A study on group discussion and its impacts on speaking ability of the non-major students at the post-elementary level in Military Science Academy

1
A study on group discussion and its impacts on
speaking ability of the non-major students at the
post-elementary level in Military Science Academy

• By Pham Thanh Mai

2
Design of the study

• Chapter one Introduction
• Chapter two Literature review
• Chapter three Research design
• Chapter four Data analysis
• Chapter five Findings
• Chapter six Discussion and Conclusion

3
Scope of the study

• Quantity 16 students
• Target group Post Elementary Non-major
  English students in 4th year of Chinese
  Department at MSA
• Time 10 weeks
• Investigation
• Nature of group work
• Relationship between group work and individual
  presentation

4
Objectives of the study

• contribute more theory to the understandings of
  group discussion
• find out the essentials of group discussion
• provide the teachers with the basic framework
• provide students with more chances to interact
• build a stepping-stone to further study

5
Research questions

• What truly happens during group discussion in
  classroom?
• Do the students in pre-planning groups perform
  more accurately and better than those in
  unplanning groups in terms of tenses,
  subject-verb agreement and pronouncing morpheme-s
  in plurality?

6
Methods of the study

• Qualitative
• - Observation
• - Questionnaire
• Quantitative
• - Descriptive statistics

7
Subjects of the study

• 16 post-elementary non major students
• all of them learned English for 3 years at
  school
• None of them has ever been to an English speaking
  country
• they have little opportunity to use English
  outside the classroom
• age 21 24
• Sex male

8
Instrumentation

• Audio recording
• Questionnaire
• Observation note

9
The implementation of the study

• Time 10 weeks
• Total number of participants 16
• Number of participants in a group 4
• Number of groups 4
• ( 2 No planning groups 2 Pre-planning
  groups)
• Records All the group discussions and the
  individual presentations from No planning group
  Pre-planning group

10
Group Data Analysis

• Language Related Episodes
• Form-based LREs (F - LREs)
• Lexis-based LREs (L - LREs)
• Mechanics-based LREs (M - LREs)
• Leadership move

11
Individual Data Analysis

• Error - Free - Verb Forms (EFVF)
• - The percentage of accurately used verbs in
  terms of tense and subject-verb agreement is
  taken into account
• Error - Free - Noun Forms (EFNF)
• - The percentage of correct noun form is measured
  by the number of nouns used correctly in
  plurality by adding morpheme-s to the end of the
  word

12
Group Discussion Findings

• Language Related Episodes (LREs)
• Vary between 2 groups, among topics
• M-LREs are highest
• Turns in group talks
• no much difference in the number of turns among
  the participants
• Leadership moves
• - One or two students seem to be leaders in every
  talk

13
Individual Presentation Findings

• most of the participants in PTP group performed
  better and more accurately than those in NP group
  in terms of EFVF and EFNF (in terms of tense,
  subject verb agreement and pronouncing morpheme-s
  in plurality ).

14
Conclusions and Suggestions

• Group planning prior to individual presentations
  is really useful
• Group planning should be applied and encouraged
  in the classroom
• Further study
• Investigate in three areas fluency, complexity
  and accuracy.
• Find out other factors affect students speaking
  competence
• experiment in higher or mixed proficiency level
  students
• Include the subjects of both male and female in
  class

15
(No Transcript)