UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICA DE SANTIAGO DE GUAYAQUIL
TUTORIAL WORK
FIRST TERM
SUBJECT:
RESEARCH METHODS
STUDENT:
GALO BARAHONA
PROFESSOR:
XIMENA JARRIN
SEMESTER A-2019
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Speaking is one of the skills teachers and students have to deal with inside the classroom
in order to develop it. Richards, Jack. (2002), says that the ability to speak a second
language well is a very complex task. Teachers have the duty to set up a classroom
culture of speaking and turn into talking classrooms to get confident speakers.
Unidad Educativa Particular “San José de Calasanz” is a religious high-school located
in Urdesa Norte in Guayaquil. This institution has been working for the community since
February 5th, 1993. Its mission is to deliver students with a meaningful and high quality
education with a responsibility for the society. There are twelve teachers, four of them
are involved in the English field. There are 187 students who belong to a medium
economic level and now they are receiving holistic formation to achieve academic quality.
It is well known for many people, the need and demand of learning English all over the
world. To cover this necessity, this subject has been taught at San José de Calasanz
since it was open. Nonetheless, the outcomes have not been the desired in the high
school section. Students of 2nd baccalaureate cannot convey their opinions when they
are asked to work on speaking activities.
In some way, this low performance could stand for students’ difficulties during the
learning process. There might be many reasons such as the school environment, their
social background, and others.
Consequently, if the institution’s expectation is to improve its academic goals, it is
imperative to notice what is happening inside the classroom.
JUSTIFICATION OF THE PROBLEM
Speaking is one of the most important skills in bilingual institutions. Teachers know how
important is this skill to communicate ideas among students. Although it is a complex
process teachers make an effort in order to avoid quietness in the classroom.
English has become a requirement in high schools through Ecuador and most institutions
require their students have a B1 English proficiency in English at the end of the school
period. This requirement states that baccalaureate students can communicate and
understand basic topics.
Students must be aware that English offers them a better education, opportunities to
study abroad and get high quality education from well-known universities such as Oxford
and Cambridge. In addition, English speakers can improve their world knowledge.
Participants who take part in this project is the English teacher who is in his middle
thirties and is currently studying English at a private university. He has three years under
his belt in the teaching English field (TEFL). The other participants are the 16 students
who are now in second baccalaureate of Unidad Educativa “San Jose de Calasanz”.
Among them there are 7 female students and 9 male students aged from 15 to 17. They
come from a middle class social status living in Urdesa (Guayaquil) and other northern
neighborhoods.
IMPROVING SPEAKING SKILLS IN SECOND BACCALAUREATE STUDENTS
RESEARCH QUESTION
Why do students find it difficult to develop speaking skills in the classroom?
GENERAL OBJECTIVE
To find out the reasons students find it hard to cope with speaking activities in English
classes.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
To focus on speaking skills among second baccalaureate students
To figure out how the classroom environment affect students.
Source:
http://ijreeonline.com/article-1-38-en.pdf
IMPROVING SPEAKING SKILLS IN SECOND BACCALAUREATE STUDENTS
INTRODUCTION
Speaking is essential in human communication. In our everyday life we speak more than
we write, and this is the reason why teachers have the huge responsibility to make
students communicate their thoughts, feelings and desires in English making the
classroom environment enjoyable and a lively place to be.
The purpose of this project is to understand why speaking is complex in students of
second baccalaureate at Unidad Educativa Particular “San Jose de Calasanz”. At this
stage in the research, speaking is the skill students need to improve in the classroom.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Students of 2nd baccalaureate at Unidad Educativa “San Jose de Calasanz” cannot
convey their opinions when they are asked to work on speaking activities. The low
achievement depicted might suggest the school environment, social background or
activities performed in the classroom.
OBJECTIVES
General objective
t To determine the reasons students of second baccalaureate find it hard to cope with
speaking activities in English classes.
Specific Objectives
To focus on speaking skills among second baccalaureate students
To figure out how the classroom environment affect students.
RESEARCH QUESTION
Why do students find it difficult to develop speaking skills in the classroom?
