The study focuses on teaching and learning spoken English of teachers and students in high schools. My specific objects of the study are class 11A3, 11A9, 12A6, 12A7 and 12A10

TABLE OF CONTENTS	 PAGE
1. INTRODUCTION	2
1.1 Reasons for choosing the topic	2
1.2 Purposes of the study	2
1.3 Objects of the study	2
1.4 Methods of the study	2
1.5 New points of the study compared with 	
previous ones.	3
2. CONTENS OF THE STUDY	4
2.1 Theoretical background	4
2.2 The reality of teaching English speaking skills	
in Ngoc Lac high school.	5
2.3 Some methods for the reality.	6
	2.3.1 Theoretical part	6
	1- Students’ motivation to participate	
 in a speaking lesson.	6
	2- Correcting students’ mistakes	7
	3- Types of communicative activities	8
	4- Advantages of pair work and group 	
work.	9
	5- The roles of a teacher in communicative 	
activities.	9
	2.3.2 Practical part	9
2.4 The effects of the study on educational activities.	13
3. CONCLUSION AND SOME PROPOSALS	15
3.1 Conclusion	15
3.2 Some proposals	15
4. REFERENCE MATERIALS	16
1. INTRODUCTION
REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC
At present, speaking a foreign language presents one of the essential requirements of today’s society. Besides other skills and knowledge, it is considered as one of most influencing factors while applying for a job or sustaining in a particular work position under the condition of advancing the language level. Based on my work experience, I can confirm that knowing a foreign language is necessary for everyone in general, mainly for my students of upper secondary school. These people are required to reach a sufficient level in a foreign language on order to pass the GCSE and take the entrance examination into university as well as have adequate capacity of communication in reality.
My main reason for choosing this topic for my study was realizing how important speaking is in everyday situations. No matter where we are in this dynamic world, English conversation plays a crucial role in understanding each other and dealing with different kinds of uncovered problems. It means that students not only need English for communication inside class but they need English to communicate with foreigners who they happen to meet and need help outside class. 
Being able to keep a fluent conversation with a native speaker is viewed as the main goal of my students, which underlines the importance of speaking skills in a student’s point of view. Therefore, in my study I decided to concentrate on communicative activities which might be helpful for English teachers and enhance their students’ communicative skills.
1.2 PURPOSES OF THE STUDY 
With the success of the study, it will help teachers have the following experiences:
How to motivate students to participate in a speaking lesson.
How to correct students’ mistakes effectively.
How to choose suitable speaking activities for different levels of high school students. 
1.3 OBJECTS OF THE STUDY
The study focuses on teaching and learning spoken English of teachers and students in high schools. My specific objects of the study are class 11a3, 11a9, 12a6, 12a7 and 12a10.
1.4 METHODS OF THE STUDY
I applied the following methods during my process of the study
Observing:
I attended different classes of my colleagues, observed and studied the lessons.
Practicing :
I myself gave some experimental lessons at five classes with the purposes of the study.
Exchanging and discussing :
After attending the classes, my colleagues and I often had some exchanges and discussions in order to draw experiences.
Investigating :
I made questions and designed worksheets for students to check their acquirement. 
1.5 NEW POINTS OF THE STUDY COMPARED WITH THE PREVIOUS ONES:
+ My study focuses on communicative activities which are not introduced or presented in speaking parts of English textbooks at school. They are mainly used in English optional periods when the teacher has more time to enhance students’ speaking skills beside the three main classes per week. Therefore, the teacher can freely choose the suitable activities for students’ level of each class without being forced to follow the tasks in textbooks which are sometimes boring and inappropriate to students. 
+ The communicative activities I introduce in my study are quite familiar to high school students. They are designed for real life situations such as interviews, negotiation, study, plans for future, discussion, social problems, shopping, etc which encourage students to participate in a speaking lesson and improve their communicative competence.
+ I deal with how to correct students’ mistakes effectively based on accuracy and fluency.
2. CONTENTS OF THE STUDY
2.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
	As we all know, the teaching of a foreign language in general and English in particular mainly focuses on four skills beside grammar. For upper-secondary students who are going to leave school and enter the dynamic and integrative world, speaking skills are becoming more and more important.
The ability to speak a foreign language, for most people, is synonymous with knowing that language because speak is for them the basic means of human communication. English learners no longer expect the traditional approach of their teachers based on developing mainly the grammatical competence and using methodology popular in the past. Today, teachers are expected to provide students with useful active knowledge of the foreign language, not just theory about language.
	Communicative approach focuses on balance between fluency and accuracy and is the most suitable for those students whose aim is to gain confidence in speaking and conversational abilities. Nevertheless, speaking in a foreign language has often been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills. “While listening and reading involve the ability to correctly receive messages and are therefore referred to as receptive skills, speaking and writing, on the other hand, involve language production and are referred to as productive skills”.(Harmer 1995)
	Producing spoken language has often meant a difficulty and an obstacle for English learners. There might arise a question why. The answer is obvious. In the natural spoken language students are required to be aware of characteristics of fluent speech, such as reduced forms, use of slang or idioms, fixed phrases, collocations and most importantly the pace of speech. All of these have to be taken into consideration while practicing conversation in class. Without these, our spoken language would sound bookish and unnatural. To avoid this, it is essential to introduce and practice “real” communication with our students within the learning process. If it is neglected, it may be a reason why students are often shocked and disappointed when using a foreign language for the first time while interacting in foreign environment. They have not been prepared for spontaneous communication and could not cope with all of its simultaneous demands [4].
