VIETNAM ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
GRADUATE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Lê Minh Hằng

USING PROJECT – BASED LEARNING TO
IMPROVE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILLS
AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF NATURAL
RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

MA THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

HANOI, 2019


VIETNAM ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
GRADUATE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Lê Minh Hằng

USING PROJECT-BASED LEARNING TO
IMPROVE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILLS
AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF NATURAL
RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

Field: English Language
Code: 8220201
Supervisor: Đặng Nguyên Giang, Ph.D.

HANOI, 2019


and through the duration of my thesis to completion. His constructive
suggestion and untiring supervision not only encouraged me to complete my
dissertation, but it helped me effectively develop my research skills as well. In
addition, I am very much grateful to the teachers of Department of Foreign
Languages and the other staff at Graduate Academy of Social Sciences for
granting me the honor of writing this thesis as well as their assistance and
most valuable comments.
Especially, I would like to give sincere thanks to my colleagues at the
Department of English at Hanoi University of Natural Resources and
Environment for their encouragement and attendances during my study. My
appreciation also goes to all twenty eight students at class English3- 27 who
participated in this study for their patient cooperation. Both teachers and
students who have been involved at different stages in this action research
helped provide valuable data so that I have a better views of teaching
speaking at university.
Finally, this study is dedicated to my family for their sympathy and
financial support during my study for M.A degree at Graduate Academy of
Social Sciences. With their love and contribution, I am strongly motivated to
complete this thesis.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
DECLARATION BY AUTHOR

i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


1.3. Research Questions

3

1.4. Scope of the Study

3

1.5. Significance of the Study

4

1.6. Research Methods

5

1.7. Structure of the Study

5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

6

2.1. Concepts of Speaking

6

2.1.1. Definitions of Speaking

iii


2.3.1 Definitions of project-based Learning

14

2.3.2. Types of Projects

15

2.3.3. Evaluation in Project-based Learning

17

2.4. Project-based Learning in English Language Teaching

18

2.4.1. Phases for Implementing a Project-based Learning Projects
Teaching Speaking

18

2.4.2. Teachers’ Roles in Project-based Learning

19

2.4.3. Advantages and Possible Restriction of Project-based Learning
in Teaching English as Foreign Language


3.5. Research Procedures

36

3.6. Data Analysis

39

3.7. Summary

40

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

41

4.1. Data Analysis from Questionnaires

41

4.2. Data Analysis from Test

51

4.3. Data Analysis from Interviews

55

4.4. Data Analysis from Classroom Observation


73

APPENDIX 1: Scoring Rubic for Speaking Test

I

APPENDIX 2: Pre-test of Speaking

III

APPENDIX 3: Survey questionnaire

IV

APPENDIX 4:PBL survey questionnaire

VI

APPENDIX 5: Post-test of Speaking

IX

APPENDIX 6: Interview questions

X

APPENDIX 7: A Sample of Lesson Plan

v


Table 3: Observation Checklist

38

Table 4: Students’ Evaluation of their Achievement on English

49

knowledge
Table 5: Students’ Evaluation of their Achievement on Speaking

49

skills
Table 6: Students’ Evaluation of their Achievement on Learning

49

skills
Table 7: Comparison of Mean Scores between Pre-test and Post-test

52

Table 8: Students’ scores of both tests

53

Table 9: Summary of projects carried out by students



LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AR:

Action Research

EFL:

English as Foreign Language

PBL:

Project-Based Learning

HUNRE:

Hanoi

University

of

Natural

Environment
T:

