Instructions for ISPACS 2003 Camera-Ready Manuscript Journal of Research and Innovation in Language ISSN (Online): 2685-3906, ISSN (Print): 2685-0818 DOI: https://doi.org/10.31849/reila.v5i1.12276 Vol. 5, No. 1, April 2023, pp. 17-31 17 Enhancing EFL Vietnamese Students’ Communicative Competence through Selected Speaking Strategies Nguyen Huu Chanh School of Medicine, Viet Nam National University, Ho Chi Minh, Viet Nam nguyenhuuchanh06@gmail.com ARTICLE HISTORY Received : 2022-12-17 Revised : 2023-04-16 Accepted : 2023-04-24 KEYWORDS Communicative competence, EFL students Mixed-methods research Speaking strategies, Teaching speaking, ABSTRACT In Vietnamese tertiary education, there is a growing focus on enhancing students' speaking skills through the use of speaking strategies. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of different types of speaking strategies when employed in authentic settings. A mixed-methods research approach was employed, using a questionnaire and interview to collect data from 90 pre- intermediate undergraduate students at a local university. Random sampling was utilized with the support of SPSS version 20. Ten strategies were carefully designed to meet the requirements of tasks in the pre-, while-, and post- speaking phases, based on previous studies. The results showed that the use of these speaking strategies had a positive impact on EFL students' communicative competence, as evidenced by their scores and feedback. Moreover, teachers were found to be able to vary their speaking strategies according to the specific types of activities, with a particular strategy being implemented in a given class meeting. This research represents one of the first empirical studies investigating the roles of speaking strategies in improving students' communication skills and achieving learning autonomy in the Vietnamese tertiary education context. Furthermore, it is hoped that the findings will make significant contributions to the curriculum development of programs and to Target No.4: Quality Education, as defined by the United Nations, both in Vietnam and globally. Overall, this study highlights the importance of effective speaking strategies in EFL education and provides valuable insights for educators seeking to enhance their students' communicative competence. 1. Introduction With more and more attention to globalisation and localisation, the trend towards global integrationhas been one of the urgent requirements for each country and individual. To meet the demands, the ability to speak a language other than one's mother tongue is highly valued (Khamkhien, 2010; Alharbi, 2015; Mei & Masoumeh, 2017; Faez & Karas, 2019; Liao, 2009; Pabro-Maquidato, 2021) and English has been the top priority within a lot of international languages to be the most widely spoken and utilized in different sectors. English is used in many countries for trade, economy, science, technology, education, and culture, leading to an increasing number of English language user (Dawson et al., 2014). In many countries around the world, including Vietnam, English has become an official, second or foreign subject in the national education system alongside other subjects (Al-Tamimi, 2014). Many companies and multinational corporations, when recruiting employees, require English to ensure that their employees are capable of the general trend of the world. In order to assess language learning success to some extent, it is usually based on the ability to use words (Candilas, 2021; Chanh, 2021a; Do, 2021) and grammar through English speaking skills since if learners speak accurately and easily, the path to success in language learning will not be far away. Language learners find it challenging to communicate effectively at some points, which arises an issue that needs to be taken seriously (Dörnyei, 1997a, 1997b; Blau et al., 2002; Pabro-Maquidato, 2021). Many students, regardless of being long time exposed to English, sometimes are not able to speak English effectively. To improve the above scenarios, it was necessary to engage students’ interests and the changes in teaching activities by designing interactive tasks (Andrade, 2006; Shin, 2008; Angelini & GarcĆa- Carbonell, 2019; Sayuti et al., 2020; Styfanyshyn & Kalymon, 2020; Yusuf & Mabagits, 2020). Then, with an inspiring learning environment and great supports from teachers (Ma, 2012), students can demonstrate https://doi.org/10.31849/reila.v5i1.12276 mailto:nguyenhuuchanh06@gmail.com 18 their language proficiency confidently and to a wider audience in an inspiring learning environment with teacher support. (Van, 2021; Chau, 2021). Reality had proved that the difficulty in learning a foreign language is that students did not have enough necessary words in a discipline-based context (Chanh, 2021a, 2021b; Chau, 2021; Van et al., 2021). Students often intend to talk about well-trodden paths and avoid exploring some unfamiliar circumstances. In order to contribute to solving the above situation, the innovation of designing tasks, including innovation in creating motivation to students, was essential (Dawson et al., 2014; Romero et al., 2012; Kim & Shin, 2014; Sayuti et al., 2020; Singh & Han, 2010). One of them was changing tasks into interactive activities that contribute to students’ confidence and avoid root learning (Chen & Hwang, 2020; Chien et al., 2020). Within this thematic limit, some task-based activities in teaching English speaking skills had been suggested in the study. As stressed previously, tasks should be designed carefully and scientifically to attract the students’ attention; therefore, there