Make English Speaking Pupils Interested at SIU

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GRADUATION THESIS
Major
English Language
Topic
How to make pupils at SIU interested in
learning English speaking
Instructor
Nguyen Thanh Tuan, MA
Student
Dinh Thai Son
ID: 97011501057

DECLARATION
I hereby declare that the work entitled "THE THESIS PROPOSAL" submitted for the
school governor of The Saigon International University (SIU) is my original work and I
also confirm that, the report is only prepared for my academic requirement not for any
other purpose.
Student's name : Đinh Thái Sơn
Course : SIUBFT0815
Student ID : 97011501057
Date : September 6th
, 2017
Place : Hochiminh city
Signature of the Student:

ABSTRACT
The experience of English teaching, especially speaking class, comes from the actual
classroom and that is not a good news for a new teacher, who does not have it but
urgently needs to acquire the basic knowledge. This writing provides the reasons why the
level of interesting acts as a crucial point in the succeeding of a class. Furthermore, some
methods of teaching speaking are going to be viewed and discussed to strengthen the
point of view that intrinsic motivation should be applied in the class. Readers will find
graphs and figures demonstrating the subject and result in finding them useful for further
studies at the Saigon International University.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to show deep gratitude to all those who gave me a chance to complete this
research and this Thesis.
A special thanks I would like to give to my instructor, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tuan, for helping
me with the information needed for my Thesis. Over the period of 10 weeks, he helped us
to schedule the writing from step to step so that the writing could be handed in time.
Professor also guided us the correct form of writing and corrected our paper works.
Furthermore, I would like to thank the class 15DTA, who act as a helpful source of data on
reflecting the state of our speaking class in the pass. The data was rapidly filled and the
reply was so frank. Without their participation, this writing was so much in trouble.
Last but not least, I would like to thank the Saigon International University. The academic
facility provides me a chance to be able to present the knowledge that I had learned here
for the last four years and applied them to real life situation.

Instructor’s Comment
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TABLE OF CONTENT
Content
Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................... 9
1. Rationale .................................................................................................................... 9
2. Purposes of the Study................................................................................................ 2
3. Significant of the Study............................................................................................. 2
4. Research Questions ................................................................................................... 3
5. Limitation................................................................................................................... 3
6. Scope of the Study ..................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW............................................................................. 5
1. Intrinsic motivation................................................................................................... 5
2. Distinguish Types of Motivations ............................................................................ 6
3. Advantages of Intrinsic Motivation......................................................................... 7
4. Some Elements of English Speaking........................................................................ 7
5. Communicative Language Teaching....................................................................... 8
6. Task-based activities and Topic-based activities.................................................... 8
7. Some Classroom Speaking Activities ...................................................................... 9
7.1. Script Acting......................................................................................................... 9
7.2. Discussion........................................................................................................... 10
7.3. Prepared Talks .................................................................................................... 10
7.4. Questionnaires .................................................................................................... 11
7.5. Simulation and role-play.................................................................................................11
Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY...................................................................................................13
1. Research design....................................................................................................................13
2. Research Procedures ...........................................................................................................13
3. Participants...........................................................................................................................15
4. Sample Selection...................................................................................................................15
5. Material Technique..............................................................................................................15
6. Data Collection.....................................................................................................................16
7. Reliability and Validity........................................................................................................16
Chapter 4: ANALYSIS AND DICUSSION...............................................................................18

1. Speaking class should be improve to be more enthusiastic for students.........................18
2. Methods of teaching English speaking fit into the class to make it more enthusiastic. .22
2.1. Dramatic methods ..........................................................................................................22
2.2. Topic-based methods......................................................................................................25
3. Which methods are considered to be the most suitable for the students at Saigon
International University?........................................................................................................27
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................33
REFERENCE.................................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
APPENDIX...................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

LIST OF CHARTS
Chart 1: The chart describing the level of interest the speaking class could get based on
students’ grading................................................................................................................20
Chart 2: The chart describing the amount of activities were use......................................21
Chart 3: The chart describing the most common method used during class ........................
............................................................................................................................................22
Chart 4: Chart describing which methods students prefer................................................29
Chart 5: Chart describing which task-based activities students prefer.............................30
Chart 6: Chart describing which topic-based activities students prefer......................32
CONTENT
Chapter 1: Introduction
The research began when the class of speaking conducted at SIU had finished since
the majority felt the same that the class either quite reluctant or not being able to distribute
the enthusiastic activities. In the search for methods to better the class learning
environment, the hope is that speaking class will be more communicative for students to
enjoy.
1. Rationale
English has always been unofficially considered to be the most used language of the
modern time for it has proved it significant in global business and communication in the
last decade. Yet, learning a second language is not as easy as it seems especially when it

