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

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
Supervisor: Phạm Lan Anh, M.A

Hanoi – 2012
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF TABLES v

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1. Rationale 1

2. Aims of the study 2

3. Scope of the study 3

4. Significance of the study 3

5. Methodology 4

6. Design of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

Chapter 1: Literature Review 5

1.1. Theoretical background of Communicative language teaching 5

(CLT)

1.1.1. Concept of CLT 5

1.1.2. Characteristics of CLT 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 15

1.4.1. Difficulties from teachers 15

1.4.2. Difficulties from students 17

1.4.3. Difficulties from objective factors 20

Chapter 2: The study 22

2.1. The context 22

2.1.1. Description of the English course and its objectives at HaUI 22

2.1.2. Description of the students at HaUI 23

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 27

PART C: CONCLUSION 41

1. Summary of findings 41

2. Some suggestions to overcome students’ difficulties 42

2.1. Suggestions for teachers 42

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2.2. Suggestions for students 43

3. Limitations of the study 44

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 XI

teachers

6
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

HaUI: Hanoi University of Industry

CLT: Communicative Language Teaching

L1: First language

L2: Second language

7
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Information about students participating in the survey

Table 2: Teachers’ years of teaching English and students’ years of learning

English

Table 3: Teachers’ and students’ opinion about the importance of English speaking
skill

Table 4: Teachers’ and students’ opinion about the importance of English speaking
skill in comparison with other skills

Table 5: Teachers’ and students’ opinions about students’ favor of learning English
speaking skill

Table 6: Teachers’ and students’ judgment about students’ speaking competence

Table 7: Students’ reasons for learning English speaking skill

Table 8: Teachers’ belief about CLT

Table 9: Students’ common difficulties in learning speaking skill

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 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 non-
English 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
master quite many new words and structures, they still cannot apply them in
learning speaking skill very well. That is one of the reasons why I wish to carry out
a research to find out the common difficulties in learning speaking skill and some
suggested solutions to the problem.
9
 There are quite many researches on learning English speaking skill and
difficulties in learning this skill; however, there are still few researches about
difficulties in learning speaking skill by students at HaUI, especially by non-English
major students although it is a quite big university in Vietnam and the number of
non-English major students is also quite large. Being an English teacher for non-
English major students at this university, I would like to carry out a research to find
out the common difficulties in learning this skill by those students in order to help
them to improve the situation in the next semesters as well as to help me and my
colleagues to improve our teaching.

These above facts have provoked me to conduct a research with the title: “A
study on difficulties in learning speaking skill faced by non- English major students
at Hanoi University of Industry”.

2. AIMS OF THE STUDY

The study is carried out to find out non-English major students’ difficulties
in learning English speaking skill at Hanoi University of Industry from students and
lecturers’ points of views. Then, some solutions will be generated from the lecturers
at this university to overcome the problems. All these above aims can be realized by
answering three following research questions:

1. What are the difficulties encountered by non-English major students in

learning English speaking skill from lecturers’ opinions?
2. What are the difficulties encountered by non-English major students in
learning English speaking skill from students’ opinions?
3. What are suggested as solutions by lecturers for non-English major students
to overcome those difficulties?

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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.

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5. METHODOLOGY
With the aims of investigating difficulties of non-English major students
in learning speaking skill at HaUI, I decide to choose survey research methodology.
Based on the aims of this study, it is clear that this is a descriptive research.

To collect data for this study, 526 non-English major students and 15
lecturers are invited to take part in. The students are from different classes, different
faculties and all chosen at random. The lecturers participating in the survey are
directly teaching English to non-English major students or have had some
experience in teaching non-English major students so that they can understand the
students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill. Those lecturers are also selected
randomly.
In this study, questionnaires for non-English major students and lecturers,
semi-structured group-interview with teachers will be used to collect data to
guarantee the accuracy of the data.

6. DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The minor thesis is composed of three parts:

Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, the aims, the research questions, the
scope, the methodology, the limitations and the design of the study

Part B: Development consists of three following chapters

1. Chapter 1: Literature Review presents the concepts relevant to the study.

2. Chapter 2: The Study presents an overview of the context of investigation,
summarizes non-English major most common difficulties and gives some
suggested solutions for them to overcome those difficulties
Part C: Conclusion addresses the key issues, limitations of the study and
suggestions for further researches.

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 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

13
competence. Later Canale (1983) separated sociolinguistic competence into two
different components: sociolinguistic and discourse competence.
According to Nunan (1989, p.194) CLT is defined as adapted below:
“CLT views language as a system for the expression of meaning. Activities
involve oral communication, carrying out meaning tasks and using language, which
is meaningful to the learners. Objectives reflect the needs of the learners; they
include functional skills as well as linguistic objectives. The learner‟s role is as a
negotiator and integrator. The teacher‟s role is as a facilitator of the
communication process. Materials promote communicative language use; they are
task-based and authentic”.
Nunan states that in communication process, learners are negotiators and
integrators whereas teachers are facilitators. Nunan’s definition of CLT represents a
particular view of understanding and explaining language acquisition.
According to Bock (2000) CLT is tailored to get at meaning and learners
negotiate meaning in class. Meaning is considered as what is communicated. The
negotiation of meaning can be implicated through pair work, group work in
problem-solving tasks. He also states: “Authentic materials, functional tasks, and
group and pair work are significant aspects of CLT”.

The definition above represents a particular view of understanding and

explaining language acquisition. It is socially constructed and must be seen as a
product of social, cultural, economic, and political forces.

1.1.2. Characteristics of CLT

Nunan (1991) points out five features of CLT: 1) An emphasis on learning to
communicate through interaction in the target language. 2) The introduction of
authentic texts into the learning situation. 3) The provision of opportunities for
learners to focus, not only on language but also on the learning process itself. 4) An
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 self-
study 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
they usually occur so in the real world. 6) Teachers should let students induce or
discover grammar rules themselves. In applying these principles in the classroom,
new classroom techniques and activities were needed, and the new roles for teachers
15
and learners in the classroom appear. Instead of making use of activities that
demanded accurate repetition and memorization of sentences and grammatical
patterns, activities that require learners to negotiate meaning and to interact
meaning-fully are required. (Richards, 2006, p. 13).

According to Larsen- Freeman (2003, p.131) the most obvious characteristics

of CLT is that, almost everything that is done is done with a communicative intent.
The focus of CLT is therefore on learners’ ability to express their own ideas,
feelings, attitudes, desires and needs. The focus of the lesson is on fluency, not on
accuracy.
Richards & Rodgers (2001, p.167) also affirm that CLT is associated with its
learner- centred and experienced-based tasks view of second language teaching. In
CLT context, learners are seen as active participants in the construction of
knowledge, rather than passive recipients of information provided by the teacher or
the textbook. In contrast, language teachers are no longer viewed as the authority of
the knowledge, playing a dominant role. Rather, they share different roles such as
communication facilitator, independent participant, needs analyst, counsellor, and
group process manager to create more fascinating experiences for the learners.
Besides the above features, Richards & Rodgers (2001) also describe other
significant characteristics of this approach including its efforts to make tasks and
language relevant to a target group of learners through an analysis of genuine,
realistic situations, its emphasis on the use of authentic, from-life materials, and its
attempt to create a secure, nonthreatening atmosphere
Littlewood (1981) describes the CLT approach that one of the most
characteristic features of communicative language teaching is that it pays systematic
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.

16
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).

According to Brown, Burns & Joyce, speaking is an interactive process of

constructing meaning concerning three periods: producing and receiving and
processing information (Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997).

17
 Chaney and Burk (1998, p.13) states that speaking is the process of building
and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in many
different contexts.

Brown (1994) affirms that interaction is the heart of communication; it is

what communication is all about, for example in the cases of sending messages;
receiving them; interpreting them in a specific context; negotiating meanings; and
collaborating to accomplish certain purposes. And interaction is the collaborative
exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more people resulting in a
reciprocal effect on each other.

In Byrne’s view (1986), speaking skill is one of two ways of oral

communication process, and is the productive skill. The speaker has to encode the
message he wishes to convey in appropriate language, while the listener has to
decode (or interpret) the message.

According to Florez (1999) speaking is an interactive process of constructing

meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information. It is often
spontaneous, open-ended and evolving.

In short, there are quite many different definitions of speaking, each of them
has their own good points and strong points. However, in this study the researcher
decided to follow the concept of speaking by Bygate (1997 which means that
speaking not only involves grammatical competence but also sociolinguistic
competence.

1.2.2. Characteristics of Speaking

According to Bygate (1997), speaking involves two kinds of routines in the
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
used in class, and what specific needs learners require, teachers can help learners to
improve their speaking skill.