was no question why the issue has been brought into the research field by some scholars all over the world. To begin with, a study by Salehi et al. (2015) is carried out among Iranian students in two levels of language proficiency. The criteria are based on three aspects, comprising the level of student autonomy, the ways they deal with difficulties in classroom settings, and students’ success in those situations. A survey is delivered to all participants to examine the types of speaking strategies they use and the level of autonomy they have during the lesson. The results showed that there was a lower rate in slow-performance students compared to high-performance ones. Moreover, the former group was less autonomous than the latter one. The findings showed the suggestions in curriculum revision to enhance students’ competence since the more communicative opportunities the students can take part in, the more effectively they can achieve. Then, Prabawa (2016) carries out a study to investigate students’ communicative competences in terms of their personalities. Students can lose their chances to perform their speaking capacity in class when they have low participation and low consequences of speaking skills. By using qualitative research, the results showed that the typical speaking strategies in Indonesia higher education, the ways that students could improve their speaking skills. Next, the research paper led by (Chien et al., 2020a) discovered the importance of authentic English scenarios caused language barriers to English students. The reason was that they did have many opportunities to be communicated and corrected by the others. The findings showed the positive aspects of this environment in terms of the motivation of English uses, the ability to speak the English language, the fewer worryings in interacting with other students. However, the thing was that the activities need to be designed to meet each context. Besides, in shedding the light on this issue, the authors of (Chien et al., 2020b) carried out investigations of the utility of flipped learning on improving the student’s speaking ability by carrying out the pretest/ posttest and quasi- experimental design in 72 students. The concepts mapping was applied in listening and speaking skills and they found that it greatly influenced the ability to use the English language and students then could limit their anxiety during the process. This way was also highly encouraged to build the students’ critical thinking. However, the study did not mention the specific procedures of some typical methods used in the speaking lessons. Moreover, a study by Sayyora (2021) investigates the speaking strategies in ESL and EFL contexts since the teaching and learning in speaking lessons do not pay much attention and there are still some potential issues to address. The results showed that the combination of teacher recommendations and the application of speaking strategies plays a key role in improving students’ communicative skills. This finding replaces the traditions of repeating drills and memorizing the conversations in the past speaking lessons. In general, these studies realise some typical examples of speaking strategies used for tertiary education which creates fundamental knowledge to the current study, but the application of speaking strategies in a Vietnamese context has not been clearly discovered and whether these speaking strategies are effective to help undergraduate students’ language proficiency in terms of task-based activities. These listed gaps intensify the significance of the current study which targets entailing students to be excellent users in the future. Supported and developed from formerly conducted studies of the same fields, the current one hopes to be appreciated as a considerable contribution. Previous studies show the necessity to utilize the useful tools to enhancing students’ language proficiency. In pre-speaking phase, Cho (2007) also mentions the great benefits when applying “chatting” regarding motivations in EFL context. Also, in the study by Pratiwi & Ayu (2020), “Describing a picture” was utilized to improve speaking capacity. The results from the data showed the great achievement in their overall score. Barnard et al. (2003) conducted a study about the usage of “Matching” through pictures and words. A model was established to show the effectiveness of the strategy. The current study also employed “Jigsaw” since the great number of previous studies mentioned the usefulness of this strategy in English language learning. One of the typical papers was Mengduo & 19 Xiaoling (2010) who proved the effectiveness of using “Jigsaw” in a specific task to improve student’s competence. The strategy works well when it is applied in EFL context to encourage students’ attendance ad enthusiasm. In the while-speaking phase, Shah et al. (2022) offer “interviewing” as an enjoyable way when it comes to one’s behaviour and have some implications to understand the purpose of context more effectively. Alabsi (2016) mentioned the use of “role-play” in vocabulary enhancement. The participants are Saudi learners who get problems with vocabulary memory. The results reveal that this strategy really encourage students to learn vocabulary in real-life situations. Kalantari & Hashemian (2016) had a study about “story-telling” which is totally applied in the while- and post-speaking phase. The reason why this strategy is utilized in two stages since it shows different functions in each context. “Story- telling” focuses on fluency in the while-speaking phase while it concentrates on accuracy in