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

LÊ PHƯƠNG LAN

THE APPLICATION OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES
TO DEVELOP SPEAKING SKILLS FOR 10TH GRADERS
IN SON TAY HIGH SCHOOL-HANOI
(ỨNG DỤNG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG GIAO TIẾP ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN KỸ NĂNG NÓI
CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT SƠN TÂY-HÀ NỘI)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field : ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
Code : 601410

HANOI, 2011


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

LÊ PHƯƠNG LAN

THE APPLICATION OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES
TO DEVELOP SPEAKING SKILLS FOR 10TH GRADERS
IN SON TAY HIGH SCHOOL-HANOI
(ỨNG DỤNG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG GIAO TIẾP ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN KỸ NĂNG NÓI
CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT SƠN TÂY-HÀ NỘI)

LIST OF TABLES

vii

ABBREVIATIONS

viii
INTRODUCTION

1

1. Rationale of the study

1

2. Aims of the study

2

3. Research questions

2

4. Scope of the study

2

5. Design of the study

2

8

1.2.3. Principles for teaching speaking

10

1.3. COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES

12

1.3.1. What are communicative activities?

12

1.3.2. Purposes of communicative activities

13

1.3.3. Types of oral communicative activities

14

1.3.3.1. Communication games

14

1.3.3.2. Songs

15



2.1.3. The students in Son Tay High School

18

2.1.4. The current situation of English teaching and learning in Son Tay

19

High School
2.2. RESEARCH METHODS

20

2.2.1. Description of the subjects

20

2.2.2. Data collection instruments

20

2.2.3. Procedures

21

2.2.4. Methods of data analysis

21


30

Chapter 4: IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

32

4.1 Some kinds of effective communicative activities

32

4.2 Some considerations and suggestions on using

35

communicative activities
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES

37
39

APPENDIX 1

I

APPENDIX 2

III

APPENDIX 3


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communicative activities in their English teaching.
Table 5

Some strategies the teachers have applied to overcome these

25

obstacles.
Table 6

The reasons for speaking of students in classroom

26

Table 7

Kinds of communicative activities that students were fond of

26

participating in.
Table 8

Reasons discourage students from speaking English in class

27



INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
The introduction of the new textbook “English 10” into teaching at Son Tay High
School in 2006 has marked real renovation in language teaching and learning from the
traditional approach-grammar translation method, which only concentrates on the ability of
using grammar rules precisely, to communicative approach, which focuses on
communication ability. Nonetheless, the teachers of English at Son Tay High School find it
difficult to teach speaking successfully because of the class size, the students’ language
level, and additionally, students are not acquainted with CLT. Moreover, the majority of
the teachers were trained under the strong influence of the Grammar-Translation method,
which impedes them from teaching speaking successfully even the new textbook follows
the communicative approach.
As a teacher of English at Son Tay High School in Hanoi, I often receive similar
questions from many students. For example, “I can understand grammar and sentence
structures well, but I feel embarrassed to talk in English” or “What should I do to speak
English well?” In my reality of teaching, there are a lot of students who have perfect
knowledge of grammar that works wonderfully for reading and writing but cannot express
themselves to the teachers. On the other hand, I often hear a lot of complaints from the
colleagues: “Students seem so quiet and lazy during speaking lessons. It is very difficult to
make them participate in speaking activities”. Therefore, the idea of doing something
useful for my colleagues and students has urged me to conduct the research.
Another reason why the study was carried out lies in my love for teaching
speaking. By doing the study, I can know more about the challenges in teaching and
learning speaking skills so that I can find relevant techniques along with activities to
improve my teaching speaking at Son Tay High School.
The above reasons have inspired me to conduct a study on “The application of
communicative activities to develop speaking skills for 10th graders at Son Tay High
School-Hanoi” with the hope to make a little contribution to the quality of teaching and
learning speaking skills for Grade 10th at Son Tay High School.

is structured in three main parts namely: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion.
The first part “Introduction” presents the rationale, aims, research questions, scope of the
study and its design.
The second part “Development” includes four chapters.
Chapter 1, Theoretical Background, begins with the literature on understanding speaking,
including the comparison of spoken language with written language and implication for
teaching. Then comes the literature on teaching speaking with the speaking needs and
goals of language students, some approaches to teaching speaking and principles for
teaching speaking. The rest of the chapter is on communicative activities, its purposes and
its different types.
Chapter 2 is composed of two sections. The first section presents the local situation in Son
Tay High School. The second section provides the research methods that involve


3

information about the subjects, data collection instruments and procedures. Also, the
methods of data analysis are mentioned.
Chapter 3 presents major findings and discussion
Chapter 4 gives recommendations for more effective application of Communicative
Activities in developing students’ speaking skills.
The third part is the conclusions of the study.


