An investigation into the factors that hinder the participation of the second-year English-major students in English speaking lessons at Thuong Mai University

 of Linguistics and TESOL. 
Thuong Mai University is not the university 
which focuses on foreign language studies. The 
students’ academic results at entrance examination 
are pre-intermediate. The levels of English 
proficiency of the students of English faculty at 
Thuong Mai University are generally different. 
Most of the students come from rural areas with a 
little chance for speaking English. As a result, when 
they enter university, it is quite difficult for them to 
become confident in speaking English as expected. 
3.2. The Syllabus and Materials for Speaking 
skills
At Thuong Mai University, English majors have to 
study four skills in four years. Speaking syllabus is 
designed to help students develop English-speaking 
skill both accuracy and fluency. By the end of the 
course, the students would be able to communicate 
effectively in job-related situations and daily life, 
89KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
 DISCUSSION v
as well as establish, and maintain relationships 
with members of the target community. They will 
be able to present their ideas about personal and 
social issues in English. The main topics include 
society, economics, education, healthy, money and 
technology. 
Teaching and learning speaking skills, a 
compulsory subject of that program, is integrated 
with that of other skills in one textbook, The 
Business Intermediate, which is taught in four 
courses in four semesters and accounts for 8 credits. 
It means that there is no separated speaking skill 
textbook or syllabus for English-majored students. 
The book is laid out with plenty of authentic models 
of spoken language, and communicative activities 
to help students practice using the language in the 
classroom. Most importantly, there are many pair-
work and group-work activities in the book. The 
testing-assessment includes speaking assessment 
by class participation during the course of study 
and a presentation score without a final oral test.
In term of methodology, teachers usually use 
the communicative method of teaching. Moreover, 
students often play the key role in the lesson, being 
the main speakers. Teacher only acts as an advisor 
during communication activities. 
3.3. The objects
Teachers: They are 10 Vietnamese females aged 
from 28 to 50. Most of them are regarded as 
experienced teachers with at least 7 teaching years. 
All of them have got Master Degree in teaching 
English. Thus, they can be representatives for the 
foreign language teaching staff in Thuong Mai 
University.
Students: 175 second-year-students from 
the faculty of English in Thuong Mai University 
responded to the questionnaires. These students 
passed the National Enrollment Examination and 
most students took the entrance examination in 
English in 2017. Their levels varying from lower 
pre-intermediate to pre-intermediate are proven by 
the fact that they have studied English for at least 3 
years at high school and one year in the university 
as well as the results of their first year in university. 
The average size of their class varies from 30 to 40 
students. “The Business- Intermediate” is used as 
their textbooks. 
3.4. Data collection instruments
Questionnaire
The factor analysis revealed included 
affective-related problems, socially-related, 
instructor- related problems, educational system 
and facility-related problem and linguistically- 
related problems.
The questionnaire (both instructors’ and 
students’ versions) involves 35 speaking problems. 
All the statements of which were oriented on a 
Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) 
to 5 (strongly agree). To ensure the validity and 
reliability of the questionnaire, the following steps 
were taken: 
1. Before the study began, 20 second-year 
students and ten instructors sat a semi-structured 
interview. The questions of the semi-structured 
interview were utilized after they were approved 
by two experts in the field. The reason behind 
this was to make sure that all the problems which 
students and their English instructors might 
face in speaking classes were included in the 
questionnaire, the main items of which were to be 
drawn from the interviews. 
2. The questionnaire hence constructed was 
piloted with 73 students. To further ensure the 
validity of the questionnaire, exploratory factor 
analysis was run. Since the results of the factor 
analyses indicated that some of the items correlated 
poorly with others, nine of the items with low anti-
image correlation were omitted from the 41-item 
speaking skills problems questionnaire and three 
new items were added (i.e. My instructors do not 
90 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
v DISCUSSION
teach us how to express appropriate speech acts; 
My instructors do not tell us what to do when we 
cannot find the correct and appropriate word, 
structure and sentence during our speaking; 
and there is no cooperation spirit among my 
classmates in my speaking classes) were added. 
