Background
Language acquisition is the complex process of a teacher’s and a learner’s activity, which should function in accord and concurrence. Undoubtedly, during mastering the particular language, there arises a range of problems of different nature, which the potential foreign language speaker has to face and overcome alone or with the teacher’s help.
These problems emerge at different spheres of language acquisition process, one of which is profoundly analyzed in this paper. In particular, the latter is focused on oral activity of the foreign language learner, the difficulties he or she has to face during foreign language production.
As far as ‘language is for speaking’, not merely grammar and structure knowledge, it is highly desirable to develop the oral predisposition to foreign language at the first place. [Wharton Pepper, 2000]
There is a necessity to mention that oral language production, in comparison with written, for example, has peculiar features. Moreover, in case of mastering foreign language oral production, the process of learning would constitute not merely of ‘studying the language’ (considering language structure, grammar, etc).
To reach success in speaking foreign language, one has to take into consideration either personal psychological peculiarities. This is due to the fact that oral activity is never introspective, it is directly connected to contact with other people and immediate interaction.
Hence, while dealing with oral language production difficulties, foreign language teacher is obliged to take a reasonable range of aspects into consideration. In addition to general language knowledge, personal predispositions of a foreign language learner, a teacher should also ponder on such factors as nationality, age, social status, etc.
This study is built over one of the aspects which influence the language acquisition in terms of oral production. Thus, this paper is devoted to investigating the difficulties Asian students face at the English class while managing oral language production.
Further, on defining the nature of these difficulties, the research discusses the alternative strategies that a foreign language teacher may apply in order to motivate and encourage a student to speak English efficiently.
During analyzing the problems Asian students have while being engaged in speaking activity, the preliminary research should be conducted into the components which constitute Asian conscience, i.e. the culture of Asian peoples.
By Raymond Williams, culture encompasses the following elements:
- a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development;
- a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, group, or humanity in general;
- the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity. [Williams, 1976]
Stuart Hall defines culture as “the actual grounded terrain of practices, representations, languages and customs of any specific society”. [Hall, 1996]
These components accomplish essential influence on the model of the whole teaching-learning process, which creates the basic conception of education in general. Hence, in order to acquire deep understanding of the subject, the researcher makes and expedition into the Asian cultural peculiarities.
Firstly, the position of a teacher in Asian culture is utterly dominant over the student. The information a teacher provides is unquestionable and is frequently not subjected to discussion but represented mainly to be accepted and memorized.
This, through a long time, has developed the tradition of being patient and silent at the class, totally different from the policy of communicative learning procedure which is being widely applied in educational establishments.
Furthermore, the Asian culture is patriarchal; it is following the established hierarchy of society, which is defined according to the age and social status. Hence, a teacher as a person considerably older than a student is not likely to tolerate any contradiction or disrespect.
The fact that a teacher is a center of learning process reflects negatively on the students’ ability to perceive information and to operate knowledge as, for example, in language learning. Becoming fluent in foreign language requires constant participation and interaction, which is an unfamiliar practice for an Asian student.
In general, the thorough analyses of Asian societies indicate that the collective tradition constitutes the basis of Asian culture. Unlike individualistic societies, collective mentality prevents the change to occur, in particular considering the alterations in the methods and techniques of teaching foreign languages.
When applied synthetically, e.g. through the authority, the students would nonetheless accept the mode of learning process as violation of established norms. Hence, the education reform in learning foreign languages would not be accomplished without the change in society conscience.
Lastly, there is a cultural preconception, that foreign language contravenes national identity of a person and this prejudice, stemming already from the genetic level, is either the obstacle to acquiring fluency in foreign language.
Thus, considering the factors mentioned above, these are the main premises to inducing reluctance, reticence, and passive role of an Asian student in foreign language learning process. The considerable amount of observations states that Asian learners experience high anxiety level during foreign language speaking activity in class.
Hence, this study is going to investigate the motivation techniques and encouragement strategies in order to facilitate the acquisition of English speaking skills among Asian students. The paper will either consider the perception of the students concerning these strategies and discuss the most preferable ways of class structure that Asian students define.