post- speaking. The study focuses on enhance the vocabulary’s use by investigating 134 upper-beginner participants into an experimental and controlled group. The results showed that this strategy is good to apply in EFL context with the great improvements in an experimental group. In the post-speaking phase, Najarzadegan, et al. (2017) carried out a study about application of speeches as a strategy in language learning. The Chinese students were examined in terms of multicultural interaction through oral communication. The results show strong evidence that “speeches” should be applied in EFL context. Another speaking strategy offered by Hidayat & Krismanti (2022) is picture narrating which aims to improve students’ error in a speaking lesson. With the use of qualitative and quantitative research, the study investigated 33 participants to make a story based on a number of pictures. The findings show the effectiveness of using this strategy and the common errors that they usually make in oral communication. Those ten strategies were utilized in the current study to investigate the effectiveness of their applications in EFL context. To fulfill the purpose of the study, the survey was seeking to answer the following research questions: 1) What kinds of speaking strategies were utilised in English speaking classroom? 2) How effective are the activities toward improving the learning environment? 3. Method 3.1 Research design and Participants This study employed a mixed-methods research design to investigate the use of speaking strategies in Vietnamese students' speaking lessons. The study was conducted at a university in Thu Duc City, where 90 pre-intermediate level students were selected using random sampling. The students were asked to participate in various speaking tasks designed by the teacher, with feedback collected through a questionnaire at the end of the class. The coursebook "Navigate" by Krantz & Norton, published by Oxford University Press, was used as the primary textbook due to its suitability for the Vietnamese context. A pilot study was conducted with 20 students to ensure the trustworthiness and reliability of the study. A prepared set of questions was used for the interviews, which were then revised based on feedback from the pilot study participants. Ten speaking strategies were employed during the pre-, while-, and post-speaking phases, based on previously published papers in the literature review. The speaking strategies used were: chatting, describing a picture, matching, jigsaw, interview, role-play, storytelling, picture narrating, and speeches. 3.2 Instruments Since the ultimate goal of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the activities that were applied in the authentic environments, it employed the descriptive qualitative approach by delivering questionnaire and interviewing participants based on the prepared set of questions which have been referenced from Strategy Inventory for Language Learning by Oxford (1990) After the class participation, students are asked to answer the questions based on the questionnaire and the interview section is implemented to obtain the data. Students had an opportunity to express their ideas about those activities. For the latter, data was calculated to show the scores students achieved after the lesson, the most noted feature students paid attention and the type of activities they felt the most interesting. Besides, based on the previously published papers in the Literature Review, ten speaking strategies were chosen and employed in the pre- speaking phase (chatting, describing a picture, matching, jigsaw), while-speaking phase (interview, role-play, storytelling), and post-speaking phase (storytelling, picture narrating, speeches). The storytelling was used in the while and post, but the focus was different, one in fluency and the other in accuracy. 3.3 Data Analysis Procedures For the teachers, they prepared carefully the activities and then showed students how to do them. 90 students were grouped into three class meetings to ensure their availability time then gave their feedback about those tasks. Students will be put into experimental and controlled group, and then, the interviewing is started when all the lesson are provided. For the textbook, “Navigate” in pre- 20 intermediate level was prepared. Next, some speaking sections in the book were chosen to match with the types of activities since the study just illustrated the most obvious examples. Then, 10 strategies were utilised among the most frequent ones. The examples were also provided to show the possibility of applying those strategies to appropriate contexts. 4. Results The below part illustrated the results of conducting ten teaching strategies, comprising chatting, describing a picture, matching, jigsaw in the pre-speaking phase; interview, role-play, storytelling in the while-speaking phase; and storytelling, picture narrating, speeches in the post-speaking phase. chatting, describing a picture, matching, jigsaw, interview, role-play, storytelling, picture narrating, and speeches. 4.1 Pre-speaking phase In the first phase, teachers check students’ understanding of the learned topic by preparing carefully a set of vocabulary and grammar points to present. The more exciting and thoughtful the preparation phase has, the better the next phase will go. Here are some typical activities for the pre- speaking phase. As illustrated, students paid more attention to the task design in Jigsaw and Chatting, images in Matching, and interests in Describing a picture. Therefore, language teachers should concentrate on these features so that they achieve the learning outcomes. Figure 4. 