VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
*****************

NGUYỄN THỊ XOAN

A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING SPEAKING SKILL
FACED BY NON-ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS AT
HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY

Nghiên cứu về những khó khăn trong việc học kĩ năng nói của sinh viên không
chuyên Tiếng Anh tại trường Đại học Công Nghiệp Hà Nội

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410

Hanoi – 2012


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
*****************

NGUYỄN THỊ XOAN

A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING SPEAKING SKILL
FACED BY NON-ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS AT


LIST OF TABLES

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

vi

PART A:

1

INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale

1

2. Aims of the study

2

3. Scope of the study

3

4. Significance of the study

3

6

1.2. Speaking skill

9

1.2.1. Concept of speaking

9

4


1.2.2. Characteristics of speaking

10

1.3. Teaching Speaking Skills in CLT approach

11

1.3.1. Teaching Speaking Skills in CLT approach

11

1.3.2. The techniques in teaching speaking skills

13

1.4. Difficulties in learning speaking skill


2.1.3. Description of the teachers at HaUI

23

2.2. The study

24

2.2.1. Participants

24

2.2.2. Sampling

25

2.2.3. Research methodology

25

2.2.4. Data collection methods

25

2.2.5. Procedures

25

2.3. Data analysis


4. Suggestions for further studies

44

REFERENCE

46

APPENDIX 1: Questionnaire for students (English version)

I

APPENDIX 2: Questionnaire for students (Vietnamese version)

IV

APPENDIX 3: Questionnaire for teachers

VII

APPENDIX 4: Transcription of semi-structured group interview with
teachers

XI

6


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Table 7: Students’ reasons for learning English speaking skill
Table 8: Teachers’ belief about CLT
Table 9: Students’ common difficulties in learning speaking skill

8


PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. RATIONALE OF THE STUDY
Nowadays, in the trend of globalization, English has become an international
language and has been widely used in many parts of the world. With the
development of modern science and technology along with the integration policy,
the need of learning English in Vietnam has been increasing day by day. With the
purpose of finding a good job with high salary or to study abroad, learners of
English nowadays not only wish to master the grammar of the language to pass the
exam at school but they also wish to develop their communication competence.
However, they often get into a lot of difficulties on the way mastering it. The
reasons may be that to speak a foreign language fluently is not easy and it takes a lot
of time and effort. There are many factors such as: students’ motivation, students’
characteristics, learning materials, teachers’ teaching methods, etc… which affect
students’ achievement in learning English speaking skill.
The topic of difficulties in learning English speaking has also attracted me
since I began teaching English at Hanoi University of Industry (HaUI). In the hope
of helping students master English well to get a good job after graduation, the
Faculty of English at HaUI has applied the communicative language teaching
approach in teaching and learning for both English-major and non-English-major
students. Among four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing),
speaking is paid special attention. However, throughout my teaching for nonEnglish major students at this university, I realize that the speaking lessons are
usually not really successful as expected because students have a lot of difficulties
in learning this skill. Although students can do the grammar exercises very well, can


10


3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study aims at finding out the difficulties in learning speaking skill
faced by non-English major students at HaUI. There are many types of difficulties
that learners can meet when they study a foreign language. However, due to the
limitation of time and the narrow scale, the study only focuses on the most common
difficulties in learning speaking skill faced by non-English major students at Hanoi
University of Industry from the perspectives of students and teachers. Then, this
study will also give out some suggested solutions generated from the teachers in the
interview for students to overcome those difficulties and improve their speaking
skill.

4. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

In finding out the difficulties of non-English major students in learning
speaking English and some suggested solutions, it is hoped that the result of the
study will somehow be used as reference to help students to learn speaking skill
better in the next semesters. In addition, the result of this study is also strongly
believed to help me and my colleagues to better our own teaching at HaUI, as well
as those who are in charge of teaching English speaking skill to non-English major
students at other universities and colleges in Vietnam with the same situation as at
HaUI.
Last but not least, this study is also hoped to contribute to recent
knowledge about difficulties in learning speaking skill of non-English major
students at HaUI.


12


PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
Chapter 1 briefly presents the overview of CLT and speaking skill: concept
of CLT, characteristics of CLT, concept of speaking, characteristics of speaking,
teaching speaking skills in CLT approach, the techniques in teaching speaking skills
and difficulties in learning speaking skill.
1.1. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
1.1.1. Concept of CLT
There are many different definitions about CLT.
Hymes (1972) promotes the theory about language as communication with
the target to develop “communicative competence” for students, which is later
considered to be the goal of language teaching, the backbone of the communicative
language teaching approach.
CLT was expanded with the development of the notional- functional syllabus
(Wilkins, 1976) and a communicative syllabus (Munby, 1978). The former was an
attempt to organize second language curriculum based on communicative
principles. Both were based on the theory that the basic categories of language were
notions and functions rather than grammatical categories such as nouns, verbs, or
adjectives. Widdowson (1978) further added to the field when he proposed a model
of language in which he made a distinction between usage and use, which usage
referring to grammatical aspects of language and use referring to communicative
aspects of language.
Canale and Swain (1980) expands the theoretical basis of CLT for both
teaching and testing. They are against the trend of over emphasis on function and a
lack of emphasis on form grammatical complexity. They insist that teaching in CLT
approach need to develop communicative competence for students. In their views,
communicative competence consists of grammatical, sociolinguistic and strategic

enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important contributing
elements to classroom learning. 5) An attempt to link classroom language learning
14


with language activities 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. In the CLT classroom, pair work and
group work are made used of to practice the fluency-based activities.
Brown (2001), in describing the key principles of CLT, promotes six
characteristics of CLT. The first one is that the goals of CLT are emphasized in all
of the components of communicative competence including: grammatical,
discourse, functional, sociolinguistic, and strategic. The second one is that language
techniques are designed to motivate learners to use the pragmatic, authentic,
functional use of language for meaningful purposes (communicative purposes). The
mastering of grammar rules is not the central goal of CLT. The third one is that
teaching techniques and activities are designed and organized to develop students’
fluency and accuracy. Fluency is sometime considered more important than
accuracy. The fourth one is that in the classroom students have to use the language
in the communicative activities. The fifth one is that students can develop their selfstudy ability during learning process. Last but not least, the role of the teacher in
the class is recognized as a facilitator and guide, not the person who knows
everything and forces students to learn and study what she knows.
Richard (2006) suggests six following principles of CLT today: 1) Teachers
need to make real communication the focus of language learning. 2) Teachers
should provide opportunities for learners to experiment and try out what they know.
3) Teachers ought to be tolerant of learners’ errors as they indicate that the learner is
building up his or her communicative competence. 4) Teachers should provide
opportunities for learners to develop both accuracy and fluency. 5) Teachers had
better link the different skills such as speaking, reading, and listening together, since

attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language. In reaction to the
grammar-translation and audio-lingual methods, the CLT approach emphasizes the
communicative activities that involve the real use of language in daily life situation.

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1.2. Speaking Skill
Speaking skill plays an important role in learners’ learning process. It is
considered an important criterion to judge learners’ achievement in learning a
language. They often evaluate their success in language learning by how well they
can speak that language. Therefore, if they cannot learn how to speak or do not get
any opportunities to speak in the language classroom, they may soon get
demotivated and bored with learning. On the contrary, if the teachers can apply
interesting activities in the class, speaking lessons can become very funny and
interesting.
1.2.1. Concepts of Speaking
There are many different concepts of speaking by many different linguistics,
however, most of them agree that speaking is very important to human
communication. Bygate (1997) states that speaking is a skill which is very
important and requires as much attention as other skills, in both first and second
languages. In order to carry out most of their basic interactions and transactions,
learners need to be able to speak, and express their ideas to other people. He slso
emphasizes that “interaction is the use of language for maintaining communication
between participants” and „interaction skills are skills of deciding what to say,
when to say it and how to say it clearly” (Bygate, 1997, p.115). Therefore, in
learning speaking skill, learners are required to know not only how to produce
specific points of language such as grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary
(linguistic competence or grammatical competence), but also when, why and in
what ways language is produced (sociolinguistic competence).

process of communicating. They are information routines and interactional ones.
Information routines may be described to involve two sub-routines: expository and
evaluation. The former includes description, narration, comparison and instruction.
The latter consists of explanation, prediction, justification, preference and decision.
Interaction routines are routines based not so much on sequences of kinds of term
18


occurring in typical kinds of interactions such as telephone conversation, interview
conversations casual encounters, conversations at parties, lessons, radio or
television interviews, all tend to be organized in characteristic ways.
In Brown’s opinion (1983) speaking has three characteristics: the first one is
that its form and meaning are dependent on the context in which it occurs, including
the participants themselves, their collective experiences, the physical environment,
and the purposes for speaking. It is often spontaneous, open-ended, and evolving.
However, speech is not always unpredictable. The second one is that speaking
requires that learners not only know how to produce specific points of language
such as grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary (“linguistic competence”), but also
that they understand when, why, and in what ways to produce language
(“sociolinguistic competence”). Last but not least, speech has its own skills,
structures, and conventions different from written language.
Bygate (1987) considers speaking as an undervalued skill in many ways. The
reason is that almost all people can speak; therefore they just take speaking skill too
much for granted. He also asserts that speaking skill deserves attention every bit as
much as literacy skills. Learners often need to be able to speak with confidence in
order to carry out many of their most basic interactions and transactions. Bygate
also highly appreciates speaking by stating that speaking is the medium through
which much language is learnt.
To sum up, it is undeniable that speaking is the key to successful
communication. By considering what good speakers do, what speaking tasks can be

to both establish and maintain social relationship while transactional speaking is to
exchange goods or services. Interactional speech is much more unpredictable than
the other as it ranges over many topics with participants taking turn and
commenting freely while the latter encounters of a fairly restricted kind (e.g.
telephoning for a taxi). Students should be taught and guided to speak the targeted
language in both interactional and transactional settings.

