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

*********************

NÔNG THỊ THANH HUYỀN

PROMOTING STUDENTS’ INTEREST IN ENGLISH SPEAKING
LESSONS BY USING GROUP WORK FOR 11TH GRADE STUDENTS
AT DUONG TU MINH HIGH SCHOOL
Tăng cường hứng thú của học sinh trong giờ nói Tiếng Anh bằng sử dụng hoạt
động nhóm đối với học sinh lớp 11 tại trường THPT Dương Tự Minh

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014


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

*********************

NÔNG THỊ THANH HUYỀN

PROMOTING STUDENTS’ INTEREST IN ENGLISH SPEAKING

I would also like to send my sincere thanks to all teachers at Post graduate Studies Department, ULIS – VNU who gave me interesting lessons
and comprehensive knowledge.

I am most thankful to students of class 11A4, Duong Tu Minh high
school for their enthusiastic participation in the study.

I am grateful to colleagues at Duong Tu Minh High School, my friends,
my classmates for their continued help and encouragement.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my husband, my parents who
always encourage me while the work was in process.

Ha Noi, August 2014

Nong Thi Thanh Huyen

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ABSTRACT

This thesis was carried out to investigate the benefits of using group
work in English speaking lessons and seek the answers to the hypothesis that
“Group work does promote students‟ interest in English speaking lessons to
students at 11th grade at Duong Tu Minh High School.” The researcher carried
out some group work activities on students to investigate whether group work
techniques promote students‟ interest. Observation method was used to find
the answer to the hypothesis. The findings of the research revealed that group
work was an effective teaching method that should be used in communicative
language teaching. The reason was that it strongly enhanced students‟ interest

1.4. Group work. .............................................................................................. 9
1.4.1. Definition of group work. ..................................................................... 9
1.4.2. Types of group work .......................................................................... 10
1.4.3. Group work activities .................................................................. …...11
1.4.4. The benefits of teaching and learning speaking English
by group work................................................................................................ 14
1.5. Organization of group work.................................................................. 15
1.5.1. Preparation for group work ............................................................... 15
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1.5.2. Steps of organizing group work ......................................................... 17
Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY .................................................................... 19
2.1. Hypothesis. .............................................................................................. 19
2.2. Setting of the study. ................................................................................ 19
2.3. Participants of the study. ....................................................................... 19
2.4. Data collection instruments. .................................................................. 19
2.5. Data collection procedure. ..................................................................... 21
Chapter 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ................................. 25
3.1. Students’ participation. ......................................................................... 25
3.2. “Learners talk a lot” .............................................................................. 27
3.3. Students’ attitude in speaking lessons. ................................................. 33
Part C: CONCLUSION
1. Major finding ............................................................................................. 36
2. Limitations of the study. ........................................................................... 36
3. Recommendation for further study. ........................................................ 32
4.Implications................................................................................................. 37
REFERENCES:......................................................................................... …38
APPENDIXES .................................................................................................. I



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overcome shyness and make students are more interested in English speaking
lessons as well as other English lessons.
Being a teacher of English at Duong Tu Minh High School, the
researcher is well aware of the importance of using group work to promote
students‟ interest in English speaking lessons. This led me to the choice of the
study “Promoting students’ interest in English Speaking lessons by using
group work” in the hope of finding the ways teachers organize group work to
promote students‟ interest in English lessons, especially in speaking lessons
so that we will achieve successfulness in teaching and learning. It is also
hoped that this study may offer the teachers of English at Duong Tu Minh
High School ways on how to use group work in teaching more effectively.
2. Aims of the study
The aim of the study is to investigate whether the use of group work in
English speaking lessons promotes students‟ interest and the difficulties that
teachers and students face with when conducting this technique.
3. Scope of the study
The study focuses on group work to promote students‟ interest in
English speaking lessons, especially group work that was appropriate to 11th
grade students in mountainous areas. Group work in this study was tested
with the participation of these students.
4. Hypothesis
This study was set up to test the following hypothesis: “Group work
helps promote students‟ interest in English speaking lessons.”
5. Methods of the study
Group work activities were designed and conducted on the students of
grade 11. Data was collected through group work implemented by the