1.3. Teaching Speaking Skills in CLT approach

1.3.1. Teaching Speaking Skills in CLT approach
According to Harmer (2001) teachers should be aware that teaching speaking
closely relates to receptive skill work. Teachers should pay attention to: Output and
19
input, Texts, Reception and production. Output and input: output is the language the
students produce; input is the feedback or prompters from students’ interlocutor
(teacher). Teachers can modify their students’ output. Texts: offer students a model
to follow, especially when working on specific functions (agreeing, disagreeing,
expressing surprise, approval...), also act as stimuli which then help create language
production: discussion (from controversial reading passage), response (after
listening to a tape about a story or opinion. Reception is a part of production:
conversation between two people is a blend of listening and speaking; comprehend
what’s said is necessary for what’s said next. Production enables reception: oral
production works in a way that helps Ss with their listening comprehension as when
they try to speak, they better adjust to understanding other people speaking in the
same context.

Brown & Nation (1997) think that teachers should give students practice
with both fluency and accuracy: teachers should provide students with form-focused
and meaning-focused speaking activities that aim at fluency and accuracy
development.

Nunan (2003) believes that teachers had better provide students opportunities
to talk (by using group work or pair work and limiting teacher talk), plan tasks
involving negotiation of meaning, design classroom activities involving guidance,
practice for both transactional and interactional speaking. Interactional speaking is
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 role-

play: 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
activity: involving deriving some new information from given info through the
process of inference or deduction and the perception of relationships or patterns,
involving comprehending and conveying information, i.e. work out teacher’s
timetable on the basis of given class timetable. Prepared talks: Students make
presentation on a topic of their own choice with or without agreement with teacher.
The talks are not designed for spontaneous conversation but more “writing-like”.

21
 Littlewood (1981) also suggests some kinds of activities for teachers to apply
in CLT speaking classroom. He classifies them into two main kinds: Functional
communication activities and social interaction activities.
In terms of Functional Communication Activities, two main uses of
language are mentioned: using language to share information and using language to
process information. They are then separated into four main groups:
a. Sharing information with restricted co-operation: Identifying a picture
from a set; Discovering identical pairs; Discovering sequence of location;
Discovering missing information;Discovering missing features; Discovering
secrets
b. Sharing information with unrestricted co-operation: Communicating
patterns and pictures; Communicating models; Discovering differences;
Following directions
c. Sharing and processing information: Reconstructing story sequence;
Pooling information to solve a problem
d. Processing information: Problem solving tasks
In terms of Social Interaction Activities, Littlewood’s (1981) promotes
other set of activities with two different types. They are the classroom as a social
context and, simulation and role playing.
a. Considering the classroom as a social context, he suggests the following
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
methods.

b. Inappropriate teacher teaching methods

Inappropriate teachers’ talking time

Nunan (1991) suggested an inappropriate teaching method in terms of

teacher’s talk. He claimed: “Teacher talk is of crucial importance, not only for the
organization of the classroom but also for the processes of acquisition. It is
important for the organization and management of the classroom because it is
through language that teachers either succeed or fail in implementing their teaching

23
plans. In terms of acquisition, teacher talk is important because it is probably the
major source of comprehensible target language input the learner is likely to
receive.”
It is, however, proved in a lot of research that teachers tend to make up over
70% of the total talk in the classroom (Legarretta, 1977; Chaudron, 1988; Zhao,
1998; Cook, 2000). When teacher talk dominates the classroom, students will have
less opportunity to further practice the language and therefore they cannot develop
their language proficiency as expected.
Inappropriate teacher’s correction
According to Brown (2002, p. 205) students’ errors are vital evidence to
show how they acquire the language through certain strategies or procedures.
Teachers therefore, have duty to correct students’ errors to clarify students’
understanding of meaning and construction of the language to master language in
their conversation. It is argued that how correction should be expressed. Some
prefer nice, gentle and tactful correction while the others are in favor of assertive,
encouraging and frank one. Ur (2000) is in favor that the later as students may lose
their confidence and feel disappointed if teachers correct their errors in an
insensitive way. In short, teachers should be sensitive and tactful when giving
corrections so that students get their errors, recognize them and correct them
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
all speaking activities will not be able to be successful.

1.4.2 Difficulties from students

There are many different ideas about difficulties from students in learning a
foreign language in general and in learning speaking skill in particular.

Nunan (1999) pointed out that students’ unmotivation is one of the factors
that causes difficulties in learning speaking skill. Unmotivation is caused by lack of
perception of progress, unspired teaching, boredom, lack of relevant materials, lack
of knowledge about the goals of the instructional program, lack of appropriate
feedback. Teachers often find that it is very hard to motivate students in learning
communicative competence.

25
 Tsui (1996) suggests five factors to determine learners’ difficulties in
leaning speaking in class: “students‟ fear of making mistakes and losing face in
front of their peers, students‟ low opinion of their own proficiency level, teachers‟
intolerance of silence, uneven participation and incomprehensive input.”

Dwyer and Murphy (1996) listed the following factors: fear of public
failure, fear of making mistakes, lack of confidence, low English proficiency, and
inability to keep up with native speakers, incompetence in the rules and norms of
English conversation, disorientation, etc. This conclusion was supported by many
other scholars such as Jones (1999), Cortazzi & Jin (1996); Jackson (1999, 2001,
2002); Li (1998); Zou (2004).

According to Burns and Joyce (1997), cultural, linguistic and affective

factors are the three main causes of students' difficulties in learning a foreign
language.

Cultural factors: Cultural factors are those that emerge from students’ prior
learning experiences as well as from the expectations that are formed on their basis.
The American linguist Sapir (192, p.60) maintains that language and culture are
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
speakers. The fourth one is authority-oriented learners: tend to be independent and
prefer to work in non-communicative classroom.

Ellis (1985, p.120) classifies learners’ learning styles into two main types:
extrovert and introvert. Extrovert learners are more willing to interact with others
than the introvert ones, and so they are usually more successful in oral
communication than the rest.

Lightbown and Spada (1995, p.55) listed a number of personality

characteristics that greatly affects the success of second language learners:
extroversion, inhibition, self-esteem, empathy, dominance, talkativeness and
responsiveness.

It is important for teachers to take into consideration students’ different

learning styles to improve their students’ performance in learning speaking.

Linguistic factor: According to Scarcella and Oxford (1992), linguistic

factor (grammar competence) consists of grammar structures (morphology, syntax),
vocabulary and mechanics (basic sounds of letters, syllables; the appropriate
pronunciation of words, intonation and stress elements)

Another thing related to linguistic factor should be taken into consideration

is that affection of learners’ first language into the target language in terms of the
sounds, rhythms, and stress patterns.

Affective factors: Affective factors that cause difficulties for students in

learning a foreign language may be low motivation, anxiety in class, negative social
experiences and culture shock.

According to Melton (1990), motivation is an important aspect which can

determine the failure or success in any learning situation. In Dornyei’s view (2001),
motivation consists of three sets of components: course-specific motivational
components, lecturer-specific motivational components and group-specific
27
motivational components. To get students really motivated, teachers need to ensure
all the three sets of components, which is very hard. Nunan (1999) pointed out some
main reasons for students’ demotivation as follows: Lack of success over time/lack
of perception of progress, uninspired teaching, boredom, lack of perceived
relevance of materials, lack of knowledge about the goals of the instructional
program, lack of appropriate feedback

According to Shank & Terril (1995), anxiety is “the subjective feeling of

tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the
autonomic nervous system”. Zhang (2006) listed out six main causes of language
anxiety: low proficient English, students’ fear of mistakes and derision, large class
size, unwilling to take risks, low tolerance of ambiguity, competitiveness.
Schumann (1998) claims that the causes of anxiety are students’ forgetfulness,
avoidance of speaking the language, less interaction with people, low self-esteem,
low-confidence, and feeling unsure of one’s abilities.

As presented above, difficulties from students are varied and defined in

different ways. However, in this study, the researcher follows the ideas that these
difficulties from the students are: students’ passive learning style, students’ low
motivation, students’ anxiety and students’ lack of background knowledge and
ideas.

1.4.3 Difficulties from objective factors

Difficulties from objective factors are usually identified by students’

learning in large and multilevel classes, uninteresting textbook, lack of material and
facilities for language teaching and learning.

According to Le (2002) in large classes, students have different learning

styles, preferences and levels of English proficiency. Therefore, teachers cannot pay
equal attention to all students in a large class and it is also very difficult for teachers
to organize suitable activities for all students in the class. Ur (1993, p. 303) has the
28
similar ideas that teachers of large classes get into a lot of difficulties in maintaining
disciplines, choosing suitable materials and activating students. Dalle and Thrush
(2003) claimed that: “large classes challenge even well-trained and experienced
teachers.” Thus, large class size not only causes difficulties for teachers in their
teaching but also causes difficulties for students in their learning.

