their ideas and opinions in a “virtual classroom.”
A study entitled “What Does it Mean to Participate in Class?: Integrity and
Inconsistency in Classroom Interaction. Journal of Classroom Interaction” (Moguel, 2004)
had attempted to answer the question “How can a teacher education program enable teacher
candidates to encourage greater participation and interactions in their classrooms?” This is an
insightful article that reveals the perceptions of six candidates about entering the teaching
profession. It raises the question of where new teachers get their ideas about classroom
participation and whether these ideas change over time. Moguel points out that teachers do
not necessarily learn how to teach during the formal portion of their teaching education.
Rather, they tend to imitate the teaching behavior that they have seen modeled since their
entrance into the public education system at a very young age, despite what they intend to do
or what behavior they might think they are displaying.
Pomerantz, E.D. (1998) conducted his work named “What Do Students Learn From
Classroom Discussion? Exploring the Effects of Instructional Conversations on College
Students’ Learning”. This study was intended to investigate the relationship between

Yunusc together conducted the work named “Factors influencing classroom participation: a
case study of Malaysian undergraduate students” (2010). The result showed that lecturer
traits were the most influential factor in encouraging participation among students, while
positive lecturers‟ traits encouraged participation, negative traits like having poor teaching
skills and being unapproachable discouraged participation; Negative students‟ traits which
refers to students‟ own limitation was found to deter their class participation. Inability to
focus and fear of making mistakes were reported to be discouraging students‟ participation.
Students were observed to be more inclined to participate when the lecturers called them by
name, asked probing questions, and engaged in positive nonverbal behaviors such as smiling
and nodding to acknowledge their answers.

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Robert H. Trudeau (2006) worked on “Get Them to Read, Get Them to Talk: Using
Discussion Forums to Enhance Student Learning”. He found out that, joining discussion
forum before class did help students actively engaging in classroom-related activity outside of
the classroom by posting reflections and reading postings from other students.
Jalynn

Roberts

&

Mary

Nell

McNeese


participants, and the purposes of speaking. It is often spontaneous, open-ended, and evolving.

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Alternatively, David Nunan (1999: 216) indicates that speaking requires learners to
not only know how to produce specific points of language such as grammar, pronunciation, or
vocabulary ("linguistic competence"), but also understand when, why, and in what ways to
produce language ("sociolinguistic competence")
Chaney (1998) states that speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning
through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts.
According to Brown and Yule (1983), speaking is the skill that the students will be
judged upon most in real-life situations. It is an important part of everyday interaction and
most often the first impression of a person based on his/her ability to speak fluently and
comprehensively.
Adopting those ideas, it can be said that speaking, which is also called oral production,
is a productive skill and is the ability to express oneself coherently, fluently and appropriately
in a given meaningful context. It is often spontaneous, hence once spoken out, it cannot be
edited and revised as in writing – another productive skill.
I.2.2.What is teaching speaking?
What is meant by "teaching speaking" is to teach learners to:
-

Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns

-

Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language.

-

quickly and confidently, with few hesitations or unnatural pauses, false starts, word searches,
etc. Teacher must provide students with fluency-building practice and realize that making
mistakes is a natural part of learning a new language.
c) Provide opportunities for students to talk by using group work or pair work, and limiting
teacher talk.
It is important for us as language teachers to be aware of how much we are talking in
class so we do not take up all the time the students could be talking. Pair work and group
work activities can be used to increase the amount of time that learners get to speak in the
target language during lessons.
d) Plan speaking tasks that involve negotiation for meaning.
Learners make progress by communicating in the target language because interaction
necessarily involves trying to understand and make teacher understood. This process is called
negotiating for meaning. It involves checking to see if you have understood what someone has
said, clarifying your understanding, and confirming that someone has understood your
meaning.
e) Design classroom activities that involve guidance and practice in both transactional and
interactional speaking.
When we talk with someone outside the classroom, we usually do it for interactional
or transactional purposes. Interactional speech is communicating with someone for social
purposes. Transactional speech involves communicating to get something done, including the
exchange of goods and/or services.
I.2.3.What are techniques for teaching speaking?
Differing from the old time when teaching speaking was just restricted to a repetition
of drills or memorization of sample dialogue, teaching speaking in this modern time requires a
lot of the collaboration from students, who are the center of the class, to improve their

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communicative skill. Teacher‟s task here is to provide the authentic environment, exciting


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Bailey said role-plays are also excellent activities for speaking in a relatively safe
environment of the classroom. In a role-play, students are given particular roles in the target
language. It helps learners practice speaking target language before they must do so in real
environment. (David Nunan, 2003)
Role-play helps improve not only their interpersonal relations, but also they learn to
work together. When the learners are given feedback by their co-learners, they do not lose
confidence rather they feel motivated to do better and learn more
I.2.3.3. Simulation
Working on simulation, Harmer (1984) suggested it increased the self-confidence of
hesitant students, because in role play and simulation activities, they would have a different
role and did not have to speak for themselves, which means they did not have to take the same
responsibility.
Simulations are very similar to role-plays but it is more elaborate. To be more specific,
students will bring items to the class to create an authentic environment.
I.2.3.4. Discussion
Discussions give learners an opportunity to share their views and are a useful means of
training pragmatic and strategic competence and fluency in general (Burns, Anna and Helen
Joyce, 1997)
Discussion can be held after a content-based lesson. Before the discussion, it is
essential that the purpose of the discussion activity is set by the teacher so that students have
to stick to the requirement and do not chat about irrelevant things. For efficient, group
preferably includes 4 or 5 member so every individual has a chance to talk and avoid quiet
student being shy to contribute their ideas. Then each group works on given topic for a
specific period of time, and presents opinions to the class. Speaking should be equally divided
among group members. At the end, teacher together with the class decides on the winning
group who defended the idea in the best way.