comes to speaking English. During speaking session, we found that some of the students
lack the motivation to stand up in front the class and deliver a speech in English. This
typical situation is often assigned to being shy, reserved and insecure of making mistake,
some cases event engage with the negative attitude toward speaking in front of public. Such
matter has raised the attention of us as future teachers to find an appropriate solution.
2. Purposes of the Study
As stated before, we are aiming at creating an efficient English speaking period for
students of Saigon International University. By attending the classes, we noticed that
getting students to speak English in class is quite tricky especially to those who were
reluctant to speak or express themselves in front of other people. Since then, we have been
scanning through methods of teaching Speaking English and obtaining more new modern
practices to help students deal with speaking problems.
3. Significance of the Study
As the first to benefit from this research, we would say that through the process of
making this writing possible, we have learned a quite amount of ways to conduct an
effective speaking class. With a certain belief that the students at Saigon International
University would be the next target to gain advantage since this research was aimed to
better the class of speaking based on the interest of each individuals. Lastly, teachers’ role
is quite important in the learning and progressing of pupils so we hope that this small
research could act as a support to those seeking of such helps and shall gain benefit from
it.

4. Research Questions
When the target has been set, three main questions are going to be discussed in the later
section of this research.
1. Should we consider to improve the Speaking class so that it could be more
enthusiastic?
2. What activities of English speaking teaching are going to fit into the class to make
it more enthusiastic?
3. Which methods are considered to be the most suitable for the students at Saigon
International University?
5. Limitation
Since the research was only carrying on for ten weeks, there were a quite shortage of
time. As a result, the amount of material we were able to collect still constrained. Further
to that, the preparation for this thesis was interfered by the time using for completing
internship report. Two weeks were cut out to complete the tasks. The questionnaire period
was yet too short, the answers collecting stopped after a week so that amount of responses
was not enough as a whole class.
6. Scope of the Study
This topic focused on the student at Saigon International University:
The Saigon International University (SIU) is an international university,
founded in Vietnam to help Vietnamese and foreign students advance their
education to the tertiary level. All our programs are taught either in English or
in Vietnamese based on the standard of the American university curriculum.
The SIU degrees are valuable nationally and internationally. (siu.edu.vn)

The class of 15DTA of English Language faculty started in 2015 and will end in 2019.
The curriculum consisted of Vietnamese program including subjects such as Introduction
to Linguistics, Semantics, etc. and English program which were the skills of Reading,
Writing, Speaking and Listening.
The research targeted the students attended the class of 15DTA of the faculty of English
Language at Saigon International University only. The list of students we used is the LIST
OF STUDENTS GRADUATION INTERNSHIP - 2019 sent to us by the school office on
February 27th
, 2019 which contained 25 members in total.
In conclusion, the main target for this research are students at SIU in general, for
the students of class 15DTA in specific. Although, there some difficulties in reaching for
the sample, we were managed to acquire the result needed for this thesis.

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
According to Harmer (2007) in his fourth edition of “The Practice of English Language
Teaching”, speaking can be quite easy to practice especially in a class where students are
acquainted to each other and archive an appropriate level of English learning. On the other
hand, Harmer also stated that it is a challenge job for teachers to handle a class with a
variety of mixed level or students who are little exposed to English in their previous
learning. These reluctant students are described as often being shy and refusing to express
themselves in front of the crowd because of the fear of not speaking normal English. In
addition, a more common problem comes to Speaking class is “I cannot think of anything to
say”. This issue is usually assigned to not being able to relate students themselves to the
topics or activities happening during the class. Last but not least, speaking class should
have a high number of individual participants because unlike other skills, speaking need
great amount of time in order for learners to expose themselves to the language.
To have a better view of some of the matter we were working on, the below terms and
definitions are going to be discussed.
As we would all agree on, “To be motivated means to be moved to do something. A
person who feels no impetus or inspiration to act is thus characterized as unmotivated,
whereas someone who is energized or activated toward an end is considered motivated” as
Richard, M, R. & Edward, L, Deci. (2000) described. Therefore, we would like to classify
two types of motivation that keep learner at their stage of studying.
1. Intrinsic motivation
The writing of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions
stated:

