VIETNAM ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
GRADUATE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
BÙI THỊ THỦY

Bùi Thị Thủy

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

USING COMMUNICATIVE CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
TO SUPPORT EFL STUDENTS’ ORAL PRESENTATION:
AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT
AT NGUYEN TRAI-BA DINH HIGH SCHOOL IN HA NOI

MA THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE
COURSE: 2017 – 2019

HA NOI, 2019


VIETNAM ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
GRADUATE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Bùi Thị Thủy

USING COMMUNICATIVE CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
TO SUPPORT EFL STUDENTS’ ORAL PRESENTATION:
AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT
AT NGUYEN TRAI-BA DINH HIGH SCHOOL IN HANOI

Field: English Language
Code: 8220201

thanks to the many people who made it possible.
First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my M.A
thesis’s supervisor, Dr. Nguyễn Thị Việt Nga for her kind consultation,
invaluable encouragement as well as thorough correction in the process of
completion. Without her helpful guidance, this study would not have been
achieved.
Next, I would like to convey my sincere appreciation and thanks to Mr.
Đặng Nguyên Giang and the staff of the Department of Foreign Languages,
Graduate Academy of Social Sciences for granting me the honor of writing
this thesis as well as their assistance and most valuable comments.
Specially, millions of my special thanks go to the teachers and students
of Nguyen Trai- Ba Dinh High School who participated in this study for their
kind and patient co-operation and encouragement. They helped provide me
with valuable data for the study so that I could have a better view of activities
in presentation task in English speaking classes at Nguyen Trai- Ba Dinh
High School in Ha Noi.
Finally, I am deeply indebted to my family for their sympathy and
support during all the time I was studying for M.A degree at Graduate
Academy of Social Sciences. Without their unconditional love and sincere
contribution, I could not have overcome my difficulties and concentrated on
my studies..
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION BY AUTHOR..................................................................... i
ACKNOWLEGDEMENTS............................................................................ ii
ABSTRACT .................................................................................................... vi
LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................ vii


CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW...................................................... 5
2.1.

Communicative Competence................................................................ 5

2.2.

Communicative Language Teaching .................................................... 7

2.3.

Communicative Activities .................................................................... 8

2.3.1. Definition of Communicative Activities ................................................................... 8
2.3.2. Characteristics of Communicative Activities .......................................................... 9
2.4.

Oral Presentation ................................................................................ 10

2.4.1. General Understanding of Oral Presentation. ..................................................... 10
2.4.2. Skills/ Sub-skills Involved in Oral Presentation.................................................... 12
2.4.3. The Problems Faced by Students When Doing Oral Presentation ................... 15
2.4.4.2. Organization of the Presentation......................................................................... 19
iii


2.4.4.3. Presentation Skills.................................................................................................. 20
2.4.4.4. Performing Self Reflections .................................................................................. 21
2.4.5. Evaluating and Assessing an Oral Presentation.................................................. 22

3.7. Data Analysis ......................................................................................... 49
3.8. Summary ................................................................................................ 50
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS ....................................... 51
iv


4.1. Data Collection and Analysis from Survey Questionnaire .................... 51
4.1.1.

Survey Questionnaire for Teachers .................................................................. 51

4.1.2. Survey Questionnaire for Students ......................................................................... 56
4.2. The Data from the Speaking Test and English-Speaking Observation . 59
4.3. The Data from the Students’ Opinions through Communicative
Activities ....................................................................................................... 64
4.4. Discussions of the Findings ................................................................... 66
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ..................................................................... 69
5.1.

Recapitulation ..................................................................................... 69

5.2.

Concluding Remarks .......................................................................... 70

5.3. Implications ............................................................................................ 71
5.3.1. Application of Communicative activities ............................................................... 71
5.3.2. Practical Tips for Teachers ..................................................................................... 72
5.4.1. Limitations.................................................................................................................. 74
5.4.2. Suggestions for Further Studies .............................................................................. 74

speaking classes were also witnessed after the intervention.

vi


LIST OF TABLES
Page
Table 1: A distinction between non- communicative activities

10

and communicative ones.
Table 2: Assessing Speaking Performance- Level B1 (CEFR)

23

Table 3: Procedures of the study

38

Table 4: Frame of Questionnaire for Teachers

44

Table 5: Frame of Questionnaire for Students

44

Table 6: A comparison of Mean Score on Pre-Test and Post-


Chart 3: Category 3 of the Questionnaire for Teachers

54

Chart 4: Category 4 of the Questionnaire for Teachers

55

Chart 5: Category 1 of the Questionnaire for Students

56

Chart 6: Category 2 of the Questionnaire for Students

57

Chart 7: Category 3 of the Questionnaire for Students

58

Chart 8: Category 4 of the Questionnaire for Students

59

viii


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
AR:



1.1.