Purpose of the Study
The aim of this study is to define the peculiarities of perception of motivation strategies and encouragement techniques of English speaking activity by 30 Asian foreign language learners at the University of Edinburg.
Moreover, the investigation is constructed to determine the differences in perceptions of the strategies by foreign language teacher and by Asian students, for the effect carried by the practice of these strategies may differ from the expected result.
Hence, the work has a purpose of developing understanding and awareness of the prerogatives of the students, which can consciously relate about reasons for their attitude to the techniques applied.
Naturally, the development of these strategies demands preliminary investigation into the difficulties the Asian speakers have during English learning process, particularly, the oral English language production. Thus, the strategies will be the reflection of students’ speaking difficulties and will have the purpose of inducing students to speak English freely and fluently.
The study aims not only at investigating the perception of the students towards the strategies applied, but also at conducting a research into preferable modes of studying. The research has a purpose to define the structure and activities of the class that the Asian English learners appreciate.
The conclusions are to serve a hint to development of effective methodology of working with Asian students. There is also a potential to define innovative ‘universal’ motivation strategies at the language class, which may foster foreign language acquisition.
Research Questions and Methodology
The research questions should be set in accordance with the purposes of the study, for only through the correctly constructed questions the purpose of the investigation will be realized. Hence, the research questions of this study are as follows:
- What are Asian EFL learners’ perceptions about speaking English in the classroom?
- What strategies did the teacher use to motivate and encourage Asian EFL learners to speak in English in the classroom?
- What teacher did in the mode of learning / classroom environment that could help Asian EFL learners to speak English freely in the classroom?
The research questions mentioned above are managed through the qualitative investigation approach, which includes a questionnaire and observation as the most effective methods of qualitative research in collecting data and analyzing it.
Lincoln and Guba “posit that trustworthiness of a research study is important to evaluating its worth.” [Lincoln and Guba, 1985] Trustworthiness involves establishing credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability.
Credibility states for “confidence in the ‘truth’ of the findings”, transferability “shows that the findings have applicability in other contexts”, dependability “showing that the findings are consistent and could be repeated”, and confirmability indicates “a degree of neutrality or the extent to which the findings of a study are shaped by the respondents and not researcher bias, motivation, or interest”. [Lincoln and Guba, 1985]
The complexity of carrying out qualitative research consists in following these four aspects that define the validity of the process and the outcomes of particular investigation. Constant attention to keeping these standards, naturally, requires effort and thoroughness from the side of a researcher.
Undoubtedly, as far as the subject of investigation is not the phenomenon that can be measured and analyzed purely quantitatively, the research results will have predispositions to higher degree of subjectivity.
However, the chosen methods enable to hold a complex multilateral research, for the researcher is able to manage the analyses through different angles of view simultaneously, which is very important for issues as language acquisition.
Denzin & Lincoln have a bright metaphor concerning the holistic way of perceiving the world in qualitative research, which does not tolerate single part analysis. Hence, the researcher is compared to a ‘brocoleur’ and the research that he/she carries out a ‘bricolage’ or a ‘montage’.
“The product of the interpretive bricoleur’s labor is a complex, quiltlike bricolage, a reflexive collage or montage – a set of fluid, interconnected images and representations. This interpretive structure is like a quilt, a performance text, a sequence of representations connecting the parts to the whole” [Denzin & Lincoln 2003].
One of the features of qualitative research is the simultaneous perception, due to the fact that the subject interpretation takes place in a “montage sequence not sequentially, or one at a time, but rather simultaneously” [Cook cited in Denzin and Lincoln 1994].
Indeed, qualitative research is conducted with the respects to variety of different factors, which may influence the variable considered, different points of view, that reflect the subject’s properties and may provide the wholly new outlook on the subject considered.
Thus, for carrying out credible and transferable research, it is vital to outline its design and structure. Hence, due to the fact that the subject of the paper is the perception of new strategies aimed at motivating oral English production by Asian students, the choice of the research method covers the methodology of qualitative investigation.