Intrinsic motivation is defined as the doing of an activity for its inherent
satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence. When intrinsically
motivated, a person is moved to act for the fun or challenge entailed rather
than because of external products, pressures or reward. (Ryan & Deci,
2000, pp. 56)
Furthermore Vanderbilt University in its article had suggested these intrinsic
motivators could be describe as those who show interest at a specific subject with the
thought of it somehow connect to the reality and when come to solving problems they can
easily apply. More specific, when asked the question of how efficient you are when
learning a subject or what archive do you earn when learning. The responses might sound
like these, ““Literature interests me.”, “Learning math enables me to think clearly.”, “I feel good
when I succeed in class.” ” (Article about Motivating Student, Vanderbilt University).
2. Distinguish Types of Motivations
A much tougher task is how to tell the differences between intrinsic, extrinsic and
internal, external motivation. Being as briefly as possible, external motivation regards the
outer forces that drive learners to their success while internal motivation is more likely to
fulfill personal satisfaction. Let us have an example. A student completed his homework
with the fear of being punished by his parents if the work had not been done. In this case,
he is motivated by his parents’ sanctions so it is obvious external. The same student
complete his work because he thinks that it will lead to his succeed at school, then he is
internally motivated. As comparing to the other two, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are
much more of an instrumentally value. The boy could have finished his homework since
his discovery that his homework contain knowledge that he needed to perform in other

subject, then he is intrinsically motivated. On the other hand, the child completing his task
thinking that he it would help him to earn a job or in short term get a reward in the future
could be considered as extrinsically motivated.
Since we are only mentioning the intrinsic motivation, the distinguish part above just
to clarify these definition. It is, however, important for teachers to recognize these types of
motivation and be able to classify reluctant students to fit in each type and make sure to
plan ahead a solution to deal with each type.
3. Advantages of Intrinsic Motivation
The process of acquiring information on students’ liking as well as further developing
them can easily accompany class time meaning that steps can happen at the same time
without interfering or suppressing one another. For instant, during speaking class, teachers
can ask students to provide their hobby or ask question about their future jobs, etc. As far
as we acknowledged, extrinsically motivating methods do their jobs as soon as you apply
them during your teaching section. Rewards and good marks draw the attentions of
students, hands are up for answering questions and speaking of ideas. It provides strong
stimulation and makes students eagerly to aim for rewards.
4. Some Elements of English Speaking
As Harmer defined, speaking English fluently means there is a full potential
deployment on pronouncing phonemes, using stress and intonation patterns and creating a
connected speech. Furthermore, these above criteria must also accompany with various
speaking events. Speaking in another language is difficult and it has been argued that an

important reason for this is that a student’s attentional resources during a speaking activity
are limited (Skehan, 1998: 73). Many students cannot stay balance between getting the
meaning right in a proper time (fluency) and using it correctly (accuracy) as an article of
Cambridge Press had suggested.
5. Communicative Language Teaching
In the work of Littlewood (2013), the communicative ability is described by analyzing
two different points of view of language, the structural and the functional. Structural point
of view considers the aspect of grammar, in other words, two sentences can be
distinguished from each other by their grammatical structure. For instant, “John is drinking
coffee” and “The coffee is being drunk by John”. The structural view alone, however,
cannot be used as a way of conveying communication. Learners will need the view of
functional as well. Here is an example: “Are they still working?” .In the aspect of grammar,
the sentence should be understand as a question or interrogative. However, there are more
than one meaning in the view of functional base on the circumstances that the speakers in.
As a result, the communicative language teaching was there to solve the problem in three
aspects: getting students to understand the linguistic structure first since this is ESL class,
helping students to use the language communicatively and also introducing students to a
non-linguistic knowledge of communication.
6. Task-based activities and Topic-based activities
As Ur defined in her work, a topic-based activity helps students to relate the ideas of
students to their own experience and knowledge. This kind of activities could also represent
a group discussion where teachers can stimulate speeches but not too many arguments so

that students can keep their origin ideas. On the other hand, task-based activities require
groups or pairs to complete observable tasks such as records, lists, charts, etc. The main
difference between these types of activities is the outcome. While topic-based activities
aim to produce discussion or such type of outcome, task-based activities provides a more
specific result, a source of material that could also be used for other subjects. Therefore,
task-based activities seem to produce more speech than its company since the procedures
of conducting a task-based activities already creates opportunities for students to talk,
especially to communicate with one another.
In this research, topic-based activities would be widened as a method of conducting
speaking class using a topic as a center to construct an activity.
7. Some Classroom Speaking Activities
7.1. Script Acting
This activity involve in having student to act a cut-out part of a story from their books
or other sources that they have most interest, the progress can be recorded and act as an
evaluation for grading. These scripts should be selected carefully so that it could fit the age
of the class and students should be asked to look through the script as if they were “real”
actors and actresses. Students will have time to practice their performance which teacher
head them toward the stress and intonation as they are speaking the lines. Not only student
will be able to practice speaking with their friend during prepare section but they also gain
confident during acting section in front of the class. During acting out part, teachers should
give students with less confident chances to look at their classmate and create a helpful
friendly environment where they help each other with the pronunciations and acting.

