Vietnam national university, hanoi
University of languages and international studies
Faculty of Post-graduate studies

TRẦN THỊ LAN ANH

CHALLENGES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING SPEAKING
SKILL WITH THE NEW ENGLISH TEXTBOOK FOR GRADE 10
(BASIC STREAM) AT XUAN HOA HIGH SCHOOL, VINH PHUC
PROVINCE AND SOME SOLUTIONS
(Những Khó Khăn Trong Việc Dạy Và Học Kỹ Năng Nói
Theo Sách Giáo KhoaTiếng Anh Lớp 10 Mới
Tại Trường THPT Xuân Hòa, Tỉnh Vĩnh PhúcVà Một Số Giải Pháp)

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code:

60 14 10

Supervisor: Do Ba Quy, MEd

Hanoi, 2010


Vietnam national university, hanoi
University of languages and international studies
Faculty of Post-graduate studies

TRẦN THỊ LAN ANH

Table 9: Students’ suggested solutions to improve their speaking skill
Chart 1: Students’ background
Chart 2: Students’ time for English at home
Chart 3: Students’ opinions towards speaking skill


v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
1. CLT: Communicative Language Teaching
2. U.S: United States


vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration………………………………………………………………………………….i
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………ii
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………..iii
List of tables and charts ………………………………………………………………….. iv
List of abbreviations………………………………………………………………………. v
Table of contents……………………………………………………………………………vi

PART I: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………….
1. Rationale of the study…………………………………………………………… 1
2. Aims of the study………………………………………………………………... 2
3. Method and procedure of the research………………………………………… 2
4. Scope of the study…………………………………………………………………2
5. Organization of the paper………………………………………………………. 2


CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS ..…………………………………....19

3.1. Data analysis .........................................................................................................19
3.1.1. Results of the survey questionnaires……………………..…………..19
3.1.1.1. Questionnaire for teachers: …………………………………..19
3.1.1.2. Questionnaire for students: …………………………………..23
3.1.2. Results of the interviews………………………………………………27
3.1.2.1. Teachers’ interview: ………………………………………… 27
3.1.2.2. Students’ interview: ...………………………………………..29
3.2. Findings ………………………………………………………………………….30
3.2.1. Subjective difficulties:……………………………………………….. 30


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3.2.1.1. Difficulties from teachers …………………………………... 30
Teachers’ insufficient communicative competence…………...30
Teachers’ lack of training…………………………………….30
3.2.1.2. Difficulties from Students:…………………………………. 31
Learners’ level of English …………………………………….31
Learners’ traditional features…………………………………31
Mother tongue use……………………………………………..32
Limited exposure to the target language……………………...32
3.2.2. Objective difficulties ………………………………………………….32
3.2.2.1. Large class …………………………………………………...32
3.2.2.2. Time pressure:……………………………………………….. 33
3.2.2.3. The constraints brought by the innovations ………………… 33
on the curriculum and teaching method.
3.2.2.4. The testing system……………………………………………34
3.2.2.5. Lack of English teachers. ……………………………………34

APPENDICES
Appendix 1…………………………………………………………………………………….I
Appendix 2……………………………………………………………………………………IV
Appendix 3………………… ……………………………………………………………...VII
Appendix 4…...……………………………………………………………………………..VIII


1

PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
Language education, especially foreign language teaching and learning, is a compulsory
part in every country. With the development of the market economy and the globalization trend,
learning foreign languages has become not only an interest but also a great demand for most
people in Vietnam.
Since 2006, the Ministry of Education and training prescribed a new series of English
textbooks for all grades and school types from grade 6 through to grade 10. According to the
authors, the new textbooks are theme-based and skill-based, with the adoption of the two
currently popular teaching approaches, i.e. the learner-centered approach and the
communicative approach. A focus is on task-based teaching as the leading methodology.
Within the task-based framework of the new textbook series, students are expected to engage
with each other in meaningful interaction and negotiation of meaning within a specific context.
The curriculum innovations have brought a total change to the reality of teaching and learning
foreign language in Vietnam. In fact, most high-school students have at least four years of
learning with the new curriculum at secondary school which has been put in to use since 2002,
so they do not find the new textbook unfamiliar. Before the approval and institutionalization of
the new textbooks, the teachers have been prepared for the new methods of teaching and
learning. Therefore, they have thorough understanding about the nature of the new textbooks.
However, both the teachers and learners face a lot of challenges in the process of working with
the new English textbooks. It seems that they do not fulfill the requirements of the new