1: The distribution of students’ interests in the pre-speaking phase As stated in the above figure, participants’ interest focuses the design the most when it comes to “Jigsaw” and “Chatting” strategy. “Images” is chosen by most of students in “Matching” strategy while “Describing a picture” should follow the interest. a) Chatting In this activity, teacher simply posed questions relevant to the topic so that the students can answer. For example, students were asked to activate the background knowledge about running and response to the teacher about their routines to help students recall the vocabulary and grammar points about the context. Before taking a look at the target book, the teacher showed the photo and author to provide more details. 21 Table 4.1 Chatting in the pre -speaking phase No. Questions Notes 1 Do you ever go running? Why/Why not? Asking students 2 Why do you think some people enjoy running? 3 Look at the photos. Do you know the author Haruki Murakami? Would you like to read the book? (Taken from Unit 1: 1.2 Free time) b) Describing a picture Teachers let students have a look at the picture and then students use their own words or phrases to describe. For example, the below activity required students to look at a man and a map to help students think about the scenario. Students might think that the map was the location of the man’s house or else as long as they could imagine the related situation to serve as first impressions in the learning process. Table 4.2 Describing a picture in the pre -speaking phase (Taken from Unit 6: 6.2 A long way home) c) Matching The assignment asked students to match the names with pictures, or words with their definitions. For example, the teacher introduced the lesson by showing 4 kinds of foods in Viet Nam, Austria, Britain and Morocco and their descriptions. The students’ task is to match the photos with appropriate definitions. Photo Description What can you see from the photo? From your imaginations, can you predict any connections in the topic “A long way home” with the photo? 22 Table 4.3. Matching in the pre-speaking phase (Taken from Unit 10: 10.1 A question of taste) d) Jigsaw In this activity, students were asked to look at some scrambled sentences, then students needed to arrange them in the correct order. From the data, it showed the benefits of developing logical thinking ability and creating their interests and help them understand the lesson longer. Table 4.4 Jigsaw in the pre -speaking phase No. Letters Sentences (Felix Baumgarther) 1 b He was born on 20th April 1969 2 d He grew up in Salzburg, Austria. 3 h He began skydiving when he was 16. 4 a In 1999, he set the world record for the highest jump from a building- Petronas Towers in Malaysia, then the world’s highest building. In 2003, he flew 23 miles across the English Channel. For this he wore special wings on his arms. 5 e It took him seven years to prepare for the space dive. 6 g He didn’t like wearing his space suit and needed the help of s psychologist. 7 c He didn’t sleep the night before his space dive. 8 f He married his girlfriend, Nicole Oetl, the year after the space dive. (Taken from Unit 3: 3.1- The man who fell to Earth) 4.2 While-speaking phase This phase creates opportunities to speak with controlled practice. Students can communicate with their peers about the topics suggested at the beginning. Students are supported with vocabulary and are provided with a collaborative environment and the opportunity to work with others, with varying degrees of formality. Here is also the stage to give students a bridge to real situations where they can present their views, role-play, tell stories, discuss, etc. Photo Description 1) Vietnam: sometimes not cooked but fried, filled with raw vegetables, herbs and noodles, severed with sour and sweet sauce. 2) Austria: chocolate cake, apricot jam, a nice bitter taste, served with thick cream. 3) Britain: baked in the oven, cut them in half and cover them with strawberry and put cream on top. 4) Morocco: a kind of stew, made with pieces of lamb with onions and spices, honey included, nicer with chilli sauce. 23 Figure 4.2. The distribution of students’ concern in the while-speaking As can be seen, participants concentrate on word usage in three strategies offered in the while-speaking phase. Besides, students also show the concern about “confidence” feature when they perform their speaking in classroom context. a) Interview In this activity, students were asked to interview to achieve the information. The stories are about two people, Ryu and Marta, telling a story about a recent experience. Students then interviewed their friends to guess about their stories. The number of participants were three to talk about these people by using suggested words .Table 5. Interview in the while-speaking phase (taken from Unit 3: 3.4 Telling and responding a story) b) Role-play In this activity, students have the opportunity to make a dialogue with role-playing activities. From the data, it showed the benefits of creating the opportunity to develop their creativity, contributing to social standards for children while they are still at school, building trust, ability to speak fluently in front of crowds. No. Questions Nam Long Mai 1 2 24 Table 4.6. Role play in the while -speaking phase Turns Sentences Notes R A: Hi there, we’ve got a room booked in the name of Rodriguez. Please could we check in? C B: Sorry, what was the name again? R A: Rodriguez … Carmen Rodriguez C Rodriguez … Carmen Rodriguez R Just a second, let me check. Yeah, yeah I’ve