7.2. Discussion
The most common of this type of interactions between teachers and students is what
Jeremy described as Buzz group. This activity involves in predicting a topic name after you
have exposed it to the students or discussing after naming some key words of that same
topic. For example, teachers show pictures of snake, elephant, tiger, etc. and suggest that
we might discuss the topic of animals in the rain forest and ask them to name the animals.
Then teachers ask them to guess where they could live or capable of, “the elephant can
swim”; “The snake cannot fly”, etc. The buzz group method, however, should be
discriminated from Instant comment, which have more connection to producing fast
corresponding in-class activities. Let take the same lesson of the rain forest for example.
Teachers again show the topic but now instead of involving the class into speaking, we can
invite individuals to stand up and list as quickly as possible four animal and their living
habitats. Another type of discussion is the Formal debates. Students during the class should
be given a topic then plan their arguments in group while teachers direct them toward some
point of view or answer their questions. It is important for the student to practice their
speech in advance in their group first.
7.3. Prepared Talks
This activity is often seen in the secondary grade classes where they acquired a quite
amount of vocabulary and the ability to use formal conversation. Students then choose a
topic that they most acquainted and prepared the talk in advance. Teachers should
encourage students to present their ideas using notes instead of scripts and should speak in
a small group first. Then teacher could grade them on a criteria that the whole class had
agreed on before.

As the most used activity in teaching English speaking, prepared talks are suitable for
both intrinsic students. It can assure that the topics chosen by students are those familiar or
interesting so they can have as much information as possible along with vocabulary needed
to make their presentation. The criteria that teachers introduce will act as grading tools to
see if students could get better in speaking English.
7.4. Questionnaires
As Harmer (2007) mentioned, “Questionnaires are useful because, by being pre-planned,
they ensure that both questioner and respondent have something to say to each other”. This
activity is what we called “flexible” to conduct and here are the reasons. Questionnaires
can be delivered to students by teachers or can be done by students themselves. Provided
that questions are came up by teachers, students then discuss answers with friends or
practice one-on-one conversation with teachers. On the other hand, students design the
materials themselves so that they could collect data from their friends and present their
finding in front of the class. In this case, teachers’ role is crucial in helping them in the
design process.
7.5. Simulation and role-play
It is described as the act of students “simulate a real-life encounter (such as a
business meeting, an interview or a conversation in an aeroplane cabin, a hotel foyer, a
shop or a cafeteria) as if they were doing do in the real world” (The Practice of English
Language Teaching, 2015, pp. 352). Also described by Ur in her “A Course in English
Teaching Language” (p. 123), this activity can also begin with role cards distributed to
students about a situation. This simulation can also be students themselves take on the role-
play of a character. It is important that the role of students should be given with full
instruction of background, characteristic, etc. Sometimes, teachers can have students to
improvise a circumstance of real life encounter.

In other words, to understand the matter thoroughly, teacher should be aimed with the
basis for professional look through books, articles and most importantly through
experience. The above provides information for such need.

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY
In this chapter, we are going to cover some information and methods that we used to
collect the information. These include the written discourse regarding the methods of
acting, planning activities, etc. for conducting an English speaking class and the tool to
find out the numbers which brought up the questions for this research.
1. Research design
As trying to better the quality of our English speaking class, we have conducted this
research to find out whether more interesting methods should be considered to make the
class more enthusiastic and seek for best methods suitable for students by using both the
Qualitative Research and Quantitative Research. The Qualitative method helps us to know
better the topic that we had chosen through written materials like books and articles related
to the topic. The procedure of Quantitative research was applied to find out the figure of
efficiency that speaking class had brought to students in the past. This section was carried
out by the form of Questionnaires, which is going to be discussed in the later part.
2. Research Procedures
The research literally starts on February 27th
, 2019, right after students received the list
of instructors, who help them to finish their paper work. Since the time, the schedule was
designed by our instructor, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tuan, as:
Week 1, 2 and 3: Finished writing Chapter 1, 2 and Correction.

Week 4 and 5: Finished writing Chapter 3, 4 and Correction.
Week 6: Finished Chapter 5 and Correction.
Week 7 and 8: Meetings.
This research aims to gather methods in relating to teaching speaking effectively for
advanced English learning students following these steps:
1. In the first step of this research, we are going to focus on the questions of
research. Firstly, for the target of this research, we would like to determine who
should be on the list of our questioning, what kind of methods that came up in the
past for teaching Speaking and select which should be able to apply to make it more
successful.
Then we put up the questionnaires about the quality of the class they had attended
in the past, mostly about activities and how enthusiastic these activities brought to
the students.
2. After having all information collected, we presented the idea and proposed the
topic and made it a research.
3. We came up with strategies to collect the data and which approach we would use
to analyze the data.
4. Then we put up the questionnaires about the quality of the class they had attended
in the past, mostly about activities and how enthusiastic these activities brought to
the students. Besides, we were walking through books and articles to scheme out
information that needed for the writing.