Thus, the questionnaire was finally based on 35 
items. Then, it was validated and factor analyzed 
for the second time with 175 students, and the 
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling 
adequacy and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity were 
calculated, the results of which are summarized 
in the following table which shows an acceptable 
KMO index (0.58). 
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. .580
Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity Approx. Chi-Square 218.342
Df 153
Sig. .000
3. The reliability of the questionnaire was also 
calculated using Cronbach’s Alpha, which shows 
that the questionnaire possessed an acceptable 
internal consistency (α = 0.72) 
Semi-structured interview 
To maximize the validity of the data, to make 
the findings more generalizable and to have a more 
in-depth analysis of the participants’ speaking 
skills problems, the data collection procedure 
was triangulated. That is, 30 students and ten 
instructors, selected from among the participants 
of the study based on stratified random sampling, 
also sat a semi-structured interview in addition to 
filling out the questionnaire. 
3.5. Data analysis 
Quantitative analysis 
Descriptive statistics (means and standard 
deviations) was applied to address the first research 
questions. Then to see if there is any statistically 
significant influence of the five factors on speaking 
skill problems, a one-way ANOVA was employed. 
Qualitative analysis 
The participants’ responses to the interview 
questions were audio-recorded and transcribed. 
Then, the common patterns and recurring themes 
of the responses were identified, coded, using 
SPSS20 and were subjected to frequency analysis. 
Finally, both the qualitative and quantitative results 
of the study were analyzed and discussed.
4. FINDINGS
Factors that hinder students’ participation in 
speaking activities
- Linguistically-related problems: LRP
- Educational system and facility-related 
problems: ERP
- Affective-related problems: ARP
- Socially-related problems: SRP
- Instructor–related problems: IRP
Model Summaryb
Model R R 
Square
Adjusted R 
Square
Std. Error of 
the Estimate
Durbin-
Watson
1 .873a .673 .729 .20721 1.927
a. Predictors: (Constant), LRP, ARP, SRP, IRP, ERP
b. Dependent Variable: SS
 5 variables LRP, ARP, SRP, IRP, ERP affect 
72.9% of students’ speaking ability; 27.1% due to 
random errors and other factors 
ANOVAa
Model Sum of 
Squares
df Mean 
Square
F Sig.
1
Regression 45.319 5 9.660 43.669 .000b
Residual 20.796 171 .083
Total 62.115 173
a. Dependent Variable: SS
b. Predictors: (Constant), LRP, ARP, SRP, IRP, ERP
 Significance F is 0.00 <0.05, so the linear 
regression model is consistent with the data set 
and can be used. 
91KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
 DISCUSSION v
Coefficientsa
Model Unstandardized 
Coefficients
Standardized 
Coefficients
t Sig. Collinearity 
Statistics
B Std. Error Beta TolerancF VIF
1
(Constant) -.185 .171 -1.079 .282
ARP 268 .026 .369 10.162 .000 .950 1.053
SRP 224 .025 .323 8.960 .000 .960 1.041
IRP 052 .024 .079 2.169 .031 .953 1.050
ERP 252 .027 .370 9.293 .000 .787 1.271
LRP 264 .026 .394 10.056 .000 .815 1.228
a. Dependent Variable: SS
Sig tests the regression coefficients of the 
independent variables are less than 0.05, so these 
independent variables are meant to explain the 
dependent variable, no variables are excluded 
from the model.
The VIF coefficients of the independent 
variables are less than 2 so there is no multi-
collinearity.
All regression coefficients are greater than 
zero. Thus, all the independent variables included 
in the regression analysis all work in the same 
direction on the dependent variable. Based on 
the magnitude of the standardized regression 
coefficient Beta, the order of magnitude of the 
strongest and weakest effects of the independent 
variables on the dependent variable HL is: LRP 
(0.394) > ERP (0.370) > ARP (0.369) > SRP 
(0.323)> IRP (0.079). Corresponding to:
Linguistically-related problems have the 
greatest impact on students’ participation in 
speaking activities.
