VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
********************

QUÀNG THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

A STUDY ON ACTIVITIES TO MOTIVATE FIRST-YEAR,
NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS IN ENGLISH SPEAKING
LESSONS AT HAUI
Nghiên cứu về các hoạt động được sử dụng để thúc đẩy sinh viên
năm thứ nhất không chuyên tiếng Anh trong các bài học nói
tiếng Anh tại trường Đại Học Công Nghiệp Hà Nội

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2017


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
********************

QUÀNG THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

A STUDY ON ACTIVITIES TO MOTIVATE FIRST-YEAR,
NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS IN ENGLISH SPEAKING

First and foremost, I would like to express my special and sincere thanks to
my supervisors, Dr. Do Tuan Minh, who gave me enthusiastic instructions, precious
support and critical feedback on the construction of the study. This has always been
one of decisive factors in the completion of this thesis.
Second, I also express my profound gratitude to all doctors, lectures and staff
members of the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies, University of Foreign Languages
and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their valuable
lectures and useful advice that are a great help to fulfill the study.
Next, I would like to send my deep sense of thanks to the teachers and the
first- year students of Non- major English Division- Faculty of Foreign LanguageHanoi University of Industry for their cooperation and the valuable information they
provided in my research field.
Furthermore, I would like to send my heartfelt gratitude to my family and all
of my friends who have great source of endless care and support.
Last but not least, I am also thankful to many writers whose important ideas
and notions are exploited and developed in the study.

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ABSTRACT
Modern teaching methods of foreign languages count on involving the use
of different organizational forms of activities which support such a development.
The way teachers organize these activities and perceive the individual steps
connected with the organization of activities may essentially influence the eventual
efficiency of the activity and the consequent development of speaking skills. In
other words, motivated activities are essentially provided to for the needs of
teaching English to communicate successfully.
In fact, there a many problems for teachers and students in applying these
communicative activities to enhance speaking skills for first year students at Nonmajor English Division- Faculty of Foreign Language of Hanoi University of
Industry. Therefore, the research approach undertaken by this study combined

1.1.1 Communicative language teaching approach .............................................6
1.1.2.. Communicative activities .........................................................................8
1.1.2.1. Definition of communicative activities ..................................................8
1.1.2.2. Features of communicative activities .....................................................9
1.1.2.3. Purposes of communicative activities ..................................................10
1.1.2.4. Sample communicative activities .........................................................11
1.2. Motivation ...................................................................................................16
1.2.1. Definition of motivation. .........................................................................16
1.2.2. Dornyei's (1994a) extended framework ..................................................16
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY ............................................................................20
2.1. Research method .........................................................................................20
2.1.1. Research setting .......................................................................................20
2.1.2. Subjects ....................................................................................................21
2.1.3. Participants...............................................................................................22
2.2. Research instruments ..................................................................................23
2.3. Data collection ............................................................................................23
2.4. Data analysis ...............................................................................................23
2.5. Summary .....................................................................................................24
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ......................................................25
3.1.

Data analysis ...........................................................................................25

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3.1.1.
3.2.
3.2.1.
3.2.2.

APPENDIX VI ....................................................................................................... XIII
SAMPLE 2 ............................................................................................................. XIII

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CLT: Communicative language teaching
L2: Second language
ESL: English as a second language
ELT: English language teaching
NED: Non- major English Division
FFL: Faculty of Foreign Language
HaUI: Hanoi University of Industry