5. The data then would be analyzed to a final result.
6. The result then is going to be informed as in the Chapter IV.
3. Participants
The main participants of this research is the student of the faculty of Major English, to be
more specific, the students were assigned to the class 15DTA and were classify differently
based on their English standard test that the university provided.
A vast majority of students in the 15DTA class have been exposed to English for at least a
year as the recent research has shown. Over a number of 25 members of the class, 38.9%
of students have been learning English for over a year while 61.1% of pupils got acquainted
to the language for over two years.
4. Sample Selection
As mentioned before, the focus of this research lay on the students of Saigon International
University, typically speaking the student of class 15TDA. Through the questionnaires
distributed earlier, results would be choose manually. More specific: the sample of those
who attended all four courses of English skills should be selected; the sample of those who
subjected to English for at least a year should be selected
5. Material Technique
The main technique in gathering material for this research is Google form and its calculator
site. This application helps user to create questionnaires on their own. Moreover, these
forms can be sent quickly through connection to other social media applications. Last but
not least, the questions can also be calculated, made into graphics and had their digital
numbers place on the table for individual results. Beside the data from students, the written

materials also played an important role in the making of this research. The selections were
books related to the education aspects, mainly about teaching English as a second language.
The research also considered specialized topics related to education as a source of
information
6. Data Collection
The main technique in gathering materials is questionnaires, which included three sections.
The first section included three questions act as a filter for eliminating results that were not
suitable for collecting data in next two sections. The second set of questions was aim for
collecting data on the level of interesting the lessons of speaking class brought to students
in the past. Kind of activities, time used to process the activity and whether these activities
can leave an impression to student are criteria this part aimed at. The third part includes six
questions mainly about activities that students would like to present during their class.
As a result, over the total of twenty-five students in 15DTA, twenty-four samples were
submitted back to the site. Twenty-one samples, however, made it through the final
calculation process since there were two did not valid due to the fact that the answered
stated that he or she did not go through the class in the period of 2015 to 2019.
7. Reliability and Validity
The result of the data found in this research is assured to be reliable due to three reasons.
Firstly, the numbers were obtained through a serious survey with a scale of enough
participants to make the outcome possible. Secondly, this survey was completed by
students of English Major so the barrier of language could be minimized. Last but not least,
the numbers were processed with accuracy so that the same survey of exact type should be

able to produce the result with the least speculation as it could have. This research
guaranteed that a same survey conducted based on the steps and questions upon this writing
would get a very same outcome.
The result of the data found in this research is assured to be valid due to two reasons.
The result of this research was carried out in an appropriate amount of time needed for the
Questionnaires to happen for the most sample could be collected. Total amount of seven
days used for collecting the sample of 25 students is legit enough. The research starts with
general question, whether the speaking class actually provided a lot of speeches. To look
into that, we narrowed down the target to a more familiar target which is our classmate, the
class of Major English. As we had noticed in the past, the majority of the class seemed
quite reluctant in the period due to the fact of lacking interest so we designed to come up
with a survey to evaluate the enthusiastic of speaking class. Then we analyzed the pros and
cons of the class that we had in the past based on our own experience and compare the
details provided by our friends answer samples. This writing as described above, followed
strictly the steps of conducting a scientific method research. Therefore, this research is
validity.

Chapter 4: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
After working through details about how the research had its samples collected and
figures calculated, the analysis of the topic would be performed by first answering three
main questions in the part of research questions. To demonstrate better on how this research
got the result as well as reached a conclusion, graphics and charts would also be shown,
described and analyzed.
1. Speaking class should be improve to be more enthusiastic for
students.
The question of whether some methods of conducting activities in the speaking class
should be applied to make the class more enthusiastic made students of 15DTA look back
to their speaking class in the last 4 semesters from 2015 to 2018. The research questions of
this part lay on the section two of the questionnaires, including seven questions. To be able
to descript the class enthusiasm, the research focused on the amount of activities carried
out during the class and the amount of time used to conduct them.