Phuc province.
5. Organization of the paper
The study includes 5 parts:
Part 1- Introduction presents the rationale, aims, method, scope and organization of the study.
Part II consists of 3 chapters:
Chapter 1- Literature review gives the theoretical background of speaking skill.
Chapter 2 - Methodology includes the description of Xuan Hoa high school context, the new
English textbook and the study (the instruments, the participants and the research questions).
Chapter 3- Data analysis and findings describes the data of the questionnaires and interviews,
then gives some findings through the data analysis.
Chapter 4 – Pedagogical Recommendations suggests some solutions to the current problems.
Part III - Conclusion focuses on the conclusions of the thesis, some limitations and
recommendations for further study.


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PART II: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Speaking is the vital skill of everyday communication. Speaking skill and teaching
speaking skill have received much attention from linguists all over the world. This chapter will
clarify the nature of speaking skill and popular ideas about teaching and learning this important
skill.
1.1. Theoretical background of speaking
1.1.1. Definition of speaking
Speaking is the productive skill in oral mode. It is, like the other skills, more
complicated than it seems at first and involves more than just pronouncing the words.
1.1.2. The nature of speaking.
It is obvious that speaking is the key to communication and seems to be the vital skill in
comparison with reading, listening and writing. Everywhere people speak to each other to

speaking involves not only the production of sounds but also the use of gestures, the
movements of the muscles and the face. Spoken language consists of short, often fragmentary
utterances, in a range of pronunciations. There is often a great deal of repetition and overlap
between one speaking and another. Speakers frequently use non - specific references.
Some of the micro-skills involved in speaking. The speaker has to:
*Pronounce the distinctive sounds of a language clearly enough so that people can
distinguish them. This includes making tonal distinctions.
*Use stress and rhythmic patterns and intonation patterns of the language clearly
enough so that people can understand what is said.
*Use the correct forms of words. This may mean, for example, changes in the tense,
case or gender.
*Put words together in correct word order.
*Use vocabulary appropriately.
*Use the register or language variety that is appropriate to the situation and the
relationship to the conversation partner.
*Make clear to the listener the main sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, object,
by whatever means the language uses.
*Make the main ideas stand out from supporting ideas or information.
*Make the discourse hang together so that people can follow what you are saying.
1.1.3. Aspects of Speaking


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According to Bygate (1987: 3), in order to achieve a communicative goal through
speaking, there are two aspects to be considered – knowledge of the language, and skill
in using this knowledge. It is not enough to possess a certain amount of knowledge, but
a speaker of the language should be able to use this knowledge in different situations: “We do
not merely know how to assemble sentences in the abstract: we have to produce them and adopt
to the circumstances. This means making decisions rapidly, implementing them smoothly, and