Rationale
Nowadays, in the era of the globalization and international exchange,

English is one of the most important means of communication and access to
information. In this context, the teaching and learning of English is more and
more necessary. English has become a compulsory subject at high school
throughout the country. Thanks to the innovation of new textbooks,
Vietnamese high schools now have a chance to get better access to
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) methods, which bring students
interest in learning English. However, it is a fact that many high school
students do not find speaking practice interesting. They are not confident
enough to converse with English teachers or native speakers, especially in
doing oral presentation.
Furthermore, students’ oral presentation accounts for a major part of
many lessons at secondary schools as well as in universities because they are
one of the communicative goals. The potential benefits of developing student
oral presentations include greater class interaction and participation, increased
interest in learning, new perspectives, and improvement in communication
and presentation skills. Students can gain knowledge not only from the work
they and other students perform, but also by observing other presenters’
strengths and weaknesses to develop better communication and presentation
skills. Despite the positive aspects of using student presentations in the
classroom, some students may show resistance to do extra work, having fear
in public speaking, or displaying boredom while sitting through others’ oral
presentations. Therefore, such students may have generally negative beliefs
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2


1.3.

Research Questions
The objectives of the study can be elaborated into the research

questions as follows:
1. To what extent do the communicative classroom activities support
the students in doing their oral presentation tasks?
2. What are the attitudes of the EFL students and the teachers towards
communicative classroom activities in speaking lesson?

1.4.

Scope of the Study
Due to time constraints, the study cannot cover all the techniques to

stimulate students’ speaking ability in a language class. Therefore, it mainly
focuses on some typical communicative classroom activities which may
produce a stimulus for the 10th grade Nguyen Trai - Ba Dinh High school
students’ oral presentation.

1.5.

Significance of the Study
Hopefully, the study will make a small contribution to the application



Teaching,

Communicative Activities, Oral Presentation as well as previous studies on
improving or developing students’ oral presentation.
Chapter 3 - Methodology: This chapter reports the context settings,
research hypothesis, participants, instruments and the procedure of conducting
Action Research for the study. The detailed results of the surveys and a
critical comprehensive analysis on the data collected are presented.
Chapter 4- Findings and Discussion: This part deals with the data
analysis from the Action Research results to make the foundation for the
activities recommended in Chapter 5.
Chapter 5 – Conclusion: This chapter summarizes the study and
suggests some typical activities as well as practical tips for teachers to
stimulate 10th -grade students’ oral presentation in an English speaking lesson.
Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study are also included in
this chapter.

4


CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
The study investigates the effectiveness of using communicative
classroom activities to support the Nguyen Trai- Ba Dinh High School
students’ oral presentation. This chapter reviews the theories and literature
relevant to the study area. It is divided into 6 parts, namely:
Communicative Competence,
Communicative Language Teaching,
Communicative activities,
Oral presentation,

situations).
Soon after Chomsky (1980) proposed and defined the concepts of
competence and performance, advocates for a communicative view in applied
5


linguistics (e.g. Savignon, 1972) expressed their strong disapproval at the idea
of using the concept of idealized, purely linguistic competence as a theoretical
ground of the methodology for learning, teaching and testing languages. They
found the alternative to Chomsky’s concept of competence in Hymes’s
communicative competence which they believed to be a broader and more
realistic

notion

of

competence.

Namely,

Hymes

(1972)

defined

communicative competence not only as an inherent grammatical competence
but also as the ability to use grammatical competence in a variety of
communicative situations, thus bringing the sociolinguistic perspective into


orthographic

and

orthopedic

competences.

Sociolinguistic competence refers to possession of knowledge and skills for
appropriate language use in a social context. The following aspects of this
competence are highlighted: language elements that mark social relationships,
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rules of appropriate behavior, and expressions of peoples’ wisdom,
differences in register and dialects and stress. The last component in this
model - pragmatic competence - involves two subcomponents: discourse
competence and functional competence. A part of both of these competences
is the so-called planning competence which refers to sequencing of messages
in accordance with interactional and transactional schemata. Strategic
competence is mentioned in the part the CEFR dedicated to a discussion of
communicative language use. This competence is conceived as strategy use in
the broadest sense. Thus, the stress is put not only on the use of
communication strategies which can help to overcome the lack in a particular
area of language knowledge but on the use of all types of communication
strategies. As to the authors of the CEFR, the use of strategies can be
compared with the application of meta-cognitive principles (planning,
achieving, controlling and correcting) on different forms of language activity:
reception, interaction, production and meditating.