20


1.3.2. The techniques in teaching speaking skills
Communicative drill is “one in which the type of response is controlled but
the students provides his or her own content or information” (Richard & Platt, 1992,
p.223).There are four kinds of activities that teachers can organize for their students.
The first one is practical situations: Students practice requesting and providing
information and situations i.e. asking for information in a city and ordering meals in
a restaurant. The second one is guessing games: Students do the games in pairs or
groups: Ask yes-no question until figure out a person/thing... chosen, Teacher
provides short, incomplete story plot, only one student knows the real end, other
students guess by asking questions etc. the third one is information gathering
activity: involves conducting surveys, interviews and searches in which students
were required to use their language to collect information. The last one is jigsaw
activity: each partner has one or a few pieces of the “puzzle”, and the partners must
cooperate to fit all the pieces into a whole picture.
Harmer (2005) suggests the following activities in the classroom: A roleplay: Teacher gives role cards to students for pair work to do certain task such as
producing speech with some requirements. A discussion activity: Students are asked
to give opinion in front of the class, share ideas within small group before speaking
in public. An opinion sharing activity: may require using factual information,
formulating arguments and justifying one’s opinion. For some topics, there may be
no right or wrong responses from different individuals or groups. A reasoning gap

activities: Using the language being thought to establish the classroom
management; Using the language being thought as teaching medium;
Conversations or discussion sessions; Basing dialogues and role plays on school
experience.
b. Simulation and role playing: Role playing controlled through cued
dialogues; Role-playing controlled through cues and information; Role-playing
controlled through situation and goal; Role-playing in form of debate or
discussion; Large-scale simulation activities; Improvisation

22


1.4. Difficulties in learning speaking skill.
Different scholars have different ideas about the difficulties in learning
speaking skill. Hymes (1974) stated that speaking skill includes linguistics
competence, socio-linguistics competence and discourse competence. Therefore,
students’ psychology, linguistics, culture, leaning materials, teachers’ characters,
class size, learning environment can affect students’ leaning to master
communicative competence. According to Larsen (1986), difficulties in language
teaching in general and difficulties in teaching speaking skill in particular may stem
from teachers, students together with objective factors affecting the teaching
process. And the researcher decided to follow this idea of Larsen in her study.
1.4.1 Difficulties from teachers
1.4.1.1. Inappropriate teacher teaching methods
a. Teachers’ misconceptions about CLT
According to Thompson (1994), teachers are often confused about CLT in
four following aspects: the first one is that CLT means not teaching grammar, the
second one is CLT means teaching speaking only, the third one is CLT means pair
work, which means role play, the last one is CLT means expecting too much from
the teachers. These misconceptions lead to teachers’ inappropriate teaching

comfortably without any negative feeling causing them shy and embarrassed.
Inappropriate teacher’s roles
The roles of teachers in the classroom have been changing a lot. However, in
CLT approach, it is agreed that students are the centre of the language classroom,
not teachers. Still, teachers play important roles in the classroom. Teachers’ roles
can affect the success or failure of the classroom.
Harmer (1999, p. 57) suggests one of the clearest classifications of teachers’
roles in the CLT classroom is that the teacher can play a role as: a controller, an
24


organizer, an assessor, a prompter, a participant, a resource,

a tutor and an

observer.
Byrner (1986, p.2) points out the roles of teachers according to three stages
of teaching speaking: the presentation stage, the practice stage and the production
stage. At the first stage, teachers play a role as an informant who prepares materials
and presents the language to the students. At this stage, teachers should be careful
about time management so that students can have enough time for the other
important activities. At the second stage, teachers act as a conductor who should try
to give all students as much time as possible to practice the presented language. At
the last stage, teachers play a role as a manager and a guide. Students are
encouraged to use language freely even though they may make many mistakes.
Teachers should make sure that students use the language for their free talk.
Teachers are expected to comment their students’ speaking activities performance at
the end of their presentation.
In short, regardless of different roles of teachers, the most important one is
supposedly that of a motivator to motivate students’ interests of learning, otherwise

dual entities: Culture representing what a society thinks and does, while its language
expresses and embodies the ideas of that society. In other words, if a learner expects
to speak a language well, he must appreciate the way it is used in social contexts.
Cultural factors can create students’ learning style. They can have affect on
students’ learning results. Keefe (1979) defines learning style as “cognitive,
affective and physiological traits that are relatively stable indicators of how learners
perceive, interact with and respond to the learning environment.” Willing (1987)
divides learners into four groups basing on their behaviors: the first one is concrete
learners who are interested in social aspects of language learning. The second one
is analytical learners who would rather work individually on reading and grammar.
The third one is communicative learners: are willing to communicate with other
26