For a closer look as well as a more direct approach to the first question, leveling the
student interest in their speaking class question was put into the questionnaires. Based on
chart number 3, the majority of the students agreed that the class only acquired a level of
average when it comes to how interesting it could get. 52.4% of students chose the option
that describe their class was interesting enough for it to carry on. Furthermore, 19% agreed
that the class was just effective enough for them to study in. The numbers were pretty low
when it came to the level 4 and 5 which is the level of good and excellent with only 14.3%
and 9.5% for each category.
Chart 1: The chart describing the level of interest the speaking
class could get based on students’ grading
1 (4.8%)
4 (19%)
11 (52.4%)
3 (14.3%)
2 (9.5%)
0
5
10
15
20
1 2 3 4 5
Total
number
of
students
The level of interest graded by students

To understand better why the level of interest was at about average, the following charts
was withdrawn from the results of the questionnaire.
As the chart described, over the total amount of 21 valid samples, 23.8% of the class
claimed that the class happened with not enough activities while 61.9% stated that the
activities were enough for the class to continue. Only a small fraction, however, says that
the amount of activities should range from several to a lot of activities used. Therefore, the
majority of participants agreed that the level of using activities or methods only at about
enough to keep the class on routine.
When it came to which is the most common method to create an activity for the class,
the research got the answer with the second chart below.
Chart 2: The chart describing the amount of activities were used.
0
5 (23.8 %)
15 (61.9 %)
2 (9.5%)
1 (4.8%)
0
5
10
15
20
1 2 3 4 5
Total
number
of
students
The level of the amount of activities used during the class

The numbers of three charts seem to tell a lack of intrinsic motivation. Firstly, the
amount of activities were insufficient since the “How much time should we give to
speaking practice?” from Cambridge University Press suggested that at least 50 % of the
class time should be devoted to the communicative speaking activity for developing
fluency of using English. As explained before, ESL classes should be taught with this kind
of activity because it provided a great amount of real-life situations that demands them to
communicate and progress their speech. Secondly, more than half of the activities belong
to the group of topic-based activity. This is concerned, though this kind of activity provides
clear objective: discussion, because answers of student upon the topic stay as original when
the class is over. With or without feedback does not actually effect the student much, for
students only participate the class for the period that they came up with ideas and produced
their speeches. Last but definitely not least, the direct number from the survey tells that
more approaches should be used to make the speaking class more interesting.
15 (71.4%)
6 (28.6%)
I often had a topic and the whole class gave in their ideas.
I was often asked to form a group and do tasks
Chart 3: The chart describing the most common method used
during class

In conclusion, the speaking class in the pass was proven to be likely lacking excitement.
Based on this finding, this research came up with some activities that might get the class
more enthusiastic and it is going to be covered in the next section. Teacher should consider
the usage of intrinsic motivation as a target to apply into their planning ahead the activities.
2. Methods of teaching English speaking fit into the class to make it
more enthusiastic.
To find out what kind of activities will work best, the search was carried and here are
the findings which some books specialized in education and some paper works, especially
journals and articles, provided this research with an overview of methods for teaching
speaking. In this part, the writing considers two main methods that will most likely to be
used in teaching speaking.
2.1. Dramatic methods
The big question is “How does drama fit into the approach of teaching second
language?”. Students expected that learning English means that the language could be
easily applied to their real life situation and Drama methods provide just that. Brauer (2002)
also stated that drama helps class room to utilize multiple types of learner, especially bodily
kinesthetic one. Activities of this type helps students to convey real meaning and solve
problems as Dodson (2000) suggested. These include Script Acting, Simulation, Role-
play, Improvisation and Mine.
2.1.1. Script Acting

As mentioned before in the previous section, this type of activity holds a lot of
advantages since it is, except for script choosing part, easy to conduct and large amount of
knowledge will be gained. One of the obstacle in practicing this method is vocabulary. It
is agreeable that scripts should be as easy as possible but that is still not going to make sure
that some learners would one hundred percent understand it. Another disadvantage of this
acting is it is quite time-consuming. An actual period of a speaking class varies from 30 to
45 minutes and a class with minimum number of above 15 students make it almost
impossible to accomplish both the practice part and acting part in one class. Provided that
the class is happened, it is going to take at least 3 class of 30 minutes (2 class of 45 minutes)
to exercise the lesson.
2.1.2. Simulation and Role- play
Its definition also mentioned before in the previous part. Similar to Script Acting, role-
play needed to be planned carefully and the role should be appropriate base on the level of
learners. One thing to notice is that although acting and role-playing share many similarity
but they are different in some aspects. Acting provides scripts for students to practice. As
a result, learners have a variety of ready vocabulary for them to practice. Role-playing, on
the other hand, forces students to use their own style of using language in that circumstance.
2.1.3. Improvisation
Improvisation in Dramatic Methods defined as an act of responding to a situation
without any scripts or rehearses. In order words, these situations are either spontaneous or
unexpected. This type usually accompanies with Role-play activity but be insured that
these two are slightly different due to the element of surprise Improvisation provides within