speaking skill. The second section presents the students‟ interest and the
factors affecting their interest in speaking lessons. Then group work activities
in language teaching and learning are discussed in the third section.
1.1. The importance of teaching speaking skills
For many years, teaching speaking has been underestimated and English
teachers seem to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization
of dialogues.
Nowadays, the world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should
improve students‟ communicative skills so that students can express
themselves with their new language.
According to communicative language teaching, teaching speaking
skills involves the use of language through different communicative activities.
When using communicative activities in speaking, it is very important to
make sure that students feel comfortable and confident to participate in
learning activities. This makes students find it easy to discuss and share ideas
with their partners. Students should be given more chances to speak in class
so that they can attain mutual understanding and practice language.
Communicative activities offer opportunities to improve speaking skills
as well as cognitive ability. It is clear that successful communication is an
integrated accomplishment. When participating in communicative activities,
students will become more active; have opportunities to interact with other. In
brief, communication activities can boost proficiency and greatly improve
communicative competence.
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There are various definitions of speaking and the popular acceptance
comes from Jones, R (1989: 86) who defines speaking as “Speaking is a form
of communication, so it is important that what you say conveyed in the most
effective way”. Chaney states that “ speaking is the process of building and

that the amount of learning in a speaking lesson is correlated with the
amount of talking by the learner. Thus, the more time learners engage
with in the course of a lesson, the more language they can obtain, so
learners speaking time makes a speaking lesson successfully.
The second characteristic that he mentions is “participation is even”.
He means that classroom discussion should not be dominated by a minority of
talkative participants. All students should have opportunities to speak, and
contributions are fairly evenly distributed. It is clearly that a successful
speaking lesson must provide opportunities of speaking to all learners with
different levels.
“Motivation is high” is the third characteristic of a successful speaking
activity. Learners are eager to speak because they are interested in the topic,
they find the topic is familiar and want to talk about it and they want to
contribute to achieve the task objective. The activities that teachers design
should make learners have a high motivation. Brown (1994) states that it is
when students‟ learning styles are matched with appropriate approaches in
teaching that their motivation, performances, and achievements will increase
and be enhanced. Nunan (1989) points out that accommodating learners‟
needs and preferences is vital in designing a learner-centered curriculum.
Understanding of students‟ preferred way of learning helps the teacher not
only to alter his or her teaching style but also to diversify classroom tasks or
activities to accommodate different learning style.
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The last characteristic is “Language is of an acceptable level”. Ur means
that

learners


engendered if learners become self-centered”. This means they are able to
determine their learning objectives, choose their own way of achieving these,
and evaluate their own progress. In this case, students have the desire to talk
or to ask for information. They want to know and try to talk it through to
achieve their goals.
1.3.2. Factors affecting students’ interest.
There have been some studies on the factors affecting students‟ interest
in learning a foreign language so far. Some factors such as language level,
learner level, learning situation level were stated by Dornyei (2001) and

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internal and external factors stated by Williams and Burnden (1997).
Although researchers have had some different views in this issue, they all
have come to an agreement with a list of common factors affecting students‟
interest. These factors can be divided into three main factors: Students‟
motivation, teaching techniques of teachers and teachers‟ personalities.
Motivation is an important factor that leads to students‟ success in
learning in general, and in learning language in particular. And when students
have their own motivation they will have interests in learning. So what is
motivation?
According to Littlewood (1998), “motivation is a complex phenomenon and
includes many components: the individual‟s drive and need for achievement
and success, curiosity, desire for stimulation and new experience that make up
her motivation. In other words, motivation is both intrinsically and
extrinsically- originated.”
Intrinsic motivation is a type of motivation that plays an important role
in most learners‟ second language learning success. For many learners, the
purpose for learning a different language is the "interest in the culture and the