JUSTIFICATION OF THE PROBLEM
Speaking is one of the most important skills in bilingual institutions. Teachers know how
important is this skill to communicate ideas among students. Although it is a complex
process teachers make an effort in order to avoid quietness in the classroom.
English has become a requirement in high schools through Ecuador and most institutions
require their students have a B1 English proficiency in English at the end of the school
period. This requirement states that baccalaureate students can communicate and
understand basic topics. Students must be aware that English offers them a better
education, opportunities to study abroad and get high quality education from well-known
universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. In addition, English speakers can improve
their world knowledge.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
CONCEPTS IN SPEAKING SKILLS
Speaking is one of the four language skills. Its main point is that the speaker and the
listener should be able to understand each other. The speaker can produce sounds that
involve messages and the listener can receive, process, and respond the messages.
According to Byrne (1984) speaking is oral communication. It is a two ways process
between speaker and listener and involve productive and receptive skill of
understanding, while Huebner (1969) states that speaking is the main skill in
communication. Based on this idea it is understood that through speaking, someone can
communicate or express what she or he wants in order to understand one another.
Rivers (1978: 162) says through speaking someone can express her or his ideas,
emotions and reactions to another person or situation and influence other person.
Furthermore, someone can communicate or express what he or she wants from other
and response to another speaker. It means that in order to express someone’s ideas,
speaker must also attend the aspect of speaking, in order that the message is
understandable to the listener.
According to Brown (1987:2) in all communication or conversation two people are
exchanging information or they have a communication or conversation need. It means
that the reason for the people to communicate with other is in order to tell people
something, which they do not know, or to find something out from other people.
Johnson (1983: 18) refers to speaking as the ability to produce articulation, sounds or
words to express, to say, to show and to think about ideas, taught and feeling. Murica
(1978: 91) says speaking is the primary element of language and it can be developed
from the beginning when someone was born, from the first contact with the language.
Moreover, in speaking, there are some aspects that should be concerned. They are
fluency, accuracy (grammar and pronunciation) and comprehensibility. Fluency is the
flow with which sounds, syllable, words and phrases are joined together when speaking.
TYPES OF SPEAKING: CLASSIFICATION
Brown (2001: 250) says that much of our language teaching is devoted to instruction in
mastering English conversation.
He classifies the types of oral language as the figure below:
In monologues, when one speaker uses spoken language, as in speeches, lectures,
readings, and news broadcast, the listener must process long stretches of speech
without interruption-the stream of the speech will go on whether or not the hearer
understands. In planed, as it opposed to unplanned, monologue differs considerably in
their discourse structures.
While dialogues involve two or more speakers and can be subdivided into those
exchanges that promote social relationship (interpersonal) and those for which the
purpose is to convey proportional or factual information (transactional).
PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING SPEAKING
Spoken language input are often followed by various forms of oral production on the part
of the students Brown (2001:275)
Principle 1 Focus on both fluency and accuracy depending on your objective.
Make sure your tasks have a linguistic (language-based) objective, and seize the
opportunity to help students to perceive and use the building blocks of English.
Principle 2 Provide intrinsically motivating techniques.
Appeal to student’s ultimate goals and interests, to their need for knowledge, for status,
for achieving competence and autonomy. Help them to see how the activity will benefit
them.
Principle 3 Encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful context.
It takes energy and creativity to devise authentic contexts and meaningful interaction,
but with the help of a storehouse of teacher resource materials, it can be done.
Principle 4 Provide appropriate feedback and correction.
It is important that you take advantage of your knowledge of English to inject the kinds
of corrective feedback that are appropriate for the moment.
Principle 5 Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and listening.
The two skills can reinforce each other. Skills in producing language are often initiated
through comprehension.
Principle 6 Give students opportunities to initiate oral communication.
Part of oral communication competence is the ability to initiate conversations, to
nominate topics, to ask questions, to control conversations, and to change the subject.
Principle 7 Encourage the development of speaking strategies.
Speaking strategies
*asking for clarification (what?)
*asking someone to repeat something (pardon me?)