4

DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. UNDERSTANDING SPEAKING
1.1.1. Spoken language versus written language


in different ways and they often change the subject of what they are saying in midsentence. A piece of writing, however, with mistakes and half-finished sentence, etc.
would be judged by many native speakers as illiterate since it is expected that writing
should be “correct”. From the point of view of language teaching, therefore, there is often
far greater pressure for written accuracy than there is accuracy in speaking. Apart from
this, writers can not use intonation, stress or body language. They also often feel under an
obligation to achieve accuracy and precisions, because written language is more permanent
than spoken language.
Another different characteristic of written and spoken language is in the overall
structures of spoken and written texts (Burns, 1997). Written texts are usually logically
organized with a distinct beginning, middle and end structures. It is generally possible for
readers to predict quite easily how the text is likely to be structured. Spoken texts, on the
other hand, are more open-ended and dynamic with one utterance leading to another.
Speakers also tend to change their topic of conversation during the talk. Therefore it is
difficult for the speakers and listeners to predict the exact direction the interaction will
take.
Finally, spoken and written languages are grammatically different. According to
Halliday (1989) in Burns (1997), written language is more lexically dense while spoken
language is more grammatically complicated. Writers tend to use lexical words such as
nouns or noun groups, speakers tend to use verbs and grammatical words such as pronouns
and conjunctions or linking words such as "and", "but" and "because" to produce clauses.
1.1.2. Implications for teaching
Understanding the characteristics of spoken and written language, the linguistic
similarities and differences is very important for language teachers to have an appropriate
approach to teaching reproductive and receptive skills. The followings are factors that EFL
teachers should take into account in order to assist EFL students’ speaking skills.
The primary need of EFL learners is the need to hear and practice with samples of
natural speech of native speakers and to be aware of the language typically used in spoken
communication. This results from the fact that EFL learners lack opportunity to be exposed
to natural speaking environment, therefore they cannot have the chance to pick up the

require a high level of accuracy like writing, learner mistakes should be tolerated until they
are given feedback at the end of the activity. This helps bring about the concept of selfconfidence, which is very important in promoting learners’ speaking skills.
1.2. TEACHING SPEAKING
1.2.1. The speaking needs and goals of language students
One of the aims of most of the language programs used by teachers today is to
develop spoken language skills, and most programs aim to integrate both spoken and


7

written language. However, the emphasis given to speaking in a language program varies
according to the needs and goals of the students and the focus of the course.
According to Burns (1997), decisions about teaching speaking will inevitably
depend on the learners’ goal and their needs in developing speaking skills. The most
important starting point when deciding how to teach speaking is to gather background data
about students such as age, language background and previous language learning, their
goals, needs and the contexts in which they will need to use English. It also involves
assessing their current level of spoken language competency or proficiency. Sheils (1993)
has suggested that the development of communicative ability has to be related to the needs
of learners. They have both immediate and potential communicative needs. They need to
know how to express their own meanings in the here-and-now of the classroom as they
share knowledge, experiences, interests, opinions and feelings. Learners also need to be
prepared to use the language for real communication outside the classroom.
Burns (1997) has also shown that in deciding what spoken language to include
in a program, it is valuable to investigate the students’ purposes and goals for improving
their speaking skills. This can be done through interviews, individual and class discussions
and through class surveys.
Harmer (1996) has shown that students may have “short-term goals” and “longterm goals” in learning a language. Long-term goals might have something to do with a
wish to get a better job at some future date, or a desire to be able to communicate with
members of a target language community. Short-term goals might include such things as

features of the approach was the presentation of the new language through individual
sentences which exemplified grammatical points. A typical lesson would include the
presentation of a new grammatical point, a list of new vocabulary items to be learned and
practice sentences for students to translate.
The grammar-translation approach placed considerable emphasis on accuracy and
stressed the production of complete sentences. As the approach was based on written
grammatical sources, the teaching of speaking was, in effect, neglected and teaching itself
took place through the medium of the learner’s first language. This approach also
encouraged a word-by-word construction of sentences, which ignored meaning and often
produced unnatural sound in sentences. One of the main goals of this approach was to
develop skills that would allow learner to read the works of great literature or to experience
the intellectual discipline of studying and analyzing grammatical structure.
Richards and Rodgers (1986) has shown that in the first half of the twentieth
century, the theories of American structural linguists such as Bloomfield (1993) and Fries
(1945) gradually replaced the more traditional approaches of classical humanism and the
structural approach became influential in language teaching. And it was considered one of


