Developing Speaking Skills Using Two Classroom Techniques: A Case Study of Non-English Major Second-Year Students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry

From the fact that students are often reluctant to spend time practicing speaking because oral English is not examined in the final exams for English 1, English 2, and English 3 at HUFI, the author believes that lecturers need to provide encouraging activities to boost the students’ speaking skill. The purposes of this research were to study and compare speaking skills of Non-English Major Second-Year students before and after using two classroom techniques, and to study the students’ attitude towards teaching English speaking skills using the three classroom techniques. The sample group is a English 2 class consisting of 42 students, 26 males and 16 females, classified by high, medium, and low according to their abilities of English speaking proficiency level. The author’s research tools were 4 units from Life Student’s Book Intermediate, an English-speaking ability test, and an attitude survey. The quantitative data were acquired from the speaking test and the students’ attitude towards English speaking class survey. The study's findings were quite positive. Firstly, 40 out of 42 students passed the speaking examination with marks from 3.5 marks to the maximum marks of 5. Secondly, data from the attitude questionnaire showed that students’ significant improvement in their enthusiasm for speaking English and their higher confidence in their English ability. Last but not least, the learners’ attitudes toward English speaking class using the three techniques were rated as satisfied. In the light of the study, it could be inferred that applying two techniques of telling story and drama – dialogue fully facilitate both the male and female students to develop their speaking skills in a more motivated way.