it

is

learner-centered

and

emphasizes

communication in real-life situations.” CLT emphasizes on contextualized,
meaning-based instructions and the use of authentic materials, as well as
maximum learner interaction (Parrish, 2004).
According to the principles of the CLT, the learners do not study only
the linguistic structures and the rules of grammar, but it stressed the
importance of using language for communication (Allwright, 1978; Cambell,
1972; Numan, 1991; Richards & Rodgers, 1995; Savignon, 1991). Besides,
Johnson (1981) suggested while studying, students must try to communicate
with their peers and try to make them understand what they have said.
Furthermore, teaching English for communication is to emphasize the
language competence for learners and they must try to communicate in real
situation (Murphy, 1991). As such, it could be conluded that in order to teach
language for communicative purposes, the teacher must put the emphasis on
the students’ communicative competence to use it in real communications.

2.3.

Communicative Activities

2.3.1. Definition of Communicative Activities

that students seek to bridge. Thirdly, they encourage students to be creative
and contribute their ideas. Fourthly, they focus on the message and students
concentrate on “what” they are saying rather than “how” they are saying it.
9


Fifthly, the students work independently off the teacher. Lastly, the students
determine what they want to write and say. The activity is not designed to
control what the students will.
In other words, communicative activities try to create authentic
communication. This is seen as contrary to monotonous drills which the
traditional method heavily relies on and which carry little communicative
functions. Harmer (2001), who holds the same view, makes a distinction
between non-communicative activities and communicative ones in the
following table:
Non-communicative Activities

Communicative Activities
A communicative desire
A communicative purpose
Content not form
Variety of language
No teacher intervention
No materials control

No communicative desire
No communicative purpose
Form not content
One language item only
Teacher intervention

Planning is obviously more associated with formal genres, but Monitoring
and Compensating for gaps in vocabulary or terminology are also a quasiautomated process in natural speech.
The categories for spoken production are organized in terms of three
macro-functions (interpersonal, transactional, evaluative), with two more
specialized genres, namely: addressing audiences and public announcements
under the term sustained monologue created by transferring certain
descriptors from the scale for information exchange that implied monologue
rather than dialogue.
In any ESL classroom, especially speaking lesson, learners should
prepare and give oral presentation lasting for 5-10 minutes. The learners can
have notes with them. They can use simple visual aids such as an overhead
projector, blackboard, charts or diagrams if necessary. At the end of the
presentation, the speaker will have to deal with any questions from the
listeners. Making an oral presentation is an authentic purpose and
communicative activity both for academic and professional purpose. The
learners can make the presentations directly to the interviewer for a formal
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test procedure. They can do a whole activity for a final summery without a
teacher or assessor. The learner, in consultation with his teacher, chooses the
appropriate topics.
Advantages of oral presentations are: bridging the gap between
language study and language use; using the four language skills in a naturally
integrated way; helping students to collect, inquire, organize and construct
information; enhancing team work and helping students become active and
autonomous learners.
The communicative approach to English teaching has been very
popular in many EFL conversation classes. Having students give oral
presentations in front of the class is one of learner-centered activities that

These include the following:
Self-awareness: Self-awareness is considered to be a pre-requisite for
the type of “other-awareness” or empathy assumed to underlie effective
communication (Hayes, 2002).
Oral communication: Some of the processes involved in effective oral
presentations. The topic of oral communication is addressed in greater depth
by the corresponding learning area.
Reflecting: Another skill that is closely related to the psychological
sciences or counseling more specifically is the ability to reflect or present
reflections. Hargie and Dickson (2004, p.148) define reflections as
“statements in the interviewer’s own words that encapsulate and re-present
the essence of the interviewee’s own words”. Presenting reflections during
interactions can serve a similar information gathering function to that seen in
questioning.
Non-verbal communications: A number of communicative activities
also involve non-verbal behavior and an ability to detect and portray
13


messages through this medium is also seen as a central interpersonal skill
(Harrigan, Rosenthal and Scherer, 2005). Messages can be communicated
through the following non-verbal channels.
Facial expressions: Elman’s work in the area of facial expressions
(e.g. Ekman, 1992) provides solid evidence that information about an
individual’s emotional state can be transmitted via their facial expression. In
addition, facial expressions can be used to regulate interactions, for example
the synchronization of conversations (Hayes, 2002).
Gaze: Emotion information can also be communicated through gaze.
For example, long stares are often seen as signals of hostility or aggression.
Looking can also be used to initiate and regulate interpersonal interactions