questions.
According to Kagan (1994) three – step interview is a cooperative structure in which
members of a team interview one another on a particular topic. This structure can be used
both as an ice-breaker which introduces students to one another and to provide students with a
venue for soliciting opinions, positions, or ideas from their peers. Students are first paired and
take turns interviewing each other using a series of questions provided by the instructor. Pairs
then match up and students introduce their original partner. At the end of the exercise, all two
students have had their position or viewpoints on an issue heard, digested, and described by
their peers.

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Conducting interviews with people gives students a chance to practice their speaking
ability not only in class but also outside and helps them becoming socialized. After
interviews, each student can present his or her study to the class. Moreover, students can
interview each other and "introduce" his or her partner to the class.
I.3. Participation
I.3.1.What is participation?
Students‟ participation literally is the extent to which students participate or involve
themselves in a class, course, etc.
In a class, student‟s participation is very important since it decides the success of a
lesson. Student need to not only focus on what teacher says but also join the class actively by
answering questions, taking part in activities, working on projects, etc.
To look under the education perspective, participation can be seen as an active
engagement process which can be sorted into five categories: preparation, contribution to
discussion, group skills, communication skills, and attendance (Dancer & Kamvounias, 2005).
It also has been shown that faculty perceives six levels of participation from students, moving
from simply attending class through giving oral presentations (Fritschner, 2000). Participation
also has been defined as „„the number of unsolicited responses volunteered‟‟ (Burchfield

Learners often face with various deterrents or obstacles that impede their participation
and progress whilst learning. These barriers include, amongst the others, learner-related
factor, lecturer-related factor, external factor, etc.
I.3.3.1. Leaner-related factor
It has been proved that learners‟ factors play an important role in foreign language
learning as well as in students‟ participation in speaking lessons (Ur, 1996). Factors around
learner may include: cognitive skill, language level, trait, anxiety, health condition, sex
differences.
The cognitive skill is different to each people. Some people can perceive a problem
quite quick and easy, whereas others need more time to understand and put into practice.
Students in the second type are tend to be shy to ask teacher about the lesson again or ask to
slow the class speed down. As the time gone, the lesson passed, the gap in knowledge will get
bigger and bigger resulting the lack of knowledge in student, so that they cannot contribute
their voice in class.
Personality trait, self-esteem, may impact one‟s willingness to participate in class,
depending on how it is measured. Normally, those with lower school-related self-esteem were
less likely to participate and more likely to sit in the back of the classroom, consequently,
whose low levels of class engagement.

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Another reason why students may not participate in class is because of their own
personal fears of feeling inadequate in front of others, regardless of the logistics of the
classroom setting. Armstrong and Boud (1983), Fritschner (2000), Howard & Henney (1998),
Hyde and Ruth (2002), and Weaver and Qi (2005) all noted that students may feel intimidated
or inadequate in front of their classmates and professors, and thus choose not to participate.
Students even reported confidence as the most motivating factor for their participation in
several studies (Armstrong &Boud, 1983; Fassinger, 1995; Wade, 1994; Weaver & Qi, 2005).
I.3.3.2. Lecturer-related factor

I.3.3.4.Possible solutions to students’ participation
As discussed above, speaking is the center skill and also the most demanding one, so
that become skilled at speaking is more and more desired by students at any levels. However,
no matter how learners try to focus on speaking lessons, they still cannot prolong their
concentration with a boring class. For that reason, keeping improving the class environment
and stimulating students to talk more in speaking class are the challenges that every teacher
has to deal with.
It is argued that students play too passive a role in lectures, furthermore, the pace of presentation is too
fast, and the main emphasis is on rote memorization rather than meaningful understanding. To remedy
this situation, it is recommended that university teachers make greater use of instructional techniques
that require active students participation, such as class discussion, cooperative learning, debates, roleplaying, problem-based learning, and case studies
Harry G. Murray and Megan Lang, 1997

It is also claimed that the students who participate actively in the class learn the
subject matter more effectively, show greater development in areas such as oral
communication, critical thinking, and problem solving compare to those taught in the
traditional lecture mode. Therefore, having students actively take part in class is a crucial
thing that teachers must conquer.
Using information gap as a technique to facilitate students to talk is an effective way
that has been proved by many educators and psychologists. Besides, this technique can be
combined with many others to create exciting in-class activities and it is also suitable for
various topics. The procedure to conduct an information gap activities is quick and easy to
explain to students to practice.

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