Interaction skills
According to Bygate (1987:22), both speakers and listeners, besides being good at
processing spoken words should be „good communicators‟, which means „good at saying
what they want to say in a way which the listener finds understandable‟. This means being
able to possess interaction skills. Communication of meaning then depends on two kinds of
skill: routines, and negotiation skills.
Routines are the typical patterns in which speakers organize what they have to
communicate. There are two kinds of routines: information routines, and interaction routines.
The information routines include frequently recurring types of information structures involved
in, for example, stories, descriptions, comparisons, or instructions. Bygate further divides
information routines according to their function into evaluative routines (explanations,
predictions, justifications, preferences, decisions), and expository routines (narration,
descriptions, instructions). The interaction routines, on the other hand, present the
characteristic ways, in which interactions are organized dealing with the logical
organization and order of the parts of conversation. Interaction routines can typically be
observed in, for example, telephone conversations, interviews, or conversations at the party.
While routines present the typical patterns of conversation, negotiation skills, on
the other hand, solve communication problems and enable the speaker and listener to
make themselves clearly understood. In fact, according to Bygate, negotiation skills get
routines through by the management of interaction and negotiation of meaning. The first aspect
of negotiation skills „management of interaction‟ refers to „the business of agreeing who is
going to speak next, and what he or she is going to talk about‟. These are two aspects of
management of interaction: agenda of management and turn-taking. On one hand, participants‟
choice of the topic, how it is developed, its length, the beginning or the end is controlled by the
agenda of management. On the other hand, effective turn-taking requires five abilities: how to
signal that one wants to speak, recognizing the right moment to get a turn, how to use
appropriate turn structure in order to take one‟s turn properly and not to lose it before
finishing what one has to say, recognizing other people‟s signals of their desire to speak,



involve routines and negotiation skills. Routines present the typical patterns of conversation
including interaction and information routines. Negotiation skills serve as a means for enabling
the speaker and listener to make themselves clearly understood. This is achieved by two
aspects: management of interaction and turn-taking.
1.2. Theoretical background of learning and teaching speaking skill
1.2.1. Definition of teaching and learning
In contemporary dictionaries, learning is defined as acquiring or getting of knowledge
of a subject or a skill by study, experience or instruction. A more specialized definition states
that learning is a relatively permanent change in the behavioral tendency and is the result of
reinforced practice (Kimble and Garmezy, 1963:133). Language learning is a long and complex
undertaking: “Your whole person is affected as you struggle to reach beyond the confines of
your first language and into a new language, a new culture, a new way of thinking, feeling and
acting. Total commitment, total involvement, a total physical, intellectual and emotional


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response are necessary to successfully send and receive messages in a second language. Many
variables are involved in the acquisition process.” (Brown, H D. 2010: 1)
Similarly, teaching, which is implied in the first definition of learning, may be defined
as “showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, giving instructions, guiding in
the study of something, providing with knowledge, causing to know or understand.” Teaching
is also defined as one of the means by which education is achieved (if it is) and education is a
common purpose of teaching. Teaching is the process of carrying out those activities that
experience has shown to be effective in getting students to learn. A teacher is defined as a
person whose professional activities involve the transmission of knowledge, attitudes and skills
that are stimulated in a formal curriculum to students enrolled in an educational programme.
Teaching and learning have a close relationship. We cannot define teaching apart from
learning. Teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learners to learn, setting the
conditions for learning. Your understanding of how the learners learn will determine your

content – centered education and task – based learning. Besides, Littlewood (1981:1) states:
“one of the most characteristic features of communicative language teaching is that it pays a
systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language”. For other theorists,
communicative language teaching means using procedures where learners work in pairs or
groups employing available language resources in problem solving tasks.
David Nunan (1991:279) offers five characteristic features of CLT:
-An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.
-The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
-The provision of opportunities for learners to focus not only on language but also on the
learning process itself.
-An enhancement of the learners‟ own experience as important contributing elements to
classroom learning.
-An attempt to link classroom language with language activation outside the classroom.
These five features are claimed by practitioners of CLT to show that they are very
interested in the needs and desires of their learners as well as the connection between the
language as it is taught in their class and as it used outside the classroom. Under this broad
umbrella definition, any teaching practice that helps students develop their communicative
competence in an authentic context is deemed an acceptable and beneficial form of instruction.
Thus, in the classroom CLT often takes the form of pair and group work requiring negotiation
and cooperation between learners, fluency-based activities that encourage learners to develop