*using fillers (uh, I mean) to get time to process
*using conversation maintenance cues (uh-huh, right, yeah, OK, Hmm)
*getting someone’s attention (hey, say, so)
*paraphrasing for structures one can’t produce
*appealing for assistance from the interlocutor
*using formulaic expressions
*using mime and non-verbal expressions
Principles for teaching speaking skills
1. Focus on both fluency and accuracy
2. Provide intrinsically motivating techniques
3. Encourage the use of authentic language
4. Provide appropriate feedback and correction
5. Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and listening
6. Give students opportunities to initiate oral communication
7. Encourage the development of speaking strategies
ELEMENTS
Harmer (2001:269) says that the ability to speak fluently presupposes not only a
knowledge of language features but also the ability to process information and
language ‘on the spot’.
Language features
Among the elements necessary for spoken production (as opposed to the production
of practice examples in language drills, for example), are the following:
Connected speech: effective speakers of English need to be able not only to produce
the individual phonemes of English but also to use fluent ‘connected speech’. In
connected speech sounds are modified (assimilation), omitted (elision), added
(linking), or weakened (through contractions and stress patterning).
Expressive devices: native speakers of English change the pitch and stress of parts
of utterances, vary volume and speed, and show by other physical and non-verbal
(paralinguistic) means how they are feeling (especially in face to face interaction).
The use of these devices contributes to the ability to convey meanings. They allow
the extra expression of emotion and intensity. Students should be able to deploy at
least some of such suprasegmental features and devices in the same ability to
convey meanings. They allow the extra expression of emotion and intensity.
Lexis and grammar: spontaneous speech is marked by the use of a number of
common lexical phrases, especially in the performance of certain language functions.
Teachers should therefore supply a variety of phrases for different functions such as
agreeing or disagreeing, expressing surprise, shock, or approval.
Negotiation language: effective speaking benefits from the negotiatory language we
use to seek clarification and show the structure of what we are saying.
We often need to ‘ask for clarification’ when we are listening to someone else talk.
For students this is especially crucial. A useful thing teachers can do, therefore, is to
offer them phrases to practice the target language.
References:
https://vk.com/doc29847842_441563117?hash=412a9cf5ca245828be&dl=540f1e11928861d3
78
https://octovany.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/ok-teaching-by-principles-h-douglas-brown.pdf
https://media.neliti.com/media/publications/168587-EN-talking-chips-technique-to-teach-
speakin.pdf
https://www.sophia.org/tutorials/building-blocks-of-language-the-eight-parts-of-spe
https://studfiles.net/preview/3495592/page:5/
STATE OF ART
This part of the project is focused on how the spoken language is taught using the
discovery approach where students can notice salient patterns and try to make sense of
them and how these patterns must be practiced attaining automaticity and self-
regulation. Thornbury (2005) “How to teach speaking”.
According to Chaney (1998), speaking is “the process of building and sharing meaning
through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts” (Chaney,
1998, p. 13).
The discovery approach which is also called the Observe Hypothesize and Experiment
approach. This approach encourages learners to use an inductive reasoning to notice
and discover recurrent patterns or rules. The role of the teacher is to guide and provide
examples of a language item and help them find the rules themselves. The speaking
lesson goes through three stages:
Awareness raising (other-regulated – assisted/scaffolded)
Appropriation (other-regulated – assisted/scaffolded)
Automaticity (self-regulated – unassisted)
Awareness raising
The teacher starts by raising learners’ awareness. The starting point should be a
recorded spoken text: a conversation. The choice of the conversation is of paramount
importance.
Appropriation
Appropriation is the second stage in a speaking lesson. Scott Thornbury (2005: 63)
states that appropriation is the “act of taking over the ownership of something.” In line
with social constructivism, this stage is other regulated. Through collaborative work and
interaction, appropriation aims at self-regulation by the end of this stage. Instead of
controlled practice Scott Thornbury suggests practiced control activities such as drilling,
chants, memorizing scripts, task repetition, writing, reading aloud, and communicative
tasks.