2.2THE REALITY OF TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS IN NGOC LAC HIGH SCHOOL.
More than half of Ngoc Lac high school students are from ethnic minorities ( Muong, Thai, Dao, etc), they still use their dialects in daily speaking beside the national language, so learning another language is quite difficult for them, especially speaking it. In addition, the environment for students to practice speaking English outside class is rather limited. Therefore they arenot able to use English to communicate fluently with a foreigner, even with very simple sentences after studying at school for a long time. The fact is that the students and their teachers only focus on grammar and vocabulary to help them cope with tests and examinations, but ignore other skills, including speaking skills- one of the most important factors to master a language and the destination of learning it. That’s why many of my students, even the ones getting high results in the exam organized by Thanh Hoa Department of Education and Training, are just good at doing exercises in books, yet they are incapable of using it in real life. 
One of the main causes of this problem is that students are too shy to speak English. They are afraid of making mistakes and being laughed at because of their mispronunciation and incorrect grammar. Another reason is that teachers have no or few interesting activities to motivate or encourage students to speak in front of class. As a result, they find English lessons tedious and time-consuming. Furthermore, speaking as a communicative competence is not a compulsory part in any English exam at school as well as for GCSE or entrance examinations into university, so they often lack knowledge, experiences and skills in daily communication.
Here are my investigating results of the classes I am in charge of before applying my study:
CLASS
NUMBERS OF STUDENTS
EXCELLENT
ABOVE AVERAGE
AVERAGE
BELOW AVERAGE
WEAK
NUMBER
%
NUMBER
%
NUMBER
%
NUMBER
%
NUMBER
%
11A3
46
1
2.1
6
13
20
43.4
14
30.7
5
10.8
11A9
20
1
2.5
5
12.5
20
50
10
25
4
10
12A6
43
0
0
2
4.6
11
25.6
20
46.5
10
23.3
12A7
44
0
0
2
4.5
15
33.3
20
44.5
9
20
12A10
45
0
0
1
2.2
15
33.3
20
44.5
9
20
2.3 SOME METHODS FOR THE REALITY
2.3.1 THEORETICAL PART
1- STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION TO PARTICIPATE IN A SPEAKING LESSON
When students learn a foreign language, they often accumulate a lot of knowledge such as grammatical rules, lists of vocabulary items but then they find out that they cannot actually use this language to communicate when they want to. Scrivener claims that there seems to be some difficulties in moving language from passive knowledge into active usage. Without experiences in using the language, learners may tend to be nervous about trying to say things. Partly they may fear seeming foolish in front of others, they may worry about getting things wrong, they may want to avoid teacher’s comments or correction and so on. It takes quite a long time for some students to express themselves, which leads to long embarrassing pauses while learners are trying to find out how to say what they really want to say.
One of the best ways of helping learners to activate their knowledge is to put them in ‘safe’ situations in class where they are inspired and encouraged to try to speak a foreign language. Teachers should try to create such activities in which learners feel less worried about speaking and less under pressure [3].
Nevertheless, the teacher is not the only one whom the students’ success in speaking is based on. There are also motivational factors, differing from student to student, which influence his progress in the spoken language. Harmer distinguishes extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. He claims that students’ attitude to speaking the language may be affected by different factors from outside, such as people in close surroundings, previous speaking experience in a foreign language. All of these present extrinsic motivation. Although extrinsic motivation is nowadays a driving force for most students, without intrinsic motivation no goal in improving speaking skills could be achieved. Success is also based on students’ willingness to learn to speak a foreign language, which may be influenced by the teacher’s methods used in teaching communication and, above all, his or her personalities. Considering these, teachers should realize how important role they play in encouraging the students to learn to speak a foreign language [10].
Students’ personalities also play an important role in determining how quickly and correctly they will manage a speaking task. Those students who are risk-takers, unafraid of making mistakes, are general more talkative but usually make many errors. Those who are shy may take a long time to speak confidently, but when they finally manage it, their English contain fewer errors. The aim of both types of students is the same, indeed-to use the language correctly and fluently. To achieve this goal, the teachers should try as much as they can to break the silence in the classroom and get the students speak no matter how many mistakes they make or how long it takes them to produce sentences. In order to decrease shyness while speaking in front of the whole class, students may be offered the opportunity to work in groups or pairs, which is a suitable approach for enhancing the active language use.
2- CORRECTING STUDENTS’ MISTAKES
Considering a fluent activity, correcting the mistakes should be done after finishing this activity. Suggested techniques are the following:
Writing the sentences used during the activity on the board and discuss them with the whole class.
Writing incorrect sentences used during the activity on the board and encouraging the students to make correction.
