An ICT Tool Based Teaching-Learning Model Focuses on Improving English Speaking Skills Among Technology Students at Van Lang University

Abstract

Today English has been playing a crucial role in both daily life and work. People all over the world have learnt it as a foreign language to better their communication. However, teaching and learning English at university might not fully meet the demand because of lack of methodology, time and supporting tools. Teaching experience shows that technology students at Van Lang University (VLU) can read technical documents easily but hesitate to speak out due to low frequent practice and mistake embarrassment. They are afraid of making wrong pronunciation when speaking. In this paper, the authors present a self-designed model that helps students overcome their problems, then better their speaking and listening skills. In the model, students use ICT tool (named as ReadOut) to self-practice at home, store their own learnt vocabulary list; teachers can give exercises and tests, then track self-study progress of each student via the tool. The strong point of ReadOut is that based on speech recognition engine, the tool can point out which part of students’ speaking is incorrect that help themselves make pronunciation improvement. Initially, the research results concluded from the survey, by technology students at VLU, show that the model makes students be interested and helps them a lot on practicing and improving speaking skills, especially pronunciation.