Mathews (2006) said that multilevel classes can cause a lot of difficulties
to teachers in organizing the activities in speaking classes. Dalle (2003) also had the
same idea about this issue.

In short, to create good language learning environment, school and

universities should organize small size classes with the equivalent students’ English
level. However, it is quite hard to achieve this condition in most cases in Vietnam.

29
 CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

The study begins with the description of the current situation where the study
was conducted. The next part is an overview of participants and instruments of the
study. Finally, it is the presentation of statistics and data analysis.

2.1. The context

2.1.1. Description of the English course and its objectives at HaUI

The study was conducted with non-English-major students at Hanoi

University of Industry (HaUI), where English is the foreign language taught as a
non-major subject.
The English courses at HaUI are divided into two stages: The first stage is
General English and the second stage is English for Specific Purposes. The first
stage aims at providing students with general knowledge of vocabulary, phonology,
English grammar as well as developing students’ integrated four language skills
with the focus on speaking skill. At this stage, students learn English during five
semesters. Each semester lasts 90 periods (45 minutes per period) and students learn
6 periods in a week. However, before learning this foreign language, students can
take part in the replacement test. If students pass this test, they can skip the first
semester of English which is called English 1. With, the third semester – English 3-
students only learn 65 periods in class and 25 periods online. During the first four
semesters, the series of textbooks New-headway by Liz, John Soars & Sylvia
Wheeldon (Elementary and Pre-intermediate) – third edition published by Oxford
University Press are used for four first semesters. For the fifth semester, the
textbook “International Express” – pre-intermediate published by Oxford University
Press is used. By using these textbooks, we can improve our students’
communicative competence and our students can learn the real things from daily
topic conversations. Students are asked to work individually, in pairs, in groups to
practice English in situational contexts. During learning process, in each semester,
students are required to complete two progress tests, one mid-term test and a final
30
test. After finishing 5 General English semesters, students moves to the second
stage – the stage for English for Specific Purposes which lasts 60 periods in one
semester. At this stage, our students are provided with the knowledge of terms and
structures related to their future job. The materials used during this stage vary
depending on the majors of the students. These materials are collected and designed
by teachers at HaUI themselves mainly focus on students’ specific vocabulary,
reading and translation.

2.1.2. Description of the students at HaUI

The students at HaUI come from different provinces such as: Ha Noi, Ha
Nam, Nam Dinh, Hai Phong, Hai Duong, Thanh Hoa, …. Most of them have
studied English before, however, they are not good at English. When they took the
entrance exam to this university, they had to take the test in math, physics and
chemistry; therefore, they only paid attention to these subjects to pass the exam.
English was considered to be unimportant; they did not study it thoroughly. Their
English level is usually very low and their English levels are very different. Some
students can be quite good at grammar but not good at speaking.

Non-English major students belong to different faculties such as: economics,

mechanical engineering, automobile, chemistry, electronic and computer science.
Their motivation for learning English is not the same. Usually, students from
economics faculties, and computer science faculties are interested and more hard-
working in learning English more than students from other faculties.

2.1.3. Description of English teachers at HaUI

There are 117 English teachers at HaUI (62 of them are permanent staff and
the rest are temporary ones). Most of them are female (111 female teachers), only 6
of them are male. Their age is from 22 to 45. Most of them are still very young,
some teachers have just only graduated from university, and they do not have much
experience in teaching. However, the boards of administrators always have some
31
workshops at the beginning and at the end of the school year to find out the things
achieved and the things not achieved during the previous course, to train teachers in
teaching methods (CLT approach is selected for all the teachers to apply in their
teaching) and to give chance for good teachers to share their teaching experience,
managing classroom with their colleagues. About 60% of the teachers at HaUI used
to be students at Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of Languages and
International Studies (HULIS), 24% teachers come from Hanoi University, and the
others are from Hanoi National University of Education or other universities. 18
teachers have finished their MA courses and there are many teachers are pursuing
their MA courses.

2.2. The study

2.2.1. Participants

In order to get information to fulfill the aims of the study, two survey
questionnaires were designed.

The first questionnaire was administered to 526 randomly selected students,

aged from 18 to 22, from different classes of different faculties at HaUI and they are
studying the course book “New headway” third edition, elementary level by Liz,
John Soars and pre-intermediate level by Liz, John Soars and Sylvia Wheeldon.

The second questionnaire was administered to 15 teachers who are currently

teaching English for non-English-major students at HaUI so that they can
understand the students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill. Those lecturers are
also selected randomly. These teachers include 2 male teachers, and 13 female
teachers, aged from 23 to 45. Three of them graduated from Hanoi University, 12 of
them graduated from Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of Languages
and International Studies (HULIS). Two of them get MA in English language
teaching, and two more teachers are learning a Post-graduate course at HULIS.

32
 Besides, the researcher also carries out the group-interview with 7 teachers
participating in answering the questionnaires to generate some solutions to students’
most common difficulties in learning English speaking skill.

2.2.2. Sampling
The sample of 526 non-English-major students, aged from 18 to 22, from
different classes of different faculties at HaUI are randomly selected to take part in
answering the questionnaires.
The sample of 15 teachers who are currently teaching English for non-
English-major students at HaUI are also selected randomly to take part in answering
the questionnaires, then7 out of these 15 teachers are invited at random to join in the
group interviews.

2.2.3. Research Methodology

The aims of this study is to investigate the common difficulties of non-

English major students in learning speaking skill at HaUI, therefore the researcher
decided to choose survey research methodology. Based on the aims of this study, it
is clear that this is a descriptive research. It is suitable with this study because the
researcher just wants to collect the information from the students and teachers in
their own current situations to find out the most common difficulties that non-
English-major students get into in the process of learning English speaking skill.

2.2.4. The Data Collection Methods

In this study, questionnaires for non-English major students and lecturers,

group-interviews with teachers will be used to collect data to guarantee the accuracy
of the data.
2.2.5. Procedures
2.2.5.1. Questionnaires
The questionnaires are delivered to both students and teachers to find out the
most common difficulties in learning English speaking skill from the perspectives
33
of them. The researcher delivers 550 survey questionnaires; however, she just gets
back 526 questionnaires and she analyzed the information from the sample of 526
fully-answered questionnaires.
The questionnaires for students consist of the questions asking about their
personal information, for example age, gender, major, their attitudes towards
learning English speaking skill, and the questions about the difficulties that they
meet in learning this skill.
The researcher asks for permission from other teachers of the class at the time
of their lesson for 10 minutes for the students to complete answering the
questionnaires with the researcher’s guidance in case they do not understand the
question thoroughly. Luckily, most of the other teachers agreed to help me,
therefore, I could complete collecting data for the thesis quickly.
The questionnaires for the teachers were delivered at the time of the recess in
the teacher’s room, and all of them could finish the questionnaire during the recess.
After these questionnaires are collected, information from these
questionnaires are then summarized and presented in the form of statistic
information tables for data analysis to find out the answers for the research
questions and to make some implications if possible.

2.2.5.2. Interviews
The semi-structured group-interviews are used in this study. Using this kind of
interview, the researcher can be flexible in collecting data and it is also time-saving
instead of interviewing one by one teacher. The content of the interview is recorded
and transcribed into texts for data analysis. The information from the interviews is
analyzed in qualitative methods.

34
2.3. Data analysis
A. Results from survey questionnaires for students and teachers

Part I: General information

Question 1: General information about participants

The information about the students participating in the survey is presented in

the following table:

Teachers Students

Male 2 250

Female 13 276

Total 15 526

Table 1: Information about students participating in the survey

As can be seen from the above table, the number of teachers participating in
this study is 15. Among them, 2 teachers are male, which only makes up for about
13.3%. The rest of about 13 teachers (86.7%) are female. There are 526 students
participating in answering the survey questionnaires. Among them, 250 students
(47.5%) are male, and 276 students (52.5%) are female. The numbers of students
according to gender are quite equal. The number of female students is just a bit
higher than the number of male students about 5%.

Question 2: Teachers’ years of teaching English and students’ years of

learning English.

35
 Teachers’ years of teaching Teachers Students’ years of learning Students
English English

A. Less than 3 years 2 A. Less than 1 year 1

B. 3-6 years 7 B. 1-3 years 0

C. more than 6-9 years 5 C. more than 3-7 years 6

D. more than 9 years 1 D. more than 7 years 519

Table 2: Teachers’ years of teaching English and students’ years of learning

English

The information from table 2 indicates that most of the teachers at HaUI
have had at least several years of teaching English. Only two teachers have the
shortest periods of time working as a teacher.7 out of 15 teachers (46.7%) teachers
have worked as an English teacher for 3-6 years. 5 teachers (33.3%) have
experience of working as a teacher for more than 6-9 years. Only one teachers has
worked in this university for more than 9 years.

