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

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

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

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

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?

Methods of the study  Qualitative : - Observation - Questionnaire  Quantitative : - Descriptive statistics

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

Instrumentation  Audio – recording  Questionnaire  Observation note

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

Group Data Analysis Language Related Episodes  Form-based LREs (F - LREs)  Lexis-based LREs (L - LREs)  Mechanics-based LREs (M - LREs)  Leadership move

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

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

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 ).

 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 Conclusions and Suggestions