9

the most common approaches to teaching speaking and listening. This approach was based
on the view that language is acquired by stimuli and imitation. It was an approach which
gave a much greater emphasis to speaking than the previous grammar-translation approach.
This approach to teaching focuses on audio-lingual method of imitation, repetition and
response. Burns (1997) has also shown that, on the one hand, this approach to teaching
speaking and listening forms habits of speaking with good intonation and correct grammar.
Learners were trained in correct speech-patterns and expected to practice them. There was
a strong emphasis on repetition and on building up of linguistic items through drills and
exercises which focused on grammatical structures and patterns. On the other hand, this
approach places little interest in the context for speaking. Learners’ activities involved

emphasizes the role of the teacher as a facilitator of the learning process.
Since the 1970s, communicative approach has had a major influence on teaching
and learning in many parts of the world. One of the major benefits of communicative
language teaching (CLT) is that it has brought about a more comprehensive view of
teaching and learning. CLT emphasizes the development of learners’ ability and
willingness to use the target language appropriately and accurately for the purposes of
effective communication (Shei1s, 1993). However, this is not to imply that the
communicative approach has been universally accepted and practiced.
Methodologies based on communicative approach to teaching speaking tend to
focus on spoken language use rather than the form of the language. This has meant that in
the classroom the teacher has been encouraged to focus on activities which will get
students speaking and attention has been paid to providing them with the means to interact.
As a result, there was often little guidance given to teachers on how to integrate a focus on
the form of spoken language.
1.2.3. Principles for teaching speaking
Attitudes toward teaching have changed somewhat since the nineteenth century.
This is particularly true of the last twenty-five years which have seen a change of focus
from “language structure” to “language use”. In the area of speaking, researchers have put
increasing emphasis on “natural speech”. That is to say there has been a shift in focus from
the product of speaking to the process involved.
The governing principle for the processes involved is to give students more and
more opportunities “to use language as they wish, to express their own ideas so that they
become aware that they have learnt something useful to them personally, and thus they are
encouraged to go on learning” (Byrne, 1987:2). However, teachers may help students
progress through several steps. First the teachers present new language to the students, then
they must practice the new language in a controlled way. Finally students can try to use the


11




12

1.3. COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES
1.3.1. What are communicative activities?
According to Harmer (1991), whatever activity the students are involved in, if it is
to be genuinely communicative and if it is really promoting language use, the students
should have a desire to communicate. If they do not want to be involved in communication
then that communication will probably not be effective. The students should have some
kind of communicative purpose, in other words they should be using language in some
way to achieve an objective. Then their attention should be centered on the content of what
is being said or written and not the language form that is being used. So, communicative
activities are the ones which involve learning through using language for a communicative
purpose.
In communicative activities, the students will have to deal with a variety of
language (either receptively or productively) rather than just one grammatical construction.
While the students are engaged in the communicative activity the teacher should not
intervene, which means he/she should not correct mistakes. This would undermine the
communicative purpose of the activity. The teacher may of course be involved in the
activity as a participant, and will also be watching and listening very carefully in order to
be able to conduct feedback.
Thus for non-communicative activities there will be no desire to communicate on
the part of the students and they will have no communicative purpose. In other words,
where the students are involved in a drill or in repetition, they will be motivated not by a
desire to reach a communicative objective, but by the need to reach the objective of
accuracy.
Harmer (1991) has summarized those points in a figure called “The communicative
continuum”:
NON-COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES

Of course not all classroom activities are either “communicative” or “noncommunicative”. There are techniques that fall somewhere between the two extremes.
Harmer has also divided work on the productive skills into three major stages:
introducing new language, practice and communicative activities. The introduction of new
language is frequently an activity that falls at the “non-communicative” end of the
continuum. Often here the teacher will work with controlled techniques, asking students to
repeat and perform in drills. At the same time the teacher will insist on accuracy,
correcting when the students make mistake. Practice activities are those which fall
somewhere between the two extremes the continuum. While students perform them they
may have a communicative purpose, and while they may be working in pairs, there may
also be a lack language variety, and the materials may determine what the students do or
say. Practice activities, then, often have some features of both non-communicative and
communicative activities. Communicative activities are those which exhibit the
characteristics at the “communicative” end of the continuum. Students are somehow
involved in activities that give them both the desire to communicate and a purpose which
involves them in a varied use of language.
1.3.2. Purposes of communicative activities
According to Littlewood (1990), communicative activities have been designed to
provide an opportunity for learners to produce language that they have recently learnt. The
followings are some contributions that communicative activities can make to language
learning:
They provide “whole-task practice”: While non-communicative activities provide
training in the part-skills, communicative activities provide practice in the total skills,
sometimes called “whole-task practice”. Learning to swim, for example, usually involves
not only separate practice of individual movements (part-skills), but also actual attempts to
swim short distances (whole- task practice). In foreign language learning, our means for
providing learners with whole- task practice in the classroom is through various kinds of
communicative activity structured in order to suit the learners’ level of ability.