The next column in table 2 also shows that most of the students at HaUI have
learnt English for quite a long time. 98.67% of the students (519 out of 526
students) have studied English for more than 7 years. They had to learn English as
at secondary school and high school. The other number of students claiming that
they have learnt English for less than 1 year to 7 years is quite small. The number of
these students is only 10, which makes up for 1.33% in total.

Part 2: Teachers’ and students’ opinions about learning speaking skill

36
Question 3: Teachers’ and students’ opinion about the importance of English
speaking skill

A. very B. Quite C. D. Not E. Not Total

important important Important very important
important at all

Teachers 3 2 8 2 0 15

Students 268 251 4 1 2 526

Table 3: Teachers’ and students’ opinion about the importance of English

speaking skill

The result of the survey shows that most of the students (99.43%) think that English
speaking skill is important. The situation is also true for teachers. There are 13 out
of 15 teachers (86.7%) think that English speaking skill is important. There is only a
small number of students and teachers consider English speaking skill not very
important or not important at all.

Question 4: Teachers’ and students’ opinion about the importance of English

speaking skill in comparison with other skills

A. more B. As C. less
important than important as important than
others others others

Teachers 2 13 0

Students 22 485 19

Table 4: Teachers’ and students’ opinion about the importance of English

speaking skill in comparison with other skills
37
 This question is used to investigate teachers’ and students’ opinion about the
importance of English speaking skill in comparison with other skills (reading,
listening and writing). 13.3% of the teachers think that English speaking skill is
more important than other skills. The other (86.7%) assume that it is as important as
other skills. No teachers think that it is less important than others. In student group,
only 4.18% of the students consider English speaking skill more important than
other skills while 92.21% consider it as important as other skills. The number of
students who think that English speaking skill is less important than other skills is
very small (only 19 out of 526 students), which only makes up for 3.61%.

Question 5: Teachers’ and students’ opinions about students’ favor of learning

English speaking skill

A. Very B. Quite C. D. Not E. Not at Mean (M)

much (5) much (4) Normal really all (1)
(3) (2)

Teachers 0 4 5 4 2 2.73

Students 76 239 137 58 15 3.65

Table 5: Teachers’ and students’ opinions about students’ favor

of learning English speaking skill

As can be seen from the above table, teachers think that their students like
learning English speaking a lot (M=2.73). However, the level of their favor is much
lower than fact that the students promote. In the students’ opinion, most of them
like learning English speaking a lot(M= 3.65).

38
 Question 6: Teachers’ and students’ judgment about students’ speaking
competence

A. Very B. Quite C. Good D. Bad E. Quite F. Very

good good bad bad

Teachers 0 3 2 3 5 2

Students 6 5 6 264 57 188

Table 6: Teachers’ and students’ judgment about students’ speaking

competence

The figure from the table shows that very few students judge their English
speaking competence to be good. The percentage of these students only takes up for
3.23%. In contrast, the number of students judging their speaking competence to be
bad is very high (509 out of 526 students which takes up for 96.77%). This
information should only be used as reference because some students do not tell the
truth about their English competence. In teachers’ opinion, 33.3% teachers say that
their students have good and quite good speaking competence. 10 out of 15 teachers
(66.7%) think that their students’ speaking competence is bad, quite bad and very
bad.

Question 7 (survey questionnaires for students): Students’ reasons for learning

English speaking skill

Students’ reasons for learning English speaking skill Number Percentage

(No) (%)

A. Because it is a compulsory subject. 431 81.94

B. Because it is interesting 35 6.65

C. Because it is necessary for your future job 248 47.14

39
 D. Because it is helpful for you to communicate with 7 1.33
foreigners.

E. Because it is helpful for you to improve your 2 0.38

knowledge.

F. Others (please specify) ………….. 0 0

Table 7: Students’ reasons for learning English speaking skill

When being asked about the reasons for learning English, most of students
indicate that they learn it because it is a compulsory subject at university. This
number of students is 431 out of 526 students participating in the survey (81.94%) .
Only 35 students out of 526 students (6.65%) learn English speaking skill because
they find it interesting. There are 248 out of 526 students (47.14%) study it to
prepare for their future job. Very few students learn English speaking skill because
they want to communicate with foreigners or to improve their knowledge. No
students indicate other reasons for their learning English speaking skill.

Part 3: Teachers’ belief about CLT

Question 7 (survey questionnaires for teachers): Teachers’ belief about

CLT

Statement Strongly Agree Neither Disagr Strongly Mean

agree (5) (4) agree ee (2) disagree
nor (1)
disagree
(3)

a.Teaching should focus on 8 5 2 0 8 4.4

fluency rather than accuracy.

b. The students should be the 11 4 0 0 0 4.73

centre of knowledge

40
 transmission. The teacher should
be their facilitator.

c. The teacher should strongly 8 6 1 0 0 4.47

encourage the students to learn
by themselves through
struggling to communicate.

d. The teacher should spend a lot 5 4 1 3 2 3.47

of time on role play/ games/
group and pair work instead of
explicit teaching structures.

e. The lesson should focus 2 3 2 5 3 2.73

mainly on speaking skills.

f. The teacher should not correct 3 8 2 2 0 3.38

the students’ mistakes at all
unless they cause
communication breakdown.

g. The students should be 6 7 0 1 1 4.07

exposed to authentic language
and material all the time.

h. Language tasks should be 12 3 0 0 0 4.8

meaningful and purposeful.

i. CLT is an effective approach 7 5 2 1 0 4.2

for your students.

Table 8: Teachers’ belief about CLT

This question aims to explore teachers’ belief about CLT in their own
teaching practice. From the above chart, it can be seen that most teachers have quite
strong agreement with the above statements because the Mean value is quite high.
Most mean values are above 4. The highest mean is 4.8 in question h about

41
language tasks. Nearly all teachers strongly agree that language tasks should be
meaningful and purposeful. Most of their believes are correct in current CLT
approach, however, there are also some misconceptions that are worth paying
attention to. The first one is that most teachers agree that teaching should focus on
fluency rather than accuracy (mean=4.4), actually this is a misconception because
today CLT does not accept this anymore. The second misconception is that the
lesson should focus mainly on speaking skill (mean=2.73). this notion is no more
accepted in current CLT approach because as Littlewood (1981) suggests that the
most characteristic feature of CLT approach is that it pays systematic attention to
functional as well as structural aspects of language, which means it does not only
focus on language skill but also on grammar items. The third misconception is that
the students should be exposed to authentic language and material all the time. One
of the features of CLT according to Rodgers (2001) is that it makes efforts to make
tasks and language relevant to a target group of learners through an analysis of
genuine, realistic situations, its emphasis on the use of authentic, from-life
materials. However, the phrase “all the time” in the statement makes it a
controversial issue. In short, there are still some misconceptions in CLT approach
by teachers at HaUI, it still can be concluded that they know about this approach
and apply it in their own teaching practice.

Part 4: Students’ common difficulties in learning speaking skill

Question 8: Students’ common difficulties in learning speaking skill

Factors causing difficulties in learning Teachers Students

speaking English
Number Percent Number Percentag
(No) age (%) (No) e (%)

From a.Teachers’ teaching method:

42
teachers - Long teachers’ talking time 2 13.3 18 3.42

- Inappropriate teachers’ 4 26.6 92 17.49

correction
- Inappropriate teachers’ role in 4 26.6 0 0
the class
b. Teachers’ characteristics:

- Teachers’ unfriendliness 2 13.3 12 2.28

- Teachers’ inadequate 3 20 12 2.28

encouragement
- Teachers’ unenthusiasm 1 6.7 68 12.93

From a.Students’ learning style 11 73.3 393 74.71

students (passive, intrinsic)
b. Students’ low motivation 8 53.3 218 41.44

c. Students’ anxiety 3 20 29 5.51

d. Students’ lack of background 4 26.6 24 4.56

knowledge, ideas
e. Lack of vocabulary 9 60 437 83.08

f. Lack of grammar structure 7 46.7 452 85.93

g. Poor pronunciation, stress and 14 93.3 424 80.61

intonation
h. Vietnamese affection 5 33.3 59 11.21

Objective a. Large classes 10 66.6 462 87.83

factors
b. Multilevel classes 14 93.3 463 88.02

c. Uninteresting textbooks 2 13.3 13 2.47

43
 (Please specify): students’ 9 60 367 69.77
laziness
Others

Table 9: Students’ common difficulties in learning speaking skill

a. Students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill related to teachers

In teachers‟ opinions: In terms of teachers’ teaching methods, the figure

shows that teachers think that their difficulties in learning English speaking skill
mostly come from teachers’ long talking time in class and inappropriate roles of the
teachers in the class with the same percentage 26.6% .