Educational system and facility-related 
problems have the second highest impact on 
students’ participation in speaking activities 
Affective-related problems have the third 
highest impact on students’ participation in 
speaking activities 
Socially-related problems have the fourth 
greatest impact to students’ participation in 
speaking activities 
Instructor–related problems have the weakest 
impact on students’ participation in speaking 
activities 
5. DISCUSSION 
5.1. Affective-related problems
The first factor commonly shared by most students 
was “being afraid of making mistakes”.
Figure 1: Students’ fear of making mistakes in class
The above chart shows that 70% students feel 
afraid of making mistakes when they have to speak 
English in front of the class while only 10% has no 
fear of this. The fear of being wrong is so great 
that students would rather not answer questions 
at all than answer them incorrectly. According to 
the interview with the students who feel shy and 
unconfident, most of them answered that they were 
afraid of making mistakes and losing face before 
other students and they didn’t have the habit of 
speaking English in class because they used to focus 
entirely on grammar and written tests during their 
secondary and high school. This resulted in their 
low level of participation in speaking activities. 
Nevertheless, being afraid of making mistakes 
and anxiety which are two of the speaking skill 
92 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
v DISCUSSION
problems reported by the majority of the EFL 
students is in contrast with what the majority 
of the instructors reported. The bulk of the EFL 
instructors didn’t believe that the fear of making 
mistakes which the EFL students reported as their 
most-impeding psychological problem in speaking 
classes is among the most troublemaking factors 
which prevented students from making progress 
in speaking. It seems that the EFL instructors 
either are not aware of their students’ worry. When 
answering the researcher’s questions, one teacher 
said that she didn’t believe that it was the students’ 
problem because she always emphasized that the 
important thing was not they gave right or wrong 
answer, the most significant point was that they 
spoke out then they could make improvement, 
the aim of speaking lessons and that they learned 
from their mistakes. Moreover, all the teacher 
in the interview claimed that they always gave 
students higher speaking scores than they deserved 
whenever they volunteered to speak. In general, the 
afford of instructors seem not to be enough to help 
students get over their own fear of making mistakes.
In term of shyness and confidence in front of the 
public, when taking part in speaking activities, just 
more than a fifth (20%) are shy and uncomfortable 
of the attention that their speech attracted. The 
results of the study showed that the second-year 
students are not very concerned with making a 
speech in public. This might be justified by the 
interview with students that because the second-
year students have been fully acquainted with 
the new academic context in which they have to 
deliver many presentations and share ideas in front 
of the whole class since they entered university. In 
addition, most of them (90%) disagree that “some 
of my classmates speak very effectively, but I 
cannot. This demotivates me”. According to the 
interview, most of students are at the same level of 
English speaking and they know each other well 
after one year learning in the same department. 
Therefore, there are not many reasons for being 
shy of speaking.
In contrast, almost half of instructors believe 
that psychological factors were also among the 
most troublemaking factors which prevented 
students from making progress in speaking. Their 
students seemed to be shy when they had to stand 
up, the whole class was looking at them and they 
became the center of the class. Some teachers 
noticed that their students seemed to feel better 
when they were sharing their ideas while sitting. 
In general, the results revealed that there 
was a significant difference between students’ 
perceptions of speaking problems and those of 
their English instructors in term of affective-
related problems.
5.2. Socially- related problems
The only socially-related problem of 91% students 
is the difficulty in finding the opportunity to 
practice English outside the classroom. In the 
context of Vietnam, the problem should be 
even more serious, as EFL students cannot find 
opportunities to have direct contact with native 
speakers of English or they are too shy to talk 
to a strange foreigner they can meet on the way. 
In the interview, an individual participant also 
mentioned: “I cannot find a partner with whom 
I can practice my speaking skills outside class. 
More importantly, I cannot find anyone who can 
help me improve my speaking” Thus, encouraging 
students to hold debate and discussion sessions 
outside the classroom could be facilitative in the 
EFL contexts where students have less opportunity 
to practice their speaking.
In discussion about the support from the leaders 
of the university, 100% teachers complained that 
there were no funds for activities or programs 
outside class time to help the students improve 
their English. It was said that there was a need to 
have an effective educational playground for the 
students with useful activities outside class time, 
such as English clubs, English speaking contests 
and English music festivals. To make the activities