1. INTRODUCTION
1.1.

Background of the study

Nowadays in Vietnam, more and more people have to use English in nearly
every field of their life, so the importance of learning and using English as an
international language continues to increase. Speaking, therefore, is considered one
of the most important skills to be mastered by the students in order to communicate
English fluently. In every classroom, the teacher tries all his best to improve the
students’ speaking skill.
However, most of the students at Trieu Thi Trinh high school find it quite
difficult to improve their speaking ability. It is shown that, the students have little
time and few chance to practice speaking English, as the old saying “Practice
makes perfect”. Byrne, D. (1980: 121) also states some problems that may prohibit
the students to develop their speaking skill, which are inhibition, lack of ideas, low
participation and students’ preference to use their mother language. Because of
these, all Vietnamese language teachers are encouraged to find out the most useful
ways to solve these problems.
Among several strategies used to improve students' proficiency such as visual
aids, CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), drama, role-play, and so on,
games are another useful strategy to promote students' language proficiency
(Richard - Amato, 1996). However, up till now, not many studies were carried out
about this issue and it seems that applying games into English speaking classes has
not reached the success as expected.
All of the reasons above, I carried out this study to examine if using games can
help the students improve their speaking ability. It was expected that the results of
this study would confirm the effectiveness of games on speaking skill for all
language teachers at Trieu Thi Trinh high school who were still suspicious about
the real effect of using games. And after this study, there would be more teachers
choosing games as a good aids for teaching speaking.

students feel uncomfortable and reluctant to join in communicating in English.
As a teacher, I find that the students’ motivation in speaking class is not really
high. Most of them are found to be passive and unwilling to speak English. In
speaking lessons, they are often in silence, some look outside the class, and some
even feel asleep. Some of them can hardly make any sentence of English, even in
the simple English grammar structures. For all reasons, using English for
communication is still one of the most serious issues of the language teachers in
our school.
1.3. The study and its rationale
As stated above, most language teachers at Trieu Thi Trinh high school clearly
know the important role of speaking ability in their course. Although, the students
feel bored and stressed in learning speaking, the teachers are seen to be difficult to
find out a useful way to motivate students to speak in class. Especially, It is
impossible for all students in one large class to have chance to practice English.
Because, this is seen as a great challenge for all teachers to solve and face with.
Besides investing good and modern furniture for supporting learning conditions,
the change of the teaching methods in speaking class needs to be solved.
1.4. The aims of the study
While teaching a full-time class at TTT high school, I recognized the problems
facing my students. Although, it was known that there were a lot of challenges, I still
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decided to conduct this study in an effort to find out the best way to help the students
improve their speaking ability as well as increase their motivation and interest in
English speaking class. It was also hoped that through games, the students had chance
to learn in a funny and comfortable atmosphere. This made them feel more confident
and willing to communicate in English with their partners.
Through this study, I also wanted to confirm the real value of games with the
teachers and the students who were still suspicious about the effects of games.

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mistakes and do not try to correct themselves in every single sentence. Thus, they
learn unconsciously, learn without realizing they are learning.
Besides that, studying for a long time often makes students very feel tired and
stressed, it is therefore, very essential to create an enjoyable learning environment
for them. It is easy to recognize that students become more excited and more active
while they are playing games. This also makes the atmosphere of the class become
more cheerful and more enjoyable. In the report of Huyen and Nga (2003), students
said that they like the relaxed atmosphere, the competitiveness and the motivation
that games brought to the classroom. In fact, while studying in an enjoyable
atmosphere, students are supplied with chances to practice more their speaking skill,
and they can show their understanding about what the teacher has just taught them
quickly and easily.
In short, the advantages of games in language learning are countless. When a
game is applied, it does not show one advantage separately but some of these
advantages at the same time.
2.2. METHODOLOGY
2.2.1. The participants
The participants of this study consist of 45 students (grade -10B1) at Trieu Thi
Trinh high school. Their ages range from 15 to 16 years old including 23 females
and 22 males. Most of these students come from many different rural areas in Nong
Cong district where English is taught as a compulsory subject in the curriculum.
Thus, they do not have good conditions and chance to improve English, especially
four skills. Before entering our school, most of these students already studied at least
4 years (from grade 6 to grade 9) as one of the compulsory subjects at secondary
school. Therefore, they all have already obtained basic knowledge of English
including basic structures and common vocabulary. Their English level is in general
not high and limited because their scores of English when entering our school are