In terms of teachers’ characteristics, teachers claim for their inadequate

encouragement and their lack of friendliness with the percentage respectively : 20%
and 13.3%.

In students‟ opinions: In terms of teachers’ teaching methods, the figure

shows that quite few students think that their difficulties in learning English
speaking skill come from the teachers’ teaching methods. Only 3.42% of the
students say that they get into difficulty in learning English speaking skill because
teachers talk too much in the class and they do not have enough to practice. No
students refer to the roles of the teachers in the class. But 17.49% of students claim
that their teachers’ correction in the speaking lesson is not appropriate. This makes
them feel shy and unconfident to participate in the class activities, therefore they
cannot study this skill very well.

In terms of teachers’ characteristics, as can be seen from the table, the

students are quite happy and satisfied with their teachers’ characteristics. Only
2.28% claim that their teachers are unfriendly, 2.28% state that their teachers are
not motivating enough and 12.93% say that they have difficulties in learning
speaking skill because their teachers are not enthusiastic.

44
 b. Students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill related to students
themselves

In teachers‟ opinion: As can be seen from the table, teachers think that their
students get into difficulties in learning speaking skill because of their learning style
and low motivation. The percentage is 73.3% and 53.3% respectively. The table
also shows that teachers believe that their students get into difficulties because of
linguistic factors mostly in terms of inadequate vocabulary (60%) and structures
(46.7), poor pronunciation (93.3%). Vietnamese has affection on students learning
English speaking, however, they do not think that it is a serious problem (33.3%). 9
out of 15 teachers (60%) claim that the students cannot learn speaking skill
successfully because they are too lazy.

In students‟ opinions: The table shows that most of the students get into
difficulties in learning English speaking skill is because of their learning style. 393
students out of 526 students (74.71% students) admit that they are passive students,
which causes a lot of difficulties in learning English, especially in learning English
speaking. 41.44% of students say that difficulties rise because they are not
motivated in learning this skill. Only 5.51% say that they get into difficulties in
learning English speaking skill because of their anxiety, and quite few students
(4.56%) claim that it is because they lack background knowledge and ideas to
speak. It can be shown from the table that most students have difficulties in
learning speaking because of linguistic factors. 83.08% say that they do not have
enough vocabulary to express their ideas, 85.93% state that they lack grammar
structures to make sentences, 80.61% insist that they do not have an acceptable
pronunciation, stress and intonation, therefore they cannot or do not want to take
part in speaking lessons. Only 11.21% say that their English is affected by
Vietnamese, which makes them hard to use English in speaking lessons. The last
part asks students to point out the difficulties themselves, most of them (367
students which counts for 69.77%) say that it is because of their laziness.

45
 From the data collected, there is not much difference between students’ ideas
and teachers’ ideas about the difficulties that non-English students face when
learning English speaking skill. It can be concluded that the students of HaUI are
quite confident, they are not afraid of speaking in class, they have background
knowledge and ideas to talk about the topic, but they do not have motivation and
activeness in learning speaking, they are too lazy, therefore, they just keep silent
and do not participating in the class activities.

c. Students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill related to objective

factors and others

In teachers‟ opinion: In terms of objective factors and other factors that

cause difficulties for students, teachers mention the most common reasons are
learning in a large class size, multi-level classes (66.6% and 93.3% respectively).
Beside they specify one more reason is that because the students are too lazy.
There are 4 teachers mentioning this reason (26.6%).

In students‟ opinions: 87.83% of students report that they cannot learn

speaking very well because they have to study in very big classes.. 88.02% state that
another important factor causing difficulties for students in learning speaking is
their English level. Only 2.47% of students in the survey are not satisfied with the
textbook “New headway”. The others find it good enough to learn speaking. Beside
the factors listed above, students also specify some more reasons. They are quite
frank in answering this question. Most of them (30.03%) say that they it is because
the students are lazy, some students say that it is because the teachers do not know
their English level to apply appropriate teaching methods. This information is very
useful for this research.

B. Results from the interview with teachers

The answers of the teachers in the interviews are recorded and transcribed
into words, then considered and analyzed in qualitative methods. In the interview,

46
teachers know the result of the questionnaires about the most common difficulties in
learning English speaking skill faced by non-English-major students and suggest
some solutions to the problems.
The results from the questionnaires with students and teachers show that the
main factors causing students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill at HaUI are
students’ passive learning style, students’ laziness, students’ low motivation and
low English level (including inadequate vocabulary, structures, poor pronunciation,
stress and intonation), learning in large and multilevel classes.
Then, the solutions for the five most common difficulties in learning speaking
skill of non-English major students are given as followed:
Firstly, to deal with students’ passive learning style, most of the teachers
agreed that they should arrange a lot of pair-work and group-work in class, as well
as at home. Students are given a lot of communicative activities and games related
to real life topics to be attracted and motivated in the lessons. Teacher 3 said : “I
think games can be used to make them more competitive and active in classroom.
Also we can create suitable situations according to the topic of the lessons for them
to have real conversations”.
Secondly, teachers should be strict with students and assign homework for
students to learn clearly. Teachers should give compliments, awards and
punishments to motivate students in learning. And once again, teachers should
organize interesting activities to motivate students to participate in the classroom
activities.
Thirdly, with students’ low English level, teachers give a lot of suggestions.
Students should study the vocabulary in topics, in phrases to have vocabulary to use
in simple conversations and remember the words better. Students can listen to
music, the news and movies in English to create fun and motivation for them in
learning. Besides, they are also advised to take part in extra classes and going to
some English clubs, going to some places to make foreigners to practice their
English in real situation.

47
 With the last problem of learning in big and multilevel classes, students are
also encouraged to take extra classes and to study hard to keep pace with their peers
in class. One more advice is that when students take the replacement tests, they
should do them seriously to be put in the right classes.

48
 PART C: CONCLUSIONS

This chapter presents the short summary of the study’s results of that are
concluded from collected data and data analysis. Then, some suggestions are
generated from the theory and from the ideas’ of the teachers participating in the
group interview.

1. Summary of findings

This study aims at finding out the difficulties in learning speaking skill faced
by non-English-major students at HaUI and suggests some solutions for them to
overcome these problems. From the information collected through two
questionnaires for teachers and students, and a semi-structured group-interview with
teachers, it can be concluded that there are not many differences in the teachers’ and
students ideas about non-English-major students’ difficulties in learning speaking
skill.

The results from the questionnaires with students and teachers show that
students’ passive learning style, students’ laziness, students’ low motivation and
low English level (including inadequate vocabulary, structures, poor pronunciation,
stress and intonation), students’ learning in large and multilevel classes are the main
factors causing students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill.

The first reason is because of students’ passive learning styles. Students at

HaUI are not active in their own learning. They do not have the autonomy in their
own learning process. This is typical of the students at this university. As they enter
the university, they have to take the entrance exam in math, physics and chemistry.
They do not learn English as a main subject. They just study it with reluctance to
pass the exam. When learning English, they do not have any methods or find out the
methods to learn it successfully. Even when the teachers tell them what to do, what
to study, they are too lazy to follow the teachers’ requirement and advice (This is
what quite many students specify in the questionnaires). The question is for the
49
teachers to motivate them, to guide them in their learning. That may be the reason
why they want the help, the encouragement from their teachers, therefore they think
that their English teachers need to be more encouraging to them for them to study.

The next cause is students’ low motivation. Many students just learn English
speaking skill because it is a compulsory subject at university. They do not
recognize the importance of English to them in the future, then, they learn it with
very low motivation, or no motivation at all. They just learn it to pass the exams.

The next problem is students’ low English level. They do not have enough
vocabulary, structures to make up sentences to express their ideas to other people to
understand them. Besides, students’ poor pronunciation, stress and intonation make
them feel shy, unnatural in speaking. They cannot make others understand them
because of their wrong pronunciation. This makes them misunderstood and
reluctant in speaking as well.

Last but not least, learning in a big and multi-level class is also a big
difficulty for students. This situation does not only cause difficulties for students in
learning but also for teachers in organizing activities engaging and suitable for the
whole class to take part in.

2. Some suggestions to overcome students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill

2.1. Suggestions for teachers

Teachers should try their best to enhance their teaching methods because as
can be seen from the questionnaires, some teachers still bear in mind some
misconceptions about CLT. They also should try to apply many different activities
for the classroom activities such as: A role-play, a discussion activity, an opinion
sharing activity, a reasoning gap activity, prepared talks,… These are some
activities for teachers to choose from so that their lessons will not be boring.