14

information which another student (or group) must discover.
Communication games activities include finding the differences (or similarities);
describe and arrange; story reconstruction and/or poem reconstruction (Bygate, 1987). In


15

each case of this type of activities it is the overcoming of the information gap rather than
the production of correct language that signals the success of the performance. In this
respect, the focus of the activity is on “meanings to be communicated” rather than
“linguistic form to be learnt” (Harmer, 1991). The activities of this type provide the teacher
with a convenient bridge between pre-communicative and communicative language use,
students are engaged in communicating meaning for a purpose, but they are not yet made
to dispense entirely with the “structure crutches” provided by the teacher.
1.3.3.2. Songs
There are many good rationales for using songs in English classroom. They are
“authentic material”. They enhance student’s sense of achievement in that, for example,
they can sing a song later by themselves. Music creates a relaxing atmosphere because the
whole class sings together. Songs allows maximum participation by every student in both
listening and speaking. Additionally, music makes a nice change from standard textbook
and it is good for developing students’ instincts about intonation and rhythm. Eken (1996:
46) states that songs can be used:
• to present a topic, a language point, lexis, etc;
• to practice a language point, lexis, etc;
• to encourage extensive and intensive listening;
• to stimulate discussion of attitudes and feelings;
• to encourage creativity and use of imagination;
• to provide a relaxed classroom atmosphere and
• to bring variety and fun to learning.
In order to choose a suitable song, the teacher should keep in mind that (1) Songs

chance to see if the topic is interesting for the students.
Discussion activities are an important part of many lessons. The main thing to
remember is that “proper organization can ensure their success. Lack of it can provoke
their failure” (Harmer, 1991: 125).
1.3.3.4. Problem solving
Problem solving activities encourage students to talk together to find a solution to
(a set of) problems or tasks. According to Littlewood (1990), this type of activity dispenses
completely with the need to share information. Students now have access to all the relevant
facts. The stimulus for communication comes from the need to discuss and evaluate these
facts, in pairs or groups, in order to solve a problem or reach a decision.
Problem solving activities need not be based only on everyday situations that arise
inside or outside the classroom. The teacher may also present more unusual situations, in
order to stimulate the students’ ingenuity. In these activities students must not only analyze
information, but also argue, justify and persuade, in order to reach a common decision.
They therefore provide a context for a still wider range of communicative functions. They


17

also make it still more necessary for students to develop skills in managing the interaction
at the interpersonal level. This fact often produces a high degree of personal involvement
among the participants.
1.3.3.5. Simulation and role-play
According to Harmer (1991), the idea of a simulation is to create the pretence of a
real-life situation in the classroom: students “simulate” the real-world. Thus we might ask
them to pretend that they are at an airport, or we might organize them to get together to
plan an imaginary reunion. What we are trying to do artificially of course is to give
students practice in real-world English. Students are asked to adopt a specific role in this
situation. In some cases, they may simply have to act as themselves. In others, they may
have to adopt a· simulated identity.

is one of the schools in Hanoi which has high percentages of high school graduated
students
2.1.2. The teachers of English in Son Tay High School
There are twelve teachers of English currently working in Son Tay High School.
Nearly all of them are female whose age ranks from 28 to 50. Among them, one half
studied at Hanoi Foreign Language Teachers Training College. One-fifth was former
teachers of Russian and French who graduated from the same college. Another quarter that
was trained from in-service training programs has experienced teaching for many years.
However, their communication ability as well as new teaching methods should be
improved.
Obviously, the age of the English teacher staff reveals the fact that many of them
were trained in the traditional method-the grammar-translation one. Few of them have
taken retraining courses to improve their English and their teaching methods. This
constrains them from teaching speaking effectively. Nevertheless, most of them are severe,
enthusiastic in working. Of the 12 teachers, two teachers are going to get M.A degree. At
the present, each teacher has to teach fifteen periods divided into 5 classes per week
excluding the burden of marking examinations and time for a lot of different school work.
Apparently, the teachers in Son Tay High School have to deal with a heavy workload in
order to fulfill their task.
2.1.3. The students in Son Tay High School
The majority of students in the study at Son Tay High School are aged from 15 to
18. Most of them come from urban areas and they have learnt English since they were at


19

primary schools. Therefore, their English proficiency is some how better than students
from rural parts due to the availability of opportunities to attend part-time English courses.
Among them, there are a large number of students who are really interested in learning
English and want to develop their ability in using English. In contrast, the other part of