Nguyễn Vũ Minh Hải-15950005

Topic: A study on the attitudes of FFL-UTE students towards group work for
oral presentation

Literature review:

1. The importance of attitudes

There are different factors that affect the learning process such as motivation,
attitudes, anxiety, learning achievements, intelligence, age, personalities and so on in
learning foreign languages (Shams, 2008). D. O. Fakeye (2010) also showed that researchers
have stressed the importance of developing favourable attitudes as a means of enhancing
performance in the learning of second language like English.

There are a range of definitions of Attitude. According to Abidin, Pour- Mohammadi,

and Alzwari (2012), attitude was the psychological construct that decided a specific
behavior. To Brown (2001), attitude was described by a large amount of emotional
involvement such as feelings, self, relationships in the community. Thus, studying on
students’ attitude toward pedagogical matters is very important. For example, Weinburgh
(1998) contributed that attitudes toward learning influenced learners’ behaviors such as
choosing and reading books, speaking or listening in a foreign language. Generally, it is
believed that if learners have positive attitudes toward doing something, they will tend to
do that well than the others who have negative attitudes. In the research of Eshghinejad
(2016), She mentioned three were three dimensions of attitude: behavioral, cognitive, and
emotional. She said “these three attitudinal aspects are based on the three theoretical
approaches of behaviorism, cognitivism, and humanism, respectively.”
The behavioral aspect of attitude (BAA) deals with the way one behaves and reacts in
particular situations.
Cognitive aspect of attitude (CAA) relates to the beliefs of the students about the
knowledge they get as well as their understanding in their learning.
For the emotional attitude (EAA), Feng and Chen (2009) suggested that “Learning
process is an emotional process. It is affected by different emotional factors. The teacher
and his students engage in various emotional activities in it and varied results of emotions
are yield.”

2. The role of group work

Badache (2011) defines that group work as an instruction method where learners of
different levels form small groups and work together towards a specific objective. Learners
take the responsibility of their own learning and of those in the group, so the success of one
member is a success of all members. So, often group work is used as a teaching tool to
enhance a students’ experience in group socialization and academic achievement (Kolb,
1984; Humphrey, 2014).
Nguyễn Vũ Minh Hải-15950005

3. The attitudes toward group work

Group work technique has also proven to affect students’ attitudes towards learning.
For example, Ibnian (2012) wanted to find out the effect of group work on developing 64
Jordanian non-English major university students’ attitudes towards learning English as a
foreign language. The survey revealed that group work technique was useful in developing
students’ attitudes towards learning English by allowing them to express their ideas and
opinions freely.

More evidence of students’ learning in group work was reported by Meteetham

(2001), in Thailand, who wanted to find out the development of students’ grammar and
competence as well as students’ attitudes towards group work using a test, classroom
observation, an interview and a journal. Results showed students receiving a high score in
the test after working in groups and all students reported having more positive attitudes
towards working in groups.

4. The meaning of oral presentation

Nowadays, oral presentation plays an important role in our lives. One especially
relevant part of language curriculum at universities is teaching students how to prepare,
organize and deliver successful oral presentations for professional purposes.(Slađana
Živković, PhD, 2014). Oral presentations provide “a rewarding and stimulating experience
both for teachers in developing facilitating skills and for students in training themselves to
have confident presentations in public“ (King, 2002).

It is the reason why many ESL students perceive these oral activities positively as an
opportunity for them to practice English, learn about the values promoted in English-
medium universities, and refine their presentation skills (ZappaHollman, 2007).

5. The significance of the study

This study will help readers find out what is the attitude of FFL – UTE students
towards group work? And whether attitude of group work has effect on the result of oral
presentation (their correlation)? If yes, how does it affect? This study also investigates
students’ attitude toward group work in three aspects of behavioral, cognitive, and
emotional; whether attitude of group work is good, the result of oral presentation will be
positive or vice versa.
Thanks to this study, teacher will have an overall view about the attitudes of
FFL-UTE students toward group work for oral presentation so that teacher can set
suitable targets about making group work in some subjects in order to meet students’
needs.