50
 Teachers should also create a friendly, supportive and motivational
classroom environment to motivate students to be more confident and comfortable
with leaning English. However, disciplines must be kept as well.
Teachers should establish good relationship with students; give constructive
feedback to students to encourage students to take part in the class activities.
The teachers can organize some English clubs to attract students to take part
in, for them to have chances to practice English regularly, and it will be funnier and
more engaging for them.
Teachers can follow Harmer’s suggestions (2005) by organizing the
following activities in the classroom: A role-play, a discussion activity, an opinion
sharing activity, a reasoning gap activity, and prepared talks.

Littlewood (1981) also shared some activities for teachers to apply in

speaking lessons : Identifying a picture from a set, discovering identical pairs;
discovering sequence of location, discovering missing information, discovering
missing features, discovering secrets, communicating patterns and pictures,
communicating models, discovering differences, following directions,
reconstructing story sequence, pooling information to solve a problem, problem
solving tasks, role playing with role playing controlled through cued dialogue,
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 and improvisation.

2.2. Suggestions for students

Students should try to find out the ways to learn English effectively for
themselves as each student has their own favorite way of learning. They also need
to find out the motivations for learning English themselves. They need to train
themselves to be more hard-working in learning English. To speak English well,
students must try to learn new words, pronounce the words correctly, study new
51
structures and apply them in their speaking usually by taking extra classes, joining
some English clubs, try to make friends with foreigners if possible to use English in
real conversation.

3. Limitations of the study

Due to the limitation of time and ability, shortcomings of this study are
unavoidable. Firstly, the researcher just uses questionnaires for teachers and
students, and the interview with teachers. There should have been an interview with
the students to clarify the difficulties more clearly. Secondly, classroom
observations were not applied in this study, therefore, the researcher could not
check the effectiveness of the suggested solutions by the teachers. Thirdly, the
result of this study may not be generalized for all non-English-major students from
other universities in Vietnam, in fact, it only serves as reference information for the
universities with the students and teachers with similar characteristics as those in
this study. Last but not least, this study is done in survey research methods,
therefore, the results of this study is just preliminary in finding out the perceptions
of the students and teachers at HaUI about non- English-major students’ difficulties
from in learning speaking skill. In long term, there should be a longitudinal study in
this field.

4. Suggestions for further studies

It is hoped that the people who are interested in this topic will widen the
scale of the study with more participants, in other schools, colleges or universities.
Apart from speaking, further researches can be done in the fields of listening,
reading and writing skills.
Action research or experimental research should be done to find out
whether the suggested solutions from the teachers are effective for students’
learning English speaking skill or not. Besides, other researchers interested in this
52
field can carry out action researches to find out which teaching methods can help
students learn speaking skill better.
Despite some limitations, it is still hopeful that this thesis can be a basic
knowledge and reference materials for other studies.

53
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58
 APPENDIX

Appendix 1: Survey questionnaires for students

This survey questionnaire is designed for the study on difficulties in learning

speaking skill faced by non- English major students at Hanoi University of Industry
and it will be used for the purposes of data analysis. Your assistance in responding
to the following questions is highly appreciated. Your confidentiality is assured.
You will not be identified in any discussion of the data.

In completing these following questions, please choose the answer by

circling the letter next to your choice, scaling items or expressing your ideas in the
blanks.

Thank you very much for your cooperation!

Part I: General information

1. Personal information:
Sex: male / female

Age:

Major:

2. How long have you studied English?

A. Less than 1 year C. More than 3 - 7 years
B. 1-3 years D. More than 7 years
3. You think English speaking skill is …….

A. Very important C. Important E. Not important at all

B. Quite important D. Not very important

4. In comparison with other skills (listening, reading and writing), speaking is

…………..
A. More important than other skills C. Less important than other
skills
B. As important as other skills
5. How much do you like speaking English?

A. Very much C. So-so E. Not at all

I
 B. Quite a lot D. Not really

6. What do you think about your speaking skill?

A. Very good C. Good E. Quite bad

B. Quite good D. Bad F. Very bad

7. Why do you learn English speaking skill? (Please tick all items that apply
you)

B. Because it is interesting.

C. Because it is necessary for your future job.

D. Because it is helpful for you to communicate with foreigners.

E. Because it is helpful for you to improve your knowledge.

F. Others (please specify)…………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………

Part II: Specific information about difficulties in learning English speaking

skill

8. What are your difficulties in learning speaking skill (Please tick all the items
that apply you)

Factors causing difficulties in learning speaking English Tick (√)

From a. Teachers’ teaching method:

teachers
- Long teachers’ talking time

- Inappropriate teachers’ correction

- Inappropriate teachers’ role in the class

b. Teachers’ characteristics:

- Teachers’ unfriendliness

- Teachers’ inadequate encouragement

- Teachers’ unenthusiasm

II
From a. Students’ learning style (passive, intrinsic)
students
b. Students’ low motivation

c. Students’ anxiety

d. Students’ lack of background knowledge,

ideas
e. Lack of vocabulary

f. Lack of grammar structure

g. Poor pronunciation, stress and intonation

h. Vietnamese affection

Objectiv a. Large classes

e factors
b. Multilevel classes

c. Uninteresting textbooks

Others (Please specify)

.....................................................................................

Thank you very much for your cooperation!

III
 Appendix 2: Phiếu điều tra dành cho sinh viên ( bản Tiếng Việt)

Phiếu điều tra này được thiết kế cho bài nghiên cứu tìm ra những khó khăn
trong việc học kĩ năng nói của sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh tại trường Đại học
công nghiệp Hà Nội và kết quả của phiếu điều tra sẽ chỉ được dùng cho mục đích
nghiên cứu phân tích số liệu. Sự giúp đỡ của các bạn trong việc trả lời các câu hỏi
dưới đây được đánh giá rất cao. Thông tin của các bạn được đảm bảo bí mật tuyệt
đối. Bạn sẽ không bị nhận ra trong bất kì thảo luận nào trong phần thảo luận số liệu.

Để hoàn thành các câu hỏi dưới đây, vui lòng chọn câu trả lời bằng cách
khoanh tròn vào đáp án bạn lựa chọn, hoặc viết ý kiến của bạn vào chỗ trống.

Xin chân thành cảm ơn sự hợp tác của các bạn!

Phần I: Thông tin chung

1. Thông tin cá nhân

Giới tính: Nam/Nữ

Tuổi: :

2. Bạn đã học Tiếng Anh trong bao lâu?

C. Dưới 1 năm C. Hơn 3 năm đến 7 năm
D. Từ 1 đến 3 năm D. Hơn 7 năm
3. Bạn nghĩ kĩ năng nói Tiếng Anh …….

A. Rất quan trọng C. Quan trọng E. Không quan trọng chút

nào

B. Khá quan trọng D. Không quan trọng lắm

4.So với các kĩ năng khác (nghe, đọc, viết) kĩ năng nói …………..
C. Quan trọng hơn các kĩ năng khác C. Không quan trọng bằng các kĩ
năng khác
D. Quan trọng như các kĩ năng khác

5. Bạn thích nói Tiếng Anh nhiều như thế nào?

A. Rất nhiều C. Bình thường E. Không thích chút nào

B. Khá nhiều D. Không thích lắm

IV
6. Bạn nghĩ gì về kĩ năng nói của bạn?

A. Rất tốt C. Tốt E. Khá tồi

B. Khá tốt D. Tồi F. Rất tồi

7. Tại sao bạn học kĩ năng nói ? (Đánh dấu tất cả các phương án phù hợp với
bạn)

B. Bởi vì nó rất thú vị

C. Bởi vì nó cần thiết cho công việc sau này của bạn

D. Bởi vì nó giúp bạn có thể giao tiếp được với người nước ngoài.

E. Bởi vì nó giúp bạn có thể nâng cao kiến thức.

F. Ý kiến khác (vui lòng nói rõ) ……………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………….

Phần II: Thông tin cụ thể về những khó khăn trong việc học kĩ năng nói

8. Khó khăn của bạn trong việc học kĩ năng nói là gì? ( Đánh dấu tất cả các
phương án phù hợp với bạn)

Các yếu tố gây khó khăn cho bạn trong việc học kĩ năng nói Đánh
dấu
(√)

Khó a. Phương pháp giảng dạy của giáo viên:

khăn từ
- Thời gian nói của giáo viên quá nhiều
phía
giáo - Phương pháp chữa lỗi của giáo viên không phù hợp
viên
- Vai trò của giáo viên trong lớp chưa phù hợp

b. Tính cách của giáo viên:

- Giáo viên không thân thiện

- Giáo viên chưa khích lệ sinh viên đầy đủ

- Giáo viên không nhiệt tình với sinh viên

V
Khó a. Phong cách học thụ động
khăn từ
b. Động lực học tập thấp
phía học
sinh c. Sự lo lắng, căng thẳng trong giờ học nói

d. Sự thiếu hiểu biết, thiếu ý tưởng

e. Thiếu từ vựng

f. Thiếu các cấu trúc ngữ pháp

g. Phát âm, trọng âm và ngữ điệu kém

h. Bị ảnh hưởng bởi Tiếng Việt

Khó a. Lớp học quá đông

khăn từ
b. Trình độ của sinh viên trong lớp không đồng đều
các yếu
tố khách c. Giáo trình không thú vị
quan

Ý kiến (Xin hãy làm rõ)

khác ..................................................................................................