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their confidence, role-plays in which students practice and develop language functions, as well
as judicious use of grammar and pronunciation focused activities.
1.2.3. Communicative Competence – The desired goal of CLT
When teaching a language, the most important goal is to help the pupils to obtain the
ability to communicate. Therefore, as an effective approach in language teaching, CLT puts
communicative competence on the top of its objectives.

do in one day. Which do we do more of? In our daily lives most of us speak more than we
write. Therefore, if the goal of the language course is truly to enable the students to
communicate in English, then speaking skill should be taught and practised in the language
classroom. Speaking is a skill which deserves attention in both first and second languages. The
learners often need to be able to speak with confidence in order to carry out many of their most
basic transactions. It is the skill by which they are most frequently judged. It is the vehicle par
excellence of social solidarity, of social ranking, of professional advancement and of business.
It is also a medium through which much language is learnt, and which for many is particularly
conductive for learning. Therefore, the teaching of speaking merits more thought.
Many language learners regard speaking ability as the measure of knowing a language.
These learners define fluency as the ability to converse with others, much more than the ability
to read, write, or comprehend oral language. They regard speaking as the most important skill
they can acquire, and they assess their progress in terms of their accomplishments in spoken
communication. The necessity of learning and teaching speaking skill was emphasized by
Nunan (1991): "success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the
(target) language." Therefore, if students do not learn how to speak or do not get any
opportunity to speak in the language classroom they may soon get de-motivated and lose
interest in learning. On the other hand, if the right activities are taught in the right way,
speaking in class can be a lot of fun, raising general learner motivation and making the English
language classroom a fun and dynamic place to be.
In the communicative model of language teaching, instructors help their students
develop this body of knowledge by providing authentic practice that prepares students for reallife communication situations. They help their students develop the ability to produce
grammatically correct, logically connected sentences that are appropriate to specific contexts,
and to do so using acceptable (that is, comprehensible) pronunciation. The goal of teaching
speaking skills is communicative efficiency. Learners should be able to make themselves
understood, using their current proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid confusion in


12


instruments to collect data and the research questions will be described.
2.1. The Teaching and Learning Situation in Xuan Hoa High School
Xuan Hoa high school is in Phuc Yen town, Vinh Phuc province, which is 30 kilometers
far from centre Hanoi. The school has good classrooms for students, a big library with many
books and a language LAB with not very good equipment.
This school has 26 classes (each has 45 students) and 7 teachers of English aged from
25 to 39 with at least 1 year of teaching. Of these teaching staff members, three graduated from
University of Languages and International Studies; the others followed continuing education or
took part in short- term English courses. Among 7 teachers, one is taking the post-graduate
course at Vietnam National University and currently isn‟t teaching. Most of the lessons are
usually conducted in Vietnamese because the students cannot understand everything in English
and the teachers have got used to teaching in their mother - tongue.
There are 9 classes of grade 10 students (with the total number of 405 students). Most
students come from nearby districts and villages of Phuc Yen town and only few come from
ethnic minorities. All of them experienced at least 4 years of learning English at lower secondary school. However, their English command is not good in terms of grammar,
vocabulary and the four skills.
2.2. The New English Textbook for Grade 10
2.2.1. The overall design of the textbook
Like the textbooks written for the other grades, the English textbook for grade 10 is
written basing on themes, such as School Talks, People‟s background, Special Education,
Technology, Excursion, etc. Each lesson includes 5 parts: Reading, Speaking, Listening,
Writing, Language Focus (with two smaller parts: Pronunciation and Grammar), each of which
is introduced within 1 period. The content of each part closely relates to the topic of the lesson.