Teacher


fundamental requirements of evaluation and assessment criterion. In such a
teaching content, conversational English has not come into educators’ focus,
which leads to learners’ limited abilities of communicating with foreigners or
expressing their ideas in a second language. As a result, after at least seven
years learning English in schools, there have been a number of students in
universities facing big challenges from mastering speaking skill. They are
normally found to have several problems in oral activities, such as reluctance,
fluency, shyness or fear of committing mistakes.
The reality shows that most of the students at Hanoi University of
Natural Resources and Environment (HUNRE) find it challenging in
communicating well orally. From what students have displayed in their oral
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performances in the classes and their results in latest final tests, a large
number of students are not able to describe their personalities or even their
daily activities in English. Their abilities of mastering speaking skill are
normally highly complained by the teachers not just about pronunciation,
vocabulary, grammar accuracy but fluency level, gesture improving and
communicative competence as well. To deal with this challenge, language
teachers need to employ appropriate English teaching and learning methods
that may encourage the students to use language with an emphasis on
communicative purposes in real world settings, rather than completely focus
on grammatical accuracy as in traditional teaching.
It is stated that speaking is an interactive process of constructing
meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information
(Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997 as stated in Flowrez (1999)). It requires
great amount of exercise and practice, otherwise the students’ speaking
cannot be improved. In addition, Brown (1994) states that anxiety is one of
problems faced by the students in speaking because they are afraid to be

- Investigating the first-year students’ attitudes towards the projectbased learning techniques used in their speaking periods.
-

Evaluating the effectiveness of the

project-based learning

techniquesapplied to English speaking skill teaching and learning.
1.3.

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

questions as follows:
- How do the project-based learning promote the first year students’
motivation?
- To what extent, do the project-based learning increase the first year
students’ speaking outcome?
1.4.

Scope of the Study
In this study, the researcher focally identifies the effectiveness of

employing the project-based learning techniques on improving non-major first
3


year students’ speaking skills as well as their attitudes towards oral activities.
There will be twenty-eight students at elementary level participating in this
action research. They are expected to have basic knowledge of English about

problem-solving skills, meaning that they are able to identify the topics and
their problems, then seek possible solutions.
1.6.

Research Methods
In order to achieve the aim, action research procedures are used in the

present study. In schools, action research (AR) refers to a process of
evaluation, investigation, and analysis designed to diagnose problems or
weaknesses – whether organizational, academic, or instructional – and help
educators develop practical solutions to address them quickly and
efficiently.The data were collected via survey questionnaires, classroom
observations, interviews, and oral tests.
1.7.

Structure of the Study
This research is organized in the following manner. The first chapter

gives reasons for choosing the thesis, scopes and aims of the study as well as
the research methods. Chapter two begins the journey with an overview of the
literature by providing the theoretical foundations, defining project-based
learning in relationship to several other similar approaches, and also discusses
previous studies in the area. Chapter three gives the specific description of the
methodology, which includes research setting, participants, data collection
instruments, research design, research procedures and data analysis. Chapter
four discusses the analysis and results from the data which are divided into
four main sections, reflecting the different types of data present in the study.
Chapter five concludes with a discussion of the findings of the study and its
implications for second language teaching theory and practice. Last but not
least, the limitations of the study and directions for future research are also

learners not only know how to produce specific points of language such as

6


grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary, but also that they understand when,
why and in what ways to produce language.
Based on the definitions above, it can be conducted that learning to
speak involves “developing a number of complex skill and different types of
knowledge about when and how to communicate” (Brown, 1994). As a result,
in speaking lessons, teachers should monitor learners’ speech production to
determine what skills and knowledge they already have and what areas need
development.
2.1.2. The nature of speaking
Brown (2004) states that speaking is a productive skill that can be
directly and empirically observed, “those observations are invariably colored
by the accuracy and effectiveness of a test taker’s listening skill, which
necessarily compromises the interaction between teacher and students or
among the students which depends on how classroom activities are
organized”. He further states that there are some basic types of speaking as in
the following:
a. Imitative: this type of speaking refers to the ability of imitating a word,
a phrase or a sentence. The purely phonetic level of oral production, a
number of lexical and grammatical properties of language may be
included in the criterion performance.
b. Intensive: The production of short stretches of oral language is
designed to demonstrate competence in a narrow band of grammatical,
phrasal, lexical or phonological relationship.
c. Responsive: This type include interaction and test comprehension but at
the somewhat limited level of very short conversations, standard

