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A study on group discussion
and its impacts on speaking
ability of the non-major
students at the postelementary level in Military
Science Academy
By Pham Thanh Mai
Design of the study
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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 4th 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
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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 ).
Conclusions and Suggestions
 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