a different role and do not have to speak for themselves, which means they do
not have to take the same responsibility.
d. Information gap: is the activity that students are supposed to be
working in pairs. One student will have the information that other partner
does not have and the partners will share their information. Information gap
activities serve many purposes such as solving a problem or collecting
information. For example, filling in the gaps in a schedule or timetable
(Partner A holds an airline timetable with some of the arrival and departure
times missing. Partner B has the same timetable but with different blank
spaces. The two partners are not permitted to see each other‟s timetables and
must fill in the blanks by asking each other appropriate questions. These
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activities are effective because everybody has the opportunity to talk
extensively in the target language.
e. Brainstorming: gives students opportunities to produce ideas in a
limited time. Depending on the context, either individual or group
brainstorming is effective and learners generate ideas quickly and freely. The
good characteristic of brainstorming is that the students are not criticized for
their ideas so students will be open to sharing new ideas.
f. Storytelling: is the activity that students can briefly summarize a tale
or story they heard from somebody beforehand, or they may create their own
stories to tell their classmates. Story telling fosters creative thinking. It also
helps students express ideas in the format of beginning, development, and
ending, including the characters and setting a story has to have. Students also
can tell riddles or jokes. For instance, at the very beginning of each class
session, the teacher may call a few students to tell short riddles or jokes as an
opening. In this way, not only will the teacher address students‟ speaking
ability, but also get the attention of the class.

they have more chances to practice. Group work dramatically increases
students talking time and students‟ participation.
- Increase in the students’ confidence: Students, who are shy of speaking in
front of the whole class, or to the teacher, often find it much easier to express
themselves in front of a small group. For teachers, because there are more
than two people in a group, there is a greater chance of different opinions and
varied contributions than in working individually or in pairs, it frees the
teacher from her traditional role of “an expert who always lectures” and
allows her to wander freely round the class, leading and encouraging
discussion, giving help where needed.(Harmer, 1999: 116).
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- Mutual help: Group work encourages students to share ideas aunderstand what to do and how to do in the task. The important thing about
instructions is that the students should understand and agree on what the task
is. To check students‟ comprehension teacher may ask them to repeat the
instructions, or, in monolingual classes, to translate them in to their first
language.
In the during activities, while students are working in groups the
teachers have a number of options. They could, for instance, stand at their
convenience in the classroom and keep an eye on what is happening, noting
who appears to be stuck, disengaged, or about to finish. In this position
teacher can „tune in‟ to a particular group from some distance away. The
teachers can then decide whether to go over and help that group. An
alternative procedure is to go round the class watching and listening to
specific groups.
When students are working in groups the teacher has an ideal opportunity
to work with individual students whom they feel would benefit from their

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2.2. Setting of the study
The study was conducted at Duong Tu Minh High School, in Thai
Nguyen province. At our school, English is taught as a compulsory subject for
students. There are three levels of English: English 10, 11 and 12. The
students have English lessons during the first term and second term of the
school year.
2.3. Participants of the study
The study was conducted on 20 non-English-major students from grade
11, Duong Tu Minh High School. The students were of different English
competence. Some of them have learned English for 5 years, while some have
learned for 9 years. In general, most of the students were at the elementary
level of English and only a few of them at intermediate level. Most of them
can do grammar exercises very well but they have difficulties in mastering
four language skills. Among the four skills, they find speaking especially
important but most difficult one. That is the reason why most of students were
bored and unmotivated in speaking classes.
2.4. Data collection instruments
Five group work activities were designed as the data collection
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instruments based on speaking units of Tieng Anh 11 but modified to be more
suitable and interesting to the students. These activities also required students
to communicate orally with each others. Three group work activities I chose
to design were role play, playing cards and discussion because they were
suitable to participants in this study. A brief description of the five speaking
activities will be outlined in the following discussion.
Activity 1: Role play
- Objectives: Asking about the way/direction and answering the way.
- Organization: Students worked in groups of 5.