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LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURES
Figure 1: Teachers‘ attitude towards the role of English speaking skills ................. 25
Figure 2: Students‘ attitudes and their feelings towards learning speaking skills .... 26
Figure 3: Teacher‘s assessment towards students‘ speaking ability ......................... 27
Figure 4: Possible factors to motivate students speaking in classroom .................... 28
Figure 5: Teacher‘s viewpoints about the reason why students afraid of
speaking and student‘s actual difficulties in speaking English ....................... 29
Figure 6: Teachers' attitudes towards activities in the textbook ................................ 30
Figure 7: Teachers‘ time to use communicative activities and the frequent forms
that they usually organize.......................................................................................... 31
Figure 8: Teachers' kinds of communicate activity applied in lesson and students‘
activity favorites ........................................................................................................ 32

techniques and some good activities to help students master their speaking skills. In
fact, to motivate student effectively, there are a number of factors for instance, the
number of interlocutors, designing activities, interaction patterns, an amount of
information processed, time span, teacher and student, but it is impossible to discuss
all the factors related to this process in the thesis; therefore, a concentration will be
focused only on the effective organization of some communicative activities. This

1


study, therefore, tries to find out applicability of some potential activities in
teaching speaking skills and some suggestions used to create English speaking
lessons with full of energy and a great deal of motivation for first-year, non-English
major students at Hanoi University of Industry.
Briefly, all of the problems mentioned above have studied further on ―A
study on activities to motivate first- year, non- English major students in English
speaking lessons at HaUI”
2. Aims of study and research questions

This study aimed to address the following issues:
 Investigating the importance of and the difficulties in applying activities in
teaching speaking process to non- English major students in Vietnam in
general.
 Discovering the applicability of some useful activities to improve English
speaking skills for first year, non-English major students in Hanoi University
of Industry.
In order to fulfil these aims, the study focuses on answering the research questions
1, What are the most frequently used activities to motivate students at FFLHaUI in speaking lessons?
2, To what extent, are these activities effective in motivating students at
FFL- HaUI?

factors in teaching and learning English speaking. Thus, this study only focused on
some useful activities that motivate non- English major students of HaUI and how
well the teachers of FFL apply them in their English lessons.
5. Method of the study

The methods conducted in this study to find out the answers to the aim of
research questions are both qualitative and quantitative analyses.
Questionnaires and classroom observations are utilized to collect data for the
whole paper. A survey is done by delivering a questionnaire to 30 teachers of FFL
and another questionnaire to 150 first-year, non- English major students at HaUI
who are being taught speaking skills under the process-based approach. After
completing questionnaires, 15 speaking lessons will be observed to build a stable
reliability for this study in term of effectiveness of activities applied in English
lessons. Briefly, all the collected information and data are then analyzed and
discussed, for quantitative analysis, frequency, charts, percentage, tables were

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published. On the other hand, qualitative data were produced from class observation
checklist.
6. Design of the study

The thesis comprises of two main parts, part A provides a general introduction,
including the rationale for the research and its aim, significance, scope, research
questions and the design of the thesis. And part B is the development sector
including four chapters as follows:
Chapter 1 is an attempt to review some theoretical background for the study.
Several underlying theories: communicative approach, the background and some
frequently activities, the roles of teacher, some motivation factors are discussed as

communicative language teaching approach and communicative activities will be
focused in this part. Finally, some activities in which speaking skills can be
developed wi ll be shown.
Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal
and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts‖ based on Chaney (1998, 13). In
other words, speaking means conveying the message through the words of mouth.
This skill is also called ―Oral Skill‖ or ―Communicative Skill‖. Harmer (2001)
Gower et al. (1995, 99-100) indicated that from the communicative point of view,
speaking has many different aspects including two principal categories as accuracy
and fluency while Martin Bygate, Speaking (1987), whose theoretical inputs
concerning the elements of speaking will be analyzed into two aspects- knowledge
of the language, and skill in using this knowledge. He views the skill as including
two elements: production skills and interaction skills, both of which can be affected
by two conditions: firstly, processing conditions, taking into consideration the fact
that ‗a speech takes place under the pressure of time‘; secondly, reciprocity
conditions connected with a mutual relationship between the interlocutors (Bygate
1987, 7).
Despite its importance, for many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and
English language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of
drills or memorization of dialogues. However, today's world requires that the goal
of teaching speaking should improve students' communicative skills, because, only
in that way, students can express themselves and proficient at social and cultural
rules appropriate in each communicative circumstance.
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1.1. Relation between activities and communicative activities.
1.1.1 Communicative language teaching approach
With the importance of English currently, teachers need to seek a significant
method to meet the demand of learners in using this language for communication.