the materials of teaching which Role-play does not have. Improvisation does not need any
scripts but preparation in advance still a must in case there some new vocabularies or
structures. However, a difficult arises is that situations that teachers bring to the class must
be clearly stated and somehow provides the class with a dramatic plot twist as Dundar
(2012) suggested. The main purpose of applying this method in teaching speaking is to
promote students confident by showing off facial expression and gestures, however, some
students might feel shy and reluctant at first. In some case, improvisation could be
misunderstood as a fun game by students. Therefore, he also proposed that teachers should
call the activity as an “exercise” and ensure them that this kind of activity will not make
them lose face by making any mistakes.
2.1.4. Mime
Defined as “a non-verbal representation of an idea or story through gesture, bodily
movement and expression.” by Dougill (1987). The most suitable target for this type of
activity is those students belong to the learning style of bodily- kinesthetic. This type of
activity, however, seems limit to students who often positive react at a mime are usually
not willing to do mime. Another disadvantage is that, of course, mime does not produce
mush speech since it is clearly non-verbal based activity. This situation which we called
personal aspect makes it difficult for the activities to be conducted. Therefore, Mime might
not be considered as a sole teaching technique but as a short period activities.
In conclusion, most of the drama methods seems to focus on developing students
confident by strengthening their abilities of using grammatical structure, pronunciation and

vocabulary. Beside its efficiency, these activities also provide the speaking class with
enthusiastic lesson learning time accompany with the textbook exercise.
2.2. Topic-based methods
Topic- based tasks, without any doubt, are tasks selected by teachers in English as
Second Language teaching. Although the name might already suggest that this methods
involving in a specific topic, there are still many forms of this kind that were not utilized.
Those include Discussion, Prepared talks, Questionnaires and Presentation.
2.2.1. Discussion
Mentioned before in the terms explanation, Discussion associates with teaching
speaking for a long time. This can happen with almost any levels of English study. The
flexibility is what this activity brings to a speaking class, provided that the topic of
discussion is appropriate any interesting enough. As far as I concerned, this method is
applicable for students who are intrinsic motivated due to its nature of pushing students to
do brainstorm on their own. Furthermore, discussion creates an active atmosphere where
students could be easy to be drawn attention to the topic. It is, however, the active
atmosphere can act as cons due to the fact that sometimes debates could get a little intense
and teachers should be able to sense it while conducting a debate. Furthermore, this kind
of activity depends a lot on how interesting the topic is to make the class enthusiastic.
Teachers’ instruction and suggestion upon the topic also play a crucial role.
2.2.2. Prepared talks

This is also a common activity for speaking class. By preparing talks in advance,
students should be able to deliver their speech in the most natural stage. However, we
would like to suggest that this activity can accompany with other minor activities to work
its best feature. For instance, pictures can be used as topic, the class first discussing them
then withdraw their own topic and make a speech about it. Another example would be the
use of the activity “Things in common” suggested by Ur (2012). Provided that a topic
“What is your favorite hobbies?” is provided, students will be put in groups and make a
group prepared speech about their favorite hobbies. The benefit of this activity is the
simplicity but efficient it brings to teachers. This topic-based activity does not require much
materials except for the topic itself. However, in order for students to progress, teachers’
feedback is needed. The disadvantage of this is that, once again, this activity based upon a
specific topic, therefore, the topic must be prepared as careful as possible by teachers.
2.2.3. Questionnaires
These questions can be a helpful way to help the class become more interesting. For a
better performance, the topic used to conduct this type of activities should be free to choose
by students, as long as the topic is appropriate enough for the class. In this case, teacher
can act as a resource to help their students in designing their questions. The questions or
queries do not need to be long or complicated, sometimes simple questions easier for
answers to be collected. An example can be seen from Harmer’s examples of questionnaire
about films. The advantage of this activity is it also provides data to others subject such as
writing, discussion and prepared talks. Another benefit is the amount of speaking time
generated will be huge. The limit, however, lies in the amount of time needed to complete

such task. A total of 45 minutes might not be enough for conducting all parts from
collecting data, process the information and plan a speech.
2.2.4. Presentation
This approach is familiar with most students nowadays. For the more advanced English
class to progress, the need for formal presentation is expected. Presentations can be divided
into three types for the length of time of each types. This could be shown by Ur (2012) in
the “A Course in English Language Teaching”. This type can also accompany well with
question-and- answer sections or discussion.
3. Which methods are considered to be the most suitable for the students
at Saigon International University?
To answer this question, this research will have to look back at the questionnaire
handed to the students of 15DTA. The set of questions lie in the section 3. The research
began by trying to figure out which methods the students think they might enjoy
participating best.