Pronunciation refers to the students’ ability to produce clear language to
fulfill the task requirements. It becomes important because it gives
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meaning to what is being said. Therefore, to make a successful
communication happen, clear messages need to be delivered for listeners.
Wrong pronunciation may cause misunderstanding or people involved in
a conversation are offended. In speaking, teaching pronunciation includes
stress, rhythm and intonation.
b. Fluency
It is pointed out that a fluent speaker is a person who can express a
sequence of ideas easily, smoothly and expressively. In a language
classroom, speaking activities which focus on fluency require students to
get things done smoothly through conversation, with a few acceptable
infrequent pauses. Harris proposes a model in assessing speaking in
which fluency is measured by considering the total number of seconds of
silence and time spent saying “uhm”, “ah” by subjects as they complete a
task.
c. Grammar
“Grammar is the system of rules governing the conventional arrangement
and relationship of words in a sentence” (Harris, 1974), so it is needed for
students to build up a correct sentence in conversation. If there are too full
of grammar mistakes during a dialogue, the communication will be
certainly slowed down.
d. Vocabulary
Vocabulary is a set of lexemes, consisting single words, compound words
and idioms that are typically used when talking something. To be able to
speak fluently and accurately, learners should master enough vocabulary
and has capability to use it accurately.

grammar, discourse structures, and routines” (the components of language).
An indirect approach, on the other hand, focuses on the development of
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fluency of speech. It “encourages learners to use language by engaging them
in communicative activities” (Goh& Burns, 2012). Learners are believed to
acquire speaking skills by communicating with each other and they will be
able to transfer those skills to real-life situation.However, Goh and Burns
(2012) point that both direct and indirect approaches have their own
limitations. As the focus of the first one is on using language to complete a
task, rather than on practicing language; the latter tend to neglect the
development of accuracy”. Therefore, in order to master speaking skills, a
combination of features in both approaches should be emphasized.
All in all, the aim of teaching speaking is to train students for more
effective interaction with people in real life. The teacher teaches speaking by
carrying out the students in certain situation when the topic is being talked
about so that students can develop their ideas and have an oral command of
the language need to describe the topic.
2.2.2. Principles for Techniques in Teaching Speaking
Brown (2001) assumes that there are some principles for techniques in
teaching speaking:
 First of all, teachers can employ techniques that cover the spectrum of
students’ needs, from language-based focus on accuracy to messagebased focus on interaction, meaning and fluency.
 Secondly, the techniques should provide intrinsically motivating
techniques, in which students must understand how the techniques and
activities will have advantages to them.
 Thirdly, the techniques might improve the use of authentic language in
meaningful context. They may need efforts to devise authentic contexts
and meaningful interaction; or teachers can find from resource

activities are very important. O‟Malley and Pierce (1996) say that such
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activities are more authentic because they provide a format for using
the real life conversation such as repetitions, interruptions, recitations,
facial expressions and gestures.

Students often engage in another

identity in role-plays, drama and simulations activities, where their
anxiety is reduced, their motivation is increased and their language
acquisition is enhanced.
 Discussion activities: these activities are often employed for advanced
language learners; they can serve as the basis of spontaneous
interaction. Lindsay and Knight (2006) point out that in such activities,
students are supposed to give their opinions or receive others' opinions.
They can speak freely without being told what to say or not by the
teacher. The students should be only informed of what to talk about and
given enough time to structure what they wish to say. However,
Thornbury (2005) says that many teachers agree that the best
discussions are those that arise spontaneously either because one
learner reports something personal or because the topic of the course
book arises discussion.
 Presentations and Talks: The best way to make students gain their
self-confidence is through making them present oral works in front of
their classmates. Thornbury (2005) asserts that the students act of
standing up in front of their colleagues and speaking is an excellent
preparation for authentic speaking. A prepared talk is when students
make the presentation on a given topic of their choice, and this talk is

experiential learning.
4. Project learning is learner-centered and allows learners to discover
their specific strengths, interests and talents.
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