feasibility, the native speaker knows if something is possible to use in a language.
For example, native speakers know that using too many adjectives does not make
sense when producing language even though there is no rule to limit how many
adjectives can be used before a noun.
The theory of communicative competence has gone through a serious
development so far Brown (1994), He refers to several theories of communicative
competence as they developed through periods of time. It has been the philosophy
of communicative language teaching (CLT) for many years to teach foreign
languages through communicative approach which focuses ‗on speaking and
listening skills, on writing for specific communicative purposes, and on authentic
reading texts‘ (p.226).
The most important features of CLT then Brown defines by means of four
characteristics:
a) Classroom goals are focused on all of the components of communicative

competence and not restricted to grammatical or linguistic competence;
b) Language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic,

authentic,

functional

use

of

language

for


grammatical and textual competence, presents those abilities involved in
controlling the formal structure of language for producing or recognizing
grammatically correct sentences, comprehending their propositional content, and
ordering them to form texts. (Bachman 1994, 87)
In a nutshell, communicative language teaching has based on different
characteristics, most researchers agree on the need for the communicative
competence to support learning and make the classroom interaction successful. A
classroom communicative competence- the philosophy of communicative language
teaching as Brown stated is essential in order for the second language students to
participate in and learn from their classroom experience.
Briefly, in present day, many linguistics and teachers agree on that students learn to
speak in the second language by "interacting". Communicative language teaching
and collaborative learning serve best for this aim. Communicative language
teaching is based on real-life situations that require communication. By using this
method in classes, students will have the opportunity of communicating with each
other in the target language.
1.1.2.. Communicative activities
1.1.2.1. Definition of communicative activities
Communicative activities refers to the classroom activities that provide a
genuine information gap and make it possible for language learners to communicate

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with target language in Communicative Language Teaching Approaches (Liao,
2000). In other words, communicative activities are activities that give students
both a desire to communicate and a purpose which involve them in a varied use of
language. They have real purposes: to find information, to break down barriers, to
talk about oneself, and to learn about the culture. Even when a lesson is focused on
developing reading or writing skills, communicative activities should be integrated

Communicative activities

Non-communicative activities
No communicative purpose
No desire to communicate
Form not content
One language item
Teacher intervention
Materials control

A communicative purpose
A desire to communicate
Content not form
Variety of language
No teacher intervention
No materials control
1.1.2.3. Purposes of communicative activities

The aim of communicative activities is to encourage purposeful and
meaningful interaction between learners. Communicative tasks are created so
learners will have a goal or reason for speaking: they can bridge an information and
opinion gap and can ask for or provide real information, or find out about their
friends‘ opinions. Communicative activities can motivate the classroom and prepare
the learners for real- life interaction (Gower. Phillips & Walters. 2005). Harmer
(2007) has the same opinion that the characteristics of truly communicative
activities encourage learners to use language. Learners are motivated to
communicate to achieve a goal. Their aim is to focus on what to say not the form
being used, and they will have to deal with a variety of language structures not just
one language structure.
Littlewood (1991) concludes the purpose of communicative activities as

different extent. Here are some types of typical communicative activities.
1.1.2.4.1 Information gap activities
Information gap activities are described by Thornbury (2005) who claims that in
these kinds of tasks there is a knowledge gap among learners and it can be bridged
by using the language. So, in order to obtain the information, the interactants have
to communicate. Littlewood (1994) labels these activities as functional
communication activities. He emphasizes sharing the information among learners
and its processing. The most common information gap activity is spotting the
differences in the pictures, exchanging personal information, guessing games and
also creating the story based on flashcards shown to the students in random order,
for a few seconds and one flashcard per group only. This makes the students
cooperate and communicate with each other to find the lacking information.
1.1.2.4.2. Discussions
Discussions are commonly used activities in speaking lessons. A topic is introduced
to the students via a reading or a listening passage and then they are asked to
discuss a related topic in order to come up with a solution or a response. Celce-