In particular, the research is based on the process of data collection and analyses through the proposed questionnaire.
The questionnaire was held among 30 Asian students at the University of Edinburg and aimed to investigate Asian EFL learners’ perceptions of speaking English in the classroom and the useful strategies the teacher applied to motivate and encourage Asian EFL learners to speak English more freely in the classroom. The questionnaire is designed in English language and constitutes 30 questions of different nature.
These questions consider students’ preferences and feelings towards English oral production activity in the classroom, the strategies and techniques used by the teacher in order to motivate and encourage Asian students to interaction. The questionnaire either contains some points about defining the most favorable mode of teaching-learning process during the class.
The questionnaire is based on the 5-scale questions, where there is a possibility to choose from the least (1) to the most (5). The lowest grade signifies total disagreement, while the highest indicates total agreement. The questionnaire is the main mean of data collection and for data calculating analyses the SPSS is used. Descriptive statistics, t test were used to analyze the data at p<.05 level.
The descriptive statistics in this study, such as years of learning English, English proficiency level, means and standard deviations were performed to summarize and analyze the obtained data to reveal the relationship between English proficiency and English speaking difficulties.
Second, to answer the research question 1 to 3, the researcher computed t test to explore the differences between English speaking motivation, difficulties and useful motivating strategies among the participants in different variables.
Rationale
In accordance with the stated research’s tasks and questions, the investigation aims at reaching several purposes, which constitute, namely, its importance. Generally, the latter may be analyzed according to the local and the global levels.
The first and the foremost value of the investigation is facilitating the process of English oral production by Asian students in the classroom. This, however, demands preliminary research into the problems and premises of language speaking difficulties, which should either be analyzed considering several aspects.
Further, the importance of the research lies in determining potential strategies (directed specifically towards Asian students) that the teacher may employ in order to encourage the students’ willing to speak the foreign language.
Moreover, the investigation questionnaire envisages the definition of the most preferable way of class structure, organization and activities so that the students can appear as creators of their own learning environment. The above mentioned value of the investigation may be considered the ‘local’ importance for it is focused on the particular Asian students group of a particular age.
Gradually making the value of the research broader, there is a potential to define the universal English speaking difficulties the representatives of Asian nation experience during mastering the foreign language. Further, on defining these barriers preventing an Asian to speak English fluently, there is a consequent need in developing the most effective teacher’s strategies of encouragement and motivation.
Personally, my professional development will be directly influenced by the process and the results of this investigation. During the research realization I would gain the experience of being a ‘qualitative researcher’. The latter conveys managing preliminary introspective work of the researcher him- or herself.
The researcher is a multicultural object and owns “peculiar history and research traditions, conceptions of self and the others, ethics and politics of research”. [Denzin and Lincoln, 1994] Denzin and Lincoln also stress the fact that “the researcher’s gaze is always filtered through the lenses of language, class, race, gender, and ethnicity”. [Denzin and Lincoln, 1994]
Therefore, it is highly important that the researcher was aware of all these factors influencing data collection, analyses, and conclusion in order to eliminate potential subjectivity hazard the research is subjected to. Due to this preliminary work, the researcher becomes able to observe how personal preconceptions influence the process of investigation and, on defining these factors, make the research more objective. [Holliday, 2007]
The above described experience shapes the personality of the researcher in a way that he/she becomes broad-minded, able to consider a wide range of variables simultaneously and define personal subjective factors influencing the research course. The development and formation of such personal traits contributes to professional gains for the whole investigation depends majorly on the figure of a researcher and his perception.
Furthermore, the results of the research constitute a value to a researcher for he/she is able to employ the strategies and techniques of motivation to speak English at the class with Asian student and him-/herself prove the conclusions of the investigation.
This investigation will be the step to further research construction, which is first and foremost focused on practical matter of fostering the fluent oral English production by Asian students.
Finally, the researcher may build up, as a result of questionnaire analyses, the class structure, which would most likely develop the ability of the students to interact in foreign language. The researcher may employ the latter practically.
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