- Topic: Questions
characteristics

Week 3

and

answers

about

personal

- Guessing game called “Hiding and finding” was applied
in the warm-up activity of the lesson.
- Topic: Asking questions and making suggestions

Week 4

- Using Information-gap game: “Habits and Hobbies”
- Topic: Talking about hobbies

Week 5

- Using matching game: “The seven families”
- Topic: Asking and talking about personal information

Week 6

- Using role-play game: “Rock and Boat”.

motivation to oral activities before the study. Additionally, the teacher used
Observation Sheet 2 in order to observe overall class atmosphere.
After the first week, a questionnaire was distributed to all students in the class to
fill in to get their attitudes and ideas about their speaking lessons without change. To
help the students in class could understand all the questions well and answer them,
the teacher translated the questions into Vietnamese to give them. The students were
encouraged to answer truly what they thought because they were told about the aim
of this survey questionnaire as well as the innovation before.
From the second week to the fifth week, oral activities with games were
applied into speaking lessons. During these lessons, the teacher continually
observed twice the students’ behaviors and attitudes towards the speaking lessons
with game activities. The teacher used note-taking technique to write down main
comments on what were happening during the speaking lessons.
One more observation was conducted after two months of the research. This
observation focused on the classroom atmosphere, the students’ participation to the
lesson and the changes compared with the first observation.
Continually, a survey questionnaire including 7 questions was distributed to the
participants right after they finished the study and they were asked to fill in the
questionnaire individually to check their attitudes towards language games and
their speaking lessons with game activities. In this one, the students were also told
the purpose of the survey questionnaire and were encouraged to answer them
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honestly. To make sure that the students could understand all the questions, and did
not misunderstand about what they chose, the teacher helped them to explain more
each of the questions if necessary.
Finally, the teacher interviewed some students who were selected randomly to
know more about their feelings and reactions about the speaking lessons with
games and in order to identify the answers collected from the questionnaire.

69.8%
(R: Raw; P: Percent)

It was seen that only a small number of students nearly 30.2% who involved in
the activities of the lesson. While the students off-task accounted for 69.3%. These
numbers indicated the fact that there were amount of the students who were not
involved in the speaking lessons. They did not participate in the activities in class.
It could be caused by the teacher’s teaching method used in the class which had
something wrong. The lessons could be boring or too difficult for the students to
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understand. Due to these, the students’ motivation and participation in speaking
lessons were lower.
Besides these statistics, the teacher saw and felt a passive atmosphere at the
beginning of the lessons. She could observe the students’ anxious and confused
faces when being called to answer. There were a few students who were willing
and able to answer the teacher’ questions. At the end of the lessons, the students
showed their tiredness and exhaustion, and they were unwilling to go on with other
subjects. This was shown well in the Observation Sheet 2 through following table:
Overall class observation (first week)
1. Involvement

1

2. Concentration

2

3. Enjoyment

Their motivation was in general very low.

b. Data collected from survey questionnaire
The questionnaire distributed to 40 students right after the first week of the
innovation were returned enough (100%). The answers of the students paralleled
with the results collected from analyzing two Observation sheets. The results of 6
questions in the questionnaire were briefly described through the following tables:
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Table 1: Question 1 (Q1): How do you feel at the beginning of the speaking
lesson?
Options

Number of choice

Percentage (%)

a. Comfortable

7

17.5%

b. Tired

6

15%



c. Confident

3

7.5%

d. Stressed

21

52.5%

Table 3: Question 3 (Q3): How do you feel when you are called to answer the
teacher’s question?
Options

Number of choice

Percentage (%)

a. Nervous

12

30%

b. Confused

8

17.5 %

Stressed

17

42.5%

Exciting

2

5%

Passive

14

35%

From the results in the tables above, we could see that a high percentage of the
students had negative attitudes and feelings towards the speaking lessons. To
answer for the Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4, most of the students (72.5%) agreed that they
felt worried, tired and sleepy at the beginning of the speaking lessons, 52.5% felt
stressed during the lessons, and 85% felt afraid and nervous when being called to
answer. Furthermore, instead of having funny speaking activities in the class, they
had to learn in a passive atmosphere.
Table 5: Question 5 (Q5): What do you think about the level of the activities and
tasks in the speaking class?
Options

your mistakes?
Options

Number of choice

Percentage (%)