Xin chân thành cảm ơn sự hợp tác của các bạn!

VI
 Appendix 3: Survey questionnaires for teachers

This survey questionnaire is designed for the study on difficulties in learning

speaking skill faced by non- English major students at Hanoi University of Industry
and it will be used for the purposes of data analysis . Your assistance in responding
to the following questions is highly appreciated. Your confidentiality is assured.
You will not be identified in any discussion of the data.

In completing these following questions, please choose the answer by

circling the letter next to your choice, ranking items in order or expressing your
ideas in the blanks.

Thank you very much in advance!

__________________________________________________________________

Part 1: General information

1. Personal information:
Sex: male / female

Age:

2. How many years have you been teaching English?

A. Less than 3 years B. 3-6 years

C. more than 6-9 years D. More than 9 years

Part 2: General opinions of teachers’ about their students’ learning

speaking skill

3. How important is English speaking skill to your students?

A. Very important C. Important E. Not important at all

B. Quite important D. Not very important

4. In comparison with other skills (listening, reading and writing), speaking is

………..
A. More important than other skills C. Less important than other skills
B. As important as other skills
5. How much do your students like speaking English?
VII
 A. Very much C. So-so E. Not at all

B. Quite a lot D. Not really

6. What do you think about your students’ speaking skill?

A. Very good C. Good E. Quite bad

B. Quite good D. Bad F. Very bad

Part 3: Teachers’ belief about CLT

7. Tick into the column which best describes your level of agreement with the
following statements about CLT

Statement Strongly Agree Neither Disagree Strongly

agree agree nor
disagree
disagree

a.Teaching should focus on

fluency rather than accuracy.

b. The students should be the

centre of knowledge
transmission. The teacher should
be their facilitator.

c. The teacher should strongly

encourage the students to learn
by themselves through struggling
to communicate.

d. The teacher should spend a lot

of time on role play/ games/
group and pair work instead of
explicit teaching structures.

e. The lesson should focus

mainly on speaking skills.

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f. The teacher should not correct
the students’ mistakes at all
unless they cause
communication breakdown.

g. The students should be

exposed to authentic language
and material all the time.

h. Language tasks should be

meaningful and purposeful.

i. CLT is an effective approach

for your students.

Part 4: Specific information about students’ difficulties in learning

English speaking skill

8. In your experience, what are your students’ difficulties in learning speaking

skill (Tick all the items that apply you)

Factors causing difficulties in learning speaking English Tick (√)

From a. Teachers’ teaching method:

teachers
- Long teachers’ talking time

- Inappropriate teachers’ correction

- Inappropriate teachers’ role in the class

b. Teachers’ characteristics:

- Teachers’ unfriendliness

- Teachers’ inadequate encouragement

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 - Teachers’ unenthusiasm

From a. Students’ learning style (passive, intrinsic)

students
b. Students’ low motivation

c. Students’ anxiety

d. Students’ lack of background knowledge, ideas

e. Lack of vocabulary

f. Lack of grammar structure

g. Poor pronunciation, stress and intonation

h. Vietnamese affection

Objectiv a. Large classes

e factors
b. Multilevel classes

c. Uninteresting textbooks

Others (Please specify)

.....................................................................................

Thank you very much for your cooperation!

X
 Appendix 4: Transcription for the semi-structured group interview with
teachers

Researcher: Good afternoon, everyone! Thank you very much for coming here
today. As you know, I am doing my MA minor thesis on finding out difficulties in
learning speaking skill faced by non- English major students at Hanoi University of
Industry. In doing this thesis, I have designed two questionnaires for both students
and teachers to find out the most common difficulties that the students may get into
on the way mastering speaking skill and now I would like to involve you into this
group interview to ask for your suggestions and solutions to the students’ most
common difficulties that they face when learning speaking skill. This interview will
be recorded and transcribed later. However, you should feel safe and be aware that
the data from the interview will be kept confidential and will be used only for the
purpose of this study. You will not be recognized in any parts of the data analysis
and discussions.

The results from the questionnaires with students and teachers show that students’
passive learning style, students’ laziness, students’ low motivation and low English
level (including inadequate vocabulary, structures, poor pronunciation, stress and
intonation), learning in large and multilevel classes are the main factors causing
students’ difficulties in learning speaking skill. Now, we are going to discuss about
the solutions to those above problems.

Firstly, we will start with the first difficulty. Most of the students find it difficult to
learn English speaking skill because they have passive learning style. As a teacher,
what solutions can be applied to help them?

Teacher 1: I think that we can help the students to change their learning style by
arrange a lot of pair-work and group-work in class as well as at home. Most of the
students like sharing and expressing themselves in front of their friends, therefore
they would try their best to show the best of them. We can assign the topic for

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students for them to prepare at home and ask them to present in the next lesson to
make them study harder and more actively. I have used this technique in not just
speaking but in writing skill as well and I find that, it’s really useful and effective.
From this, students can learn better. And it can help them learn other skills and
other subjects better, not just English speaking skill.

Teacher 2: In my opinion, we can choose a topic which is closely related to

students’ life for them to discuss and share their ideas. They can be interested in the
topic and like participating in the classroom activities.

Teacher 3: I think games can be used to make them more competitive and active in
classroom. Also we can create suitable situations according to the topic of the
lessons for them to have real conversations. For example, when I teach about
“shopping” topic in Unit 4, in the book “New-headway” pre-intermediate, I asked
students to work in pairs to make a short conversation at the clothes shop to buy a
T-shirt or anything that they like Besides, I tell them that, at home, they can practice
with their partners to make similar conversations at any other kinds of shop that
they like, and in the next lesson, I will ask some pairs to act out their conversations
in front of the class. Students have time to prepare at home, therefore, their
conversation is much longer, more fluent, more real and more interesting.

Teacher 4, 5, 7: Great!!!!

Interviewer: You have suggested a very good idea! Thank you very much, teacher
3! And some of you here, do you have any suggestions?

Teacher 4: I think I will apply to assign speaking topics for students to prepare at
home and speak in front of class. Usually, I just ask students to speak immediately
in front of the class, not for them to prepare at home. I think I should change.

Teacher 1: You should let your students some time to prepare at home, they can
perform much better in class. Because at home, they can have time to search for the

XII
information about the topic, they can find and learn the words to express their ideas
themselves. This makes them more interested in learning because they can discover
and find the things they need to learn themselves, they can remember and use
English better. This is the way for them to develop their activeness in learning.

Teacher 6: I agree that to change students’ passive learning style into active
learning style, we need to organize suitable and interesting activities to attract
students into them and to motivate them to learn more and more. But, this is not
easy. It’s hard work, really hard work. My students are from the faculties of
automobiles and mechanical engineering, so they are not only very passive, but also
very lazy. They sometimes don’t like playing games, but doing nothing in class.
They do not talk or make trouble, they just don’t want to learn anything and just sit
in the class and keep silent, observe everything around them. I have had to use quite
many techniques to change the situations, and I think that the teachers must also be
very strict to keep the students to participate in the lessons. Teachers should pay
attention to all the class so that no students are excluded in the classroom activities.

Interviewer: Yes, this is another difficulty. That is students’ laziness. You have just
given a solution to this problem, right ? Teacher 6.

Teacher 6: Yeah. And I have had some chances to teach students from different
faculties, and I recognize that, usually students from mechanical, chemical faculties
are lazier than the students from economic faculties.

Teacher 5: You are right, teacher 6. And it’s harder to motivate students from
mechanical faculties. Most of them are boys, they do not like English and they just
learn English to pass the final exam. Their motivation for learning English is low,
very low.

Interviewer: I see. So, what suggestions do you have for students who are lazy and
have low motivation in learning English?

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Teacher 4: I think that we can only do little help if the students themselves do not
change their attitudes toward learning English.

Teacher 5: I think that the teachers should be strict with the students and assign the
homework or the things students need to learn clearly. They need to be instructed
clearly about what to do or they cannot complete what you want them to do. But,
we need to check their homework regularly, we need to give students suitable
compliments for the work they have done as well as suitable punishments for those
who do not complete our requirements.

