May 24, 2017 0 Comments latl Thinh’s University of Canterbury profile page Thinh’s research Thinh presents his research as a poster (transcript beneath video) Kia ora, Hi. My name’s Thinh If you are using technology and if you want to find out the result, this presentation may be very interesting for you. As you may know, high school teachers in Vietnam heavily focus on forms. As you may know, high school teachers in Vietnam heavily focus on forms and they spend a lot of time on grammar, reading comprehension and vocabularies, while they spend a little time on listening or oral skills. Outside the classroom, students don’t have a linguistic environment to practice their own English. As a result, their English level is very low in terms of speaking and listening, so I want to create a linguistic environment for them to practice. I used social media, especially Facebook and Skype. For Facebook, I uploaded the tasks and asked them to do. For example, for speaking I gave them the topic; they recorded their own voice and uploaded it online. For listening I put some recordings there and asked them to listen and answer some questions. For writing, I asked them to write a paragraph and upload it online so that other people could view and comment. For online meetings on Skype, I gave them feedback and I also gave them more questions for discussions. The results are quite amazing. Students’ listening scores in the post-test increased significantly compared to the pre-test, and, during the post-interview, students reported that they tried to practice listening by listening to the recording at least twice and answering my questions. Second, for speaking students became more fluent in their speaking – their speed rate increased, they used more variety of vocabulary, and they could say more within the same amount of time. For writing, the post-tests showed that they could write more within the same amount of time. They also used more diverse vocabulary and better structures, with more complex sentences. During the post-interview they reported that they were more willing to communicate in the online environment because they thought that nobody would see their face. Thank you very much for listening to my presentation