Autonomy
It is the result of “the increased automaticity of the learner’s language production”. In fact,
the skill to automatize the more mechanical features of a task contributes to freeing
attention for higher-level activities. According to Scott Thornbury, the following features
characterize autonomy activities: productivity, purposefulness, interactivity, challenge,
safety, authenticity.
This stage includes activities such as presentations and talks, stories, jokes, and
anecdotes, drama, role play, simulations, discussions, debates, conversation and chat.
This stage is meant to give free vent for learners to use the language to carry out a task.
EFL learners should be aware that speaking is an important skill which requires a great
deal of knowledge in order to increase their fluency. Teachers should prepare
appropriate communication activities and obtain ways to help learners get rid of anxiety
creating an appropriate learning environment.
References:
https://vk.com/doc277688559_441727521?hash=bfd553ef1511015e58&dl=f99a3223c0e9232
41f
https://www.myenglishpages.com/blog/how-to-teach-speaking-using-a-discovery-approach/
METHODOLOGY
Why did you choose this methodology? Give referenced reasons.
The methodology chosen in this project is the communicative approach that according
to Jack C. Richards, a learner can develop communicative competence by: using
language for different purposes and functions; varying the use of language according to
the setting and participants; maintaining communication despite linguistic limitations
through the use of different strategies. This shift has had a considerable effect in
classroom materials, course books and the teachers’ role in the classroom influencing
the English language teaching and learning up to this day.
DATA GATHERING TOOLS
Qualitative gathering tools have been chosen since the instruments that are going to be
part in this project are: a survey, a focus group with students and participants, a register
of the second baccalaureate students and an observation checklist.
SAMPLE AND INDIVIDUALS STUDIED
This project involves the English teacher of second baccalaureate. He has two years of
experience in the field Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Other
participants are the 16 students that are now in the second baccalaureate. Among them
there are 9 female students and 7 students aged from 15 to 17.
THE ROLE OF THE RESEARCHER
According to (Creswell, 2007), the researcher’s role in qualitative research is critical, as
he or she collects data and implements analysis. The researcher must be involved in
the study as an observer and analyze the collected data from questionnaires to uncover
the concepts and their patterns being objective in his or her observations.
DATA REPORT AND ANALYSIS
A research project was implemented in Guayaquil, Ecuador for 2nd baccalaureate
students. I was concerned with the students` difficulties when trying to speak English.
The students were not able to be involved in certain activities for their literal prohibition.
I, as the teacher, had them fill out surveys to see how they progressed. They participated
in class with oral work. It was easier to interact with them after progressing with vocals
and certain accents. They eased into learning after demonstrating their lingual skills. I
could see they were happy and eager to learn. From there they advanced at a much
faster pace. After being properly taught not only did they advance but so did the academy
as a unit.
Most students seemed to be somewhat advanced whilst already knowing the
fundamentals of the English language. After speaking to colleagues in other departments
I was informed that they received better notes and even retained more information. Only
1 out of 16 students studied English before coming to San Jose de Calasanz. Comparing
her education to the rest they advanced rapidly. They now speak to others formally and
informally while coherently knowing the difference. All that has been taught is very
pertinent to their education and social skills.
CONCLUSION
Speaking is one of the skills teachers and students have to deal with inside the classroom
in order to develop it. Teachers have the duty to set up a classroom culture of speaking
and turn into talking classrooms to get confident speakers. They are continuing to receive
holistic formation to achieve a high academic performance. There is a need and demand
for learning English around the world. Due to this I taught various subjects in English to
the students of San José de Calasanz. English offers them a better opportunity to study
abroad and get high quality education from well-known universities. Low performance
could stand for students’ difficulties during the learning process. If the institution’s
expectation is to improve its academic goals, it is imperative to notice what is happening
inside the classroom and correct the errors taking place.
Sources:
https://www.whatiselt.com/single-post/2018/08/23/What-is-the-Communicative-Approach
https://alaworkshopdata.wordpress.com/data-collection-tools/
https://learningspacetoolkit.org/needs-assessment/data-gathering-tools-2/focus-
groups/index.html
https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/data-collection-tools/