11


Murcia (2001) mentions that students need to be reminded that each person within a
group should have a specific responsibility in the discussion – either keeping time,
taking notes or reporting the results made by the group members.
1.1.2.4.3. Role plays
A widely spread and one of the best communicative activities is a role play which
trains students in the classroom to deal with unpredictable real-life conversation in
an English speaking environment. Ladousse (1987) points out the special reasons
for using the role play in the lessons. It puts students in situations in which they are
required to use and develop language necessary in social relationships and also
helps them to build up their social skills. Using role plays is useful especially while

for learners. Finally, teachers also have to identify the ways in which they will
speak such as the voice, tone and intonation.

On the other hand, many theories of learning maintain that knowledge is
actively constructed and skills improved through interactions between learners as it
is shown in the diagram in figure 2 done by Scrivener (2005: 86). Johnson (1995)
supports that if learner-learner interaction is well-structured and managed, then it
can be an important factor of cognitive development, educational achievement of
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students and emerging social competencies. It can also develop the learners‘
capacities through collaborative works. Thus, learners will establish social
relationship through this kind of interaction, where the sense of learning community
is promoted and isolation is reduced in the classroom. Naegle Paula (2002: 128)
adds also that ―talking students with their peers about the content of the course is a
powerful way for them to reinforce what they have learned.‖ The teachers then must
encourage such type of interaction between learners because it is the fastest and the
best way, it makes learners active rather than passive participants.
By knowing the teacher- learner and learner- learner interaction, the roles of
the teacher can be categorized from several points of view, for example, according
to the type of the activity, stage of the activity, or the interaction pattern selected for
the particular activity.
Byrne (1991, 13) divides the roles of the teacher according to the type of
interaction activity distinguishing between fluency and accuracy activities. On the
one hand, during fluency activities, the teacher frequently adopts the roles of
stimulator, manager and consultant, reminding that the main reason for taking part
in such activities is to get students to interact, build the activities and to be available
for help and advice if students need and ask for it. On the other hand, the roles that
the teacher carries out during accuracy activities will primarily include the roles of

general want to explain the fundamental question of why humans behave as they do,
and therefore we cannot assume any simple and straightforward answer.
Motivation is described as the impetus to create and sustain intentions and
goal seeking acts (Ames & Ames, 1989). Burden (1997:119) assumed that ―from a
cognitive perspective, motivation is concerned with such issues as why people
decide to act in certain ways and what factors influence the choice they make. It
also involves decisions as to the amount of effect people are prepared to expand in
attempting to achieve their goals. The role of the teacher thus becomes one of
helping and enabling learners to make suitable decisions"
Dornei (2001:613) defined motivation as ―a general ways of referring to the
antecedents (i.e. the causes and the origins'. He also stated that ―motivation explains
why people decide to do something, how hard they are going to pursue it and how
long they are willing to sustain the activities‖ (2001:7). The author mentioned two
dimensions of human behavior: direction and magnitude (intensity) which
motivation concerns. Motivation is ―the process whereby goal-directed activity is
instigated and sustained‖ (Pintrich& Schunk, 2002).
From the above, it can be deduced that motivation is a psychological trait
which leads people to achieve a goal. Motivation is what drives you to ―behave‖ in
a certain way or to take a particular action.
1.2.2. Dornyei's (1994a) extended framework
L2 motivation (Dornyei, 1994a) that attempted to synthesize various lines of
research by offering an extensive list of motivational components categorized into
three main dimensions, the Language Level, the Learner Level, and the Learning
Situation Level (see Table 1).

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