got the booking here, but I’m afraid you are a bit early. C B: Oh R A: The room’s not quite ready yet. Check-in’s at two o’clock C B: Oh, I see, so … R A: So er, could you come back around two and your room’ll be ready then. (taken from Unit 7: 7.4 Checking into a hotel) c) Story -telling (Focusing on fluency) In this activity, students will have the opportunity to present about how give reasons to sound polite and suggest another time instead. Those ideas were the ones in the previous sections or created on their own. From the data, it showed that students were skillful in developing a speech with an introduction, presentation of ideas, and an end. Table 4.7. Story telling in the while -speaking phase (taken from Unit 4: 4.4 Inviting and making arrangements) 4.3 Post-speaking phase If in the while-speaking phase, students are trained to have accuracy, then at this stage, students must focus on fluency. Students have opportunities to talk in their own to elaborate their ideas and share them to their friends. They are also encouraged to No. Topics Not es 1 You have a new flatmate. Invite him/her to the cinema this weekend. 2 You are on holiday in the USA and are staying with some friends for a week. Invite them out for dinner to say thank you for letting you stay. 3 A colleague from abroad is coming to your town on a business. You have not met him/her before. Invite him/her on a tour of the town. 4 It’s your birthday next week. Ask your classmate to come to your house for a party. 25 reflect on what they have done in the process of a speaking lesson Figure 4.3. The distribution of students’ score in the post- speaking For the students’ score, the students score “5-<7” prefer “picture narrating” in the post-speaking phase which is the same as those who are below 5. For students in “7-<8” range, the score focuses on speeches while “story-telling” is on “8-10” range a) Story telling In this activity, students became storytellers about a prepared story in advance. This activity was divided into 4 teams, each team presented a story. From the data, it showed that students increased confidence in communication and strengthened their English intellectual ability while presenting on an issue, helping them to deepen their thinking about an issue. Table 8. Story telling in the post -speaking phase (taken from Unit 3: 3.1 Past simple) b) Picture narrating In this activity, students were asked to talk about a type of job they would do in the future based on the practice in the while-speaking stage. From the data, it showed that students had a more general view of presenting a problem so that they can connect ideas with other sentences and paragraphs in the same context and created conditions for students to have time to practice speaking English. No. Question Answers 1. We are going to talk about James Cameron … 26 Table 4.9 Picture narrating in the post -speaking phase (people) (time) (scenery) (walking) (On a train) (objects) (convenience) (days off) (acquaintances) (taken from Unit 8: 8.4 Asking for clarification) c) Speeches In this activity, students worked in pairs, asked and answered in advance about the problems and solutions why animals were in danger. Students then presented to the class about these issues. From the data, it showed that students created conditions for students to practice reading for main ideas and skimming to find ideas for making reports and improved public speaking skills. Table 4.10. Speeches in the post -speaking phase Descriptions Notes I am going to talk about my future job… … … (Taken from Unit 12: 12.1 Working environment) 5. Discussion After having data collection and analysis, the study employed 10 teaching strategies, including chatting, describing a picture, matching, jigsaw in the pre-speaking; interview, role-play, storytelling in the while speaking; and storytelling, picture narrating, speeches in the post speaking. In fact, these strategies have greatly contributed to motivate students to enhance their speaking performance. Moreover, the result showed that students had difficulties in their communicative competences and it is important to find more solutions as stated in the studies of Blau, Hall, & Sparks (2002), Dörnyei, 1997a, 1997b; Pabro- Maquidato, 2021). Besides, students in speaking lessons fail to produce their sentences accurately and fluently. In this case, the usage of speaking strategies has become a predominant tool to enhance students’ communicative competence. The current study serves as a primary supplement to make students more interactive in the classroom as the previous published papers have addressed (Andrade, 2006; Angelini & 27 GarcĆa-Carbonell, 2019; Sayuti et al., 2020; Shin, 2008; Styfanyshyn & Kalymon, 2020; Yusuf & Mabagits, 2020). It is true from Ma (2012), Van (2021), and Chau (2021) that students’ achievements are obtained from the environment in combination of teacher’s support and one of the most important features is the speaking strategies in each speaking lesson. Specifically, in the pre-speaking phase, the results show the effectiveness of utilizing these strategies in EFL classroom which was similar to the previous findings of Cho (2007), Pratiwi & Ayu (2020), Barnard et al. (2003) and Mengduo & Xiaoling (2010). Especially, images and design were the two most interesting features that students concerned about. Hence, it is recommended that these two characteristics should be aware so that teachers could increase the quality of a speaking lesson. Besides, in the while-speaking phase, the result of current study agreed with the previous studies, including Shah et al. (2022), Alabsi