Satisfactory

9

22.5 %

Unsatisfactory

23

57.5%

Critical

6

15%

Suitable

2

5%

week. They were really confident to speak in English.
• Comparisons the results collected from class observation before and after
change
After three times of classroom observation, the results collected were shown in
the chart (Chart 1) in order to evaluate clearly the change in the students’ speaking
ability as well as their motivation before and after the innovation.

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Chart 1: Student times on-task/ off-task behavior
Through the chart above, we could see that, the students who were on-task
behavior increased considerably from 30.2% in the first time, 67.7% in the second
time, and up to 76% in the last Observation. The data collected indicated that
implementing games in speaking class was really effective. When the students
engaged more in the lessons, they became more active and motivated.
• Observation Sheet 2
Observation sheet 2 focused on observing overall class motivation. Through
the total score collected was 33, it indicated that overall class was highly motivated
in this observation. The students found the speaking activities with games more
interesting. This accounted for the increase of their involvement, concentration as
well as persistent attention in the lessons. Most of the students were observed to be
very active and excited with the relaxed atmosphere of games.
This was quite different when comparing with the data collected in the first
week which was seen clearly in the chart below:
Chart 2: Overall Class Observation)

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4

10%

Chance to get knowledge with pleasure

7

17.5%

Chance to practice English

29

72.5%

Nothing

0

0%

Answering for the Q4 “Do you feel afraid of speaking in the class with
games?” most of the students (93%) answered that they did not feel afraid of
speaking in the class. Because when taking part in game activities, the funny
atmosphere of games made them forgot that they were learning. Each of them tried
his best to be the winner which meant that the nervous feelings of making errors
disappeared. In the Q5 “Are you satisfied with using games in your speaking
lessons?” most of the students answered “yes” which specially expressed their
feelings of satisfaction towards games. Through games, they became more

there were still some limitations which should be addressed as follows:
- It can be that the results of this study may be not generalized to a wider
population because this study was just conducted in a small scale with a number of
participants selected not randomly (only in one class). It will be better and more
valid for the future teacher to select a larger number of participants randomly from
different classes for the study. Additionally, the time for conducting this research
was limited which could affect to the findings collected. Therefore, the future
studies should be carried out in a long period of time.
- It is difficult for a teacher to manage a game activity and involve a large
number of the students in the class in it. Besides that, when the students become
excited and motivated with games, this means there will be a lot of noises which
affects to the next studying classes.
- This study mainly focused attention on observing the students’ motivation and
participation in speaking class as well as overall class atmosphere in general, but
did not check how much the students improved their speaking ability.
3.2.2. Further recommendations
In order to gain the most benefits from games and to confirm the value of
games in language teaching and learning process at Trieu Thi Trinh high school, it
is better for the language teachers to consider games as essential part of each
lesson and use games more commonly and frequently in their language classes.
Also, games should be considered a speaking teaching model of many other
teachers. Additionally, It could see that using games in class has significant and
positive effects to the students’ speaking. However, it was not easy for the teachers
to choose and introduce suitable games to students because not all games are
appropriate for the students. Different levels of students acquire different topics,
materials and types of games. Some games may be too difficult for students when
the topic is not suitable with the students’ ability. Thus, in order to reach the good
results as expected, teachers should select games carefully which are suitable with
particular teaching and learning context, topic of the lesson as well as the students’
needs. It is also necessary for the teachers to specially pay attention to guide and

Evaluation of school board

Date: 05/5/2017
I declare that this assignment is my
own work and does not involve
plagiarism or collusion.
SIGNED:
TRAN THI HOA

TABLE OF CONTENT
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1.

Background of the study………………... ………………………………….1

1.2.

The school and class context……………………………………………...…1

1.3.

The rationale…………………………….…………………………..……….2

1.4. The Aims of the experience initiatives……………………...………….........2
2. LITERATURA REVIEW
2.1. Games and motivation in Speaking…….…………………………….………..3
2.2. Methodology
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