14

The Reading part is chosen to begin each lesson with a view to developing skimming
and scanning skills. The students have to read a text of from 190 to 230 words on average
which provides them with new words and knowledge related to the topic. There are three steps:


*providing students with appropriate, systematic and basic knowledge of English.
*giving general knowledge about the people, cultures and geography of English speaking
countries and help students form positive attitudes towards the language that they are learning.
The new English textbook for grade 10 follows the two approaches dominating the
foreign language education and methodology all over the world - the learner - centered
approach and the communicative approach. The teaching method chosen for this book is task based teaching. The reason for this choice is that these two approaches consider students the
centre of education and aim at developing their creativity. In traditional teaching approaches,
teachers are the centre of the teaching and learning process - the teachers speak and the students
just listen. In the learner - centered approach, the teacher is not only the provider of knowledge
but also the organizer, advisor and facilitator; the students not only listen passively to the
teacher but also actively take part in the learning activities through pair work and group work.
The traditional approaches consider such linguistic competence as pronunciation, vocabulary
and grammar structures their final aims while the communicative competence with listening,
speaking, reading and writing skills is the biggest concern of communicative approach; the
linguistic competence is just the means for students to obtain their communicative competence.
2.2.3. Description of the Speaking Section
As being mentioned above, Speaking is the second part in each lesson and it has from 3
to 4 tasks. In lesson 1 and lesson 2, the speaking tasks are suitable for the students because the
topics are familiar (A Day in the life of, Music, Films and Cinema, School talks, etc) and the
grammar as well as structures used for speaking (greetings, asking and answering) are simple
and easy for them to remember. In most of the other lessons, students have to remember many
things: a large number of new words, complicated grammar rules (simple past, past perfect,
gerunds and to – infinitive, passive and active voice, present perfect, relative pronouns, etc)
and unfamiliar topics (Undersea Animals, Conservation, Technology and You, Historical
Places, etc). The specific description of the speaking sections in the new textbook comes as
follows:
Unit
1


-Talking about daily activities
4 tasks

-Asking and answering questions about people‟s
3 tasks

3 tasks

4 tasks

-Making an interview and reporting on results

modern inventions
-Talking about the uses of modern technology

3 tasks

7

The Mass Media

3 tasks

Village

-Making an interview: matching

-Asking for and giving information about the uses of

An Excursion

10

Conservation

4 tasks

-Talking about the new kinds of zoos
-Reporting on discussion results
-Making plans

11

National Parks

3 tasks

-Expressing regrets
-Talking about an excursion

12

13

Music

Films And
Cinemas

3 tasks


-Asking and answering about the World Cups
-Talking about the World Cup winners
-Comparing two cities
-Stating preferences and giving reasons
-Asking and answering questions about historical places
-Talking about historical places from given information

(Hoang Van Van, English Textbook for Grade 10, 2008:7))
2.3. Description of the study
2.3.1. Kind of the research
This study was carried out in the form of survey questionnaires and interviews. There
were two questionnaires: one for the teachers and one for the students. The first questionnaire
for the teachers with 9 questions was divided into 3 parts: 1.Teachers‟ background, 2.
Teachers‟ training in using the new textbook and their judgement about the training, their own
communicative competence and the speaking sections of the new textbook, 3. Teachers‟
difficulties in the process of teaching speaking with the new textbook and their solutions to
those problems. The teachers were asked to write down their names on the questionnaire so that
the author could choose the appropriate participants for the interview. There were 10 questions
in the second questionnaire for the students and they focused on 3 parts: 1. Students‟
background and their learning experience, 2. Students‟ attitudes towards speaking skill and the
speaking tasks of the new textbook, 3. Students‟ difficulties in learning to speak and their
solutions to improve speaking skill. After collecting and analyzing the data of the
questionnaires, the author carried out interviews to clarify the survey results. The interview for
teachers included 3 questions. The number of the subjects varied in each questions. They were
chosen according to their questionnaire answers. With question 1 and 2, there were 5
interviewees; with question 3 there were only 3 participants. The interview for the students
consisted of 5 questions and its subjects were 20 students.
2.3.2. Participants
A total number of 6 teachers and 360 students of grade 10 at Xuan Hoa high school
were involved in this project. Of the 6 teachers, two were more than 35 years old with more