Teacher 7: That’s’ right. We need to be very strict to them, manage them well in
class. We also should try our best to create good atmosphere in class. We need to be
strict, but sometimes we need to be funny to build good relationship with students.
Good relationship between students and teacher can become a good motivation for
students to study harder. As far as I know, students will try to learn better if they
like their teachers. My son is a good example for this. At school, he likes his
English teacher, therefore, he likes the English lessons, he tries to learn English
very hard. But, he doesn’t like his Math teacher very much because she is too
difficult and strict. He doesn’t like the day when he has to learn Math.

Teacher 2: Teacher 7 has suggested a great idea! That’s a fantastic way! But not all
teachers can do that although they really want. How to make students obey and
listen to the teacher, but they can still be very funny and friendly with them at the
same time? You are an experienced teacher, can you share some ways with us?

Teacher 7: Of course! You should have the suitable voice, facial expression to
show your emotion with the things your students have done. Well, ….. you can
reward your students if they actively participate in the class activities by giving
them good marks or giving them small gifts (you can buy the gifts yourself or you
can ask the monitor of your class to buy gifts for them. In my class, students coming
to class late will be punished by handing in 10,000 dong, and that kind of money

XIV
will be used to buy gifts for active students in the class ). For example, when your
students do not finish their homework, you need to be strict with them, punish them
in strict ways so that they will not commit the similar mistakes again.

Teacher 1, 2, 3, 4, 6: (smile) ! Great ideas!

Teacher 1: I’ll try your method! I think it will work with my class, too.

Teacher 6: Me, too. And I think that teachers should create the activities for all the
students to join in. We can modify the activities and make them more active and
engaging. Students may also have some choices in choosing the things to do. In this
way, students feel free to choose the things they like, which makes them feel
actively involved in the lessons. For example, students can be free to talk about
their last holiday, about the person that they love best, …

Teacher 4: We should give students the topics related to their lives. To motivate
students, we can use English songs or short stories, communicative games and
activities.

Interviewer: Can you tell me some communicative games and activities you often
use in your class?

Teacher 4: Yes, I often use role-play, group- discussion, problem –solving,

guessing game for my students and I find that they work with my students.

Teacher 7: I like using guessing game and role-play best! They are so much funny
and motivating not only for students but also for me! (smile)

Interviewer: Wonderful! Now, let’s talk about another problem, which is our
students’ low English competence. Our students often lack vocabulary and grammar
structures to express their ideas in addition to this, their pronunciation is not good,
they cannot speak English with the right stress and intonation as expected. They are
the reasons why they do not participate in classroom speaking activities and cannot

XV
get good results as they are required. To solve this problem, what suggestions do
you suggest for them?

Teacher 1: I think that at our students’ level, they are only required to be able to
speak about very simple topics related to their lives, therefore, I suggest that
students should try to learn vocabulary in topics, and they should learn the
vocabulary in phrases, not one by one word. Learning vocabulary in this way helps
students to have strong vocabulary about the topics they study in class, and they can
remember the words better. One more thing, students should have a good dictionary
to bring with them, so that they can learn and check the words they need any time,
and anywhere they go.

Teacher 3: I totally agree with you, teacher 1! Students should be taught the new
vocabulary in chunks, in phrases, not word by word. In this way students can learn
more words, remember words and their usage better. They can also express their
ideas more quickly. And when we teach them a new structure, if it is possible, we
should ask them to make up some sentences with that new structure, and with the
words that they have studied, to make them understand and remember the new
words and the new structure.

Teacher 6: And in class, you can create the games for the students to remember
new words and new structures. It will be much fun and more interesting to students.
You have many kinds of games for this. In addition, you can advise them to listen to
music, listen to the news, watch the movies in English, if the movies have English
subtitle, it’s the best because they can have fun when they learn! Sometimes, they
do not need to understand, but just get accustomed to listening to English.

Teacher 5: Uhm, I share the same ideas with you, teacher 6. Listening to music in
English and watching a movie in English are effective ways in learning English. In
this way, students can guess the meaning of words in context, as well as how to use
the words and in what situation.

XVI
Teacher 2: But they will forget the things they learn if they do not practice and use
them regularly. Therefore, I have the suggestion that they should attend one English
club to have fun and to have chances to use English. This can make them more
motivated in learning English.

Teacher 4, 7: Wow, great!

Teacher 4 : I think that’ll help.

Teacher 7: Students are also advised to make friends with foreigners if possible.
Foreigners are often very friendly and easy to make friends, students can meet
foreigners easily when they go to some place such as Hoan Kiem Lake, Uncle Ho
Mausoleum, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, … Being able to talk with foreigners
is a good experience and it can motivate to students to learn English as well. And
foreigners can help them to correct their pronunciation as well.

Teacher 3: That’s a good way, but I don’t think that most students can do that. I
suggest that students can learn to master good pronunciation, stress and intonation
themselves at home with good listening materials. When they learn new words, they
should learn the pronunciation, and stress of the words at the same time. The
intonation can be learned when they listen to the conversation, they can stop the
conversation to repeat the sentence to imitate the intonation. And they should try to
use the sentences with the stress and intonation they learn into their conversation to
remember it and to make their language usage more vivid and beautiful.

Teacher 1, 2, 5: Good idea, guy!!!!!!!

Interviewer: Excellent, guys! Have you got any other suggestions?

Teacher 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7: No more, maybe no more, now (smile)

Interviewer: If you do not have any other ideas about this difficulty, now we will
discuss the next difficulties about the problems of learning in large and multilevel
classes. What do you think about this problem and what suggestions do you have?
XVII
Teacher 4: At our university, there are quite many students in an English class,
usually, there are about 55 students in a class, some other classes are luckier with
the number of students of about 35 and less than 40 students. However, the number
of students is still quite large for an English class. I suggest that we should put only
30 to 35 students in a class so that in one lesson, all students can have a chance to
speak English in class.

Teacher 2: We all know that, but it’s quite difficult because we have too many non-
English major students, and if we divide them into too many small classes, we will
not have enough rooms for them to study and not enough teachers to teach them as
well.

Interviewer: This problem seems to be unavoidable, right?

Teacher 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 : Yes.

Teacher 3, 4 : Hopefully at this time only and in the future, things will change!

Interviewer: Yes. I hope so, too! To me, managing a big class is not an easy task.
(smile). So, what about the problem of multilevel class? What are your suggested
solutions?

Teacher 7: Our faculty has applied the replacement test for new students to put
them into the right classes. If the students can pass the replacement test, they can
skip the first semester and wait for the other class at a higher level to follow.

Teacher 6: But I think that the replacement test should include speaking part as
well because we just forget this important skill in this test. In the next coming years,
we should have speaking part!

Teacher 3: And we need to inform students the purposes of the replacement tests
clearly so that they will do the tests seriously and get the correct results to be put in
the right classes.

XVIII
Teacher 2 : Uhm, yeah. And we have done that already.

Teacher 1: That’s right! And we should pay attention to the quality of the test. We
should design the test carefully and, with students who are confident that they have
mastered English well, we should let them take part in the skipped level exams, if
they can pass those tests, they can skip that semester to learn at a higher level.
Because as I see, excellent students will be dismotivated in learning if they have to
study with low level students, and vice versa, low level students will feel
embarrassed and unconfident when they have to learn with very good students.

Teacher 5: I also think that’s a good to have such exams like you have suggested.
But they should only be applied for English 1 and English 2 only because usually
our students are not good at English although they have learnt English at secondary
school and at high school. The reason for this fact is that most of them took the
entrance exam to our university in 3 subjects: math, physics and chemistry, they do
not pay attention to learning English at high school. Therefore, their English level is
very low. They can have heard about a lot of things related to English : for example
: the present simple, present continuous, past simple and so on, but they still cannot
apply them into their own speaking, even in completing the grammatical task
because they do not understand them thoroughly. They need to study again to
“standardize” their English again. And one more thing is that, at our university, they
are taught in the communicative way, which may be different from the way they
learn at secondary school or at high school where the teacher just teach them the
grammar points to pass the exams!

Interviewer: Well, I agree with you about this issue! What about you, teacher 2, 3,
4? Do you have any other suggestions?

Teacher 3: I share the same ideas with teacher 5.

Teacher 4: I agree with teacher 6. We should include the speaking part in the
replacement test.
XIX
Teacher 1, 6, 5, 7: Uhm, that’s necessary!

Teacher 3: I myself think that low level students can also take some extra classes or
try to study harder than other students to keep up with their classmates.

Teacher 2: Fantastic! But this can only be done if students are really interested in
learning English.

Interviewer: Thank you very much, all of you! We have discussed some solutions
for students to overcome the most common difficulties in learning speaking skill. I
have learnt a lot from you in this discussion. Once again, thanks for your
cooperation! Goodbye, see you soon!

Teacher 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 : Goodbye! See you later!

Interviewer: Thank you so much! Goodbye! Hope to see you soon!

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