This section started with the question of choices between Topic-based method and
Dramatic method. The section of the chart “An activity which provide clear objective so
that I can have a discussion process by myself” represents the Topic-based while the other
represents the Dramatic method. As the chart shown, majority of students agreed that group
activities should have taken more time than the activities with topic provided. Due to this
event, a next question was given out to make the matter more specific: Provided that a task-
based activity is given, how would you like the activity to be conducted? Samples of
participant is going to be viewed as this next chart.
Chart 4: Chart describing which methods students prefer
16 (76.2%)
5 (23.8%)
A pair or group based activity so that Ican interact with friends
An activity which provide clearobjective so that I can have adiscussion process by myself.

Upon the selection of using a task-based activities, to be more specific in this research
are the Drama method activities, a large number of students choose to have a game
conducted during their class time. In this situation, the activities of Simulation/ role-play
and Improvisation should become a prior. To be more specific, teachers can use
Simulation/ role-play as a warm-up game to start a lesson. For instance, a business meeting
would be perfect for a speaking class of how to manage a good meeting where students
take role of businessman and practice using phrases to express their ideas and present their
plans in front of the class. Furthermore, Improvisation can definitely help out to create a
game. The element of surprise is important since the purpose of using games here mostly
for more enthusiastic moment while learning to speak. For example, in the same speaking
class as the above, teacher has students to form groups which contain one leader and other
employees, then teacher addressed that he takes the role of a manager and demands an
urgent plan for a problem arises suddenly during the business meeting. Students then will
have to act out and use every idea they could come up with to solve the problems. Mime
3 (14.3%)
14 (66.7%)
4 ( 19%)
I would like to have a Simulation orRole-play activity. I would like it to be a game.
I would like it to be an outdoor activity.

can also be planned ahead to be a game. Mime easily remind people of the game words
guessing which students stand with back facing the board and guess whatever words
written on the board by looking at the class acting. The opposite activity can also be the
whole class guess words by looking at the acting of one student. Be noticed that Mime is
going to bring a relax atmosphere to the class but sometimes it can get a little too soft since
students would think that it is just a simple game as Dundar (2012) suggested. The solution
for this issue is to make this kind of game as brief as possible. Ten to fifteen minutes will
be appropriate. Script acting, however, is hard to be turn into games due to the fact that
learners will need time to prepare in advance. By prepare, the word means that a lot of
learn-by-heart task so the activity might not suitable for turning into games. A 14% of
students agreed that the class should contained activities such as Simulation/ Role-play.
This is easier than conducting game because the time limitation is lifted up. Teacher could
make use of the period to make an activity but in a larger scale. Due to the fact that in role
play and simulation activities, they will have a different role and do not have to speak for
themselves, which means they do not have to take the same responsibility as mentioned by
Kayi (2006). The groups of businessman may have an argument about what to do to
increase sale or how to fix the sale number dropping down on the board. In conclusion,
more activities of the task-based should be applied to make the class more interesting and
above demonstrations are examples of how to make use of such activities upon students
liking. This improvement can help students to participate more during the class and
motivate speech that more likely to be communicative. As Dodson (2000) suggested, by
using dramatic activities will encourage fluency, reading and discussing while also

contribute to the developing pronunciation, grammar structures, problem solving skill in
English.
Although the amount of the majority chose to have task-based activities, the method of
topic-based is still consider to be effective due to its simplicity. In the list of queries in the
questionnaire, a hypothetical situation was given as a topic-based activity given by teacher,
how students like the activity to be. The following pie chart describes the answer.
As the chart shown, the quarter of discussion in groups takes the most of the chart up
to 33.3% of the class. The number stays equal for both lesson that comes direct from the
textbook which needs practices and activities other than discussions as 28.6%. This
indicates that there must be a mixed type of topic-based activities around. A questionnaire
Chart 6: Chart describing which topic-based activities students prefer
6 (28.6%)
9 (33.3%)
6 (28.6%)
I want it to be a direct conversationbetween a student and teacher sothat I can present my ideas
I want it to be a discussion of groupsso that I will be able to hear othersideas
I want it to be an activity (debate,questionnaires,etc)

activities could be a good start. Students can choose freely a topic, come up with questions
and collect data. Then student can present their ideas in a presentation or a prepared talk.
The same pattern with different steps order can also be applied. Students can start with a
presentation to propose the topic of their choice then create a questionnaire, collect data
and prepare a speech about the findings. A discussion will be appropriate for a change.
Instead of having only answer-feedback class, teacher can organize a discussion over an
interesting topic. Some forms of discussion stated by Harmer (2010) can help to create a
fascinating speaking activity.
To sum it up, the above analyzed graphs demonstrate which type of activities the
research had chosen. Mixed activities are what be most considered since this is the advance
English class and able to use the target language with little difficulty. However, the
efficiency remains doubt due to the lacking of opportunity to apply and make record upon
the study.

Make English Speaking Pupils Interested at SIU

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