The impact of task-based instruction on improving students' speaking skill in the front office program at Vung Tau Tourism Vocational College: Master of TESOL

Abstract

TBI is one of the most innovative new approaches and it genuinely benefits learners in various ways. Through a thorough literature review, the previous research mainly focuses on researching TBI at primary, secondary, and some research on a university level. However, these research studies ignored the impacts of TBI implementation in improving the vocational learners’ speaking skills setting in Vietnam. For all these reasons, it is necessary to conduct this research to fill in the research gap mentioned. Control and experimental group data was collected from questionnaires, semi structured interviews, and pre-and post-oral tests. Oral tests were carried out to 30 students in the experimental group and 30 students in the control group, studying Hotel Front Office program at the Vung Tau Tourism College. Survey questionnaires with 12 items were delivered to the experimental group after each of 14 tasks. The interview was also conducted with 6 experimental group students. Data from the oral tests and questionnaires was computed quantitatively while data from interview was examined qualitatively. The T-tests proved there was not much discrepancy on mean scores between two groups before and even after the TBI treatment. However, learners' discourse management went far beyond the other three criteria within the experimental group and gained much progress compared to that of the control group. Besides, the experimental group learners expressed their satisfaction and interest in the tasks, especially the problem solving and real-world tasks in the treatment. Furthermore, they recognized that TBI tasks provided them more opportunities to practice speaking, promoted their accuracy, fluency, vocabulary and complex grammatical structures. Importantly, students believed TBI tasks and pair-work activities were practical for their future career as Hotel Front Office staff. The research findings may inspire teachers to modify textbooks' activities in line with TBI to create a motivating learning environment where learners actively take part in oral language practice and improve their speaking abilities.