Inventing and writing down the story that includes some errors the teacher overheard during the activity and the students try to find them and correct them.
Find out two lists A and B- each list contains ten sentences from the activity but some of them are correct, some of them are incorrect. Students work in two groups and their task is to decide if the sentences are correct or incorrect and why [2].
Accuracy activities:
	In an accuracy based activity the teacher is require to correct students’ mistakes whenever possible. While practicing accuracy, students become aware of their own mistakes in speaking straight away because the teacher does not wait until finishing the task. This approach is suitable while focusing on grammar mainly and enables the students to realize and correct their mistakes and also prevent their recurrence.
3- TYPES OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES
Communicative activities are dealt with a large number of methodology books and their classification is distinguished according to each author’s point of view. However, all of them mention the same or similar communicative tasks but in different extent. Supported by a sufficient amount of literature, I created the following categorization of prevailing communicative activities:
Role play:
A widely spread and one of the best communicative activities is a role play which trains the students in the classroom to deal with unpredictable real life conversation in an English speaking environment. It put students in situations in which they are required to use and develop language necessary in social relationship and help them to build up their social skills. Using role play is useful especially while teaching shy students. Through this activity they are put into various roles and no longer feel that their own personality is implicated. Role play is an essential communicative technique which develops fluency, promotes interaction in the classroom and increases motivation [11].
Guessing game:
Guessing game can be used as free activities for revision of vocabulary or as an interesting way to give quite controlled practice. They provide intensive language practice, especially in asking questions. Students are fond of these guessing tasks because they enjoy themselves without realizing they also practice and improve their speaking skills.
Information gaps:
The most common information gap activity is spotting the differences in the pictures, exchanging personal information, guessing game and also creating the story based on flashcards shown to the students in random order for a few second and one flashcard per group only. This makes the students cooperate and communicate with each other to find the lacking information.
Discussion :
Discussions are a commonly used activity in a speaking lesson. A topic is introduced to the students via a reading or a listening passage and then they are asked to discuss a related topic in order to come up with a solution or a response. Students need to be reminded that each person within a group should have a specific responsibility in the discussion- either keeping time, taking notes or reporting the result made by the group members [6].
4- ADVANTAGES OF PAIRWORK AND GROUPWORK
There are many reasons for pair and groupwork to be used in the lessons. First of all, they provide students with a lot more practice than working as a whole class. Students also feel more comfortable to speak to one or two people than the whole class and the teacher. Moreover, speaking to just a few people is closer to real life situation. Pair and group work allows each student to work at the pace of his or her small group or pair. The teacher is no more considered the only source of information but the students learn from each other. This creates opportunities for learners’ knowledge to be shared. In order to be successful, learners need to become accustomed to using English without the teacher’s permanent support. Therefore, working in pairs or groups helps them to build up their independence and confidence for further conversations.
5- THE ROLE OF A TEACHER IN COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES
The teacher is a facilitator of students’ learning and as such he has many roles to fulfill. The teacher is described as a manager of classroom activities. In this role, one of his major responsibilities is to set up activities that promote communication. During the communicative activities he acts as a consultant answering students’ questions, offers advice and provides necessary language items. One of the most important roles is to make sure that students know what they are supposed to practice and check if they do it effectively. These roles are called a conductor and a monitor. Although there is a great number of various activities which may be used in speaking lessons, their use would be confusing and pointless if they would not be logically organized. Being a good organizer should be an ability possessed by every skillful teacher [3].
2.3.2 PRACTICAL PART
Even though I have experienced with teaching many different levels, I decided to deal mainly with the intermediate level in the practical part of my study and focus on communicative activities that I have already practiced with my upper-secondary students. My aim is to describe the activities and help the majority of teachers that are desperate in searching for any communicative activities to encourage speaking and conversation in the class. 
Acting and guessing game
The teacher copies and cuts up one set of cards for each pair and puts the whole set face down on the table. One student takes a card from the top of the pile and performs his appearance and mood according to the depicted card. He must not show it to his partner who guesses what activity the student has been engaged in. if the student guesses correctly, he or she is allowed to keep the card.
The aim of this activity is to collect the most cards and practice the use of present perfect continuous in common daily situation.
For or against
Students form two groups- the first group supports the idea and the second group gives reasons against it. Then teacher introduces the topic which is the subject of a debate and allows the students some time to think about it and make notes as a group preparing arguments to “beat” the second group. When they are ready to start, the teacher pretends to be a moderator of a TV show and welcome both teams to a discussion on a given topic. When the debate is over, the moderator thanks all of the presenters for their interesting remarks. A very important rule is that students are allowed to advocate only the opinion given to them by the teacher even if their real thoughts are completely different.
Finding the right phone number
The teacher is supposed to copy enough task sheets for half of the class and information sheets for the rest of the class. Then he or she places the chairs around the room in pairs back to back and asks the students to sit on them holding different sheets.
The aim of this activity is for students with task sheet to complete their task in order. That means they have to phone the stationary student behind them beginning the conversation with: “Hello, is that the Lam Son Theatre?”. If they get the right number, their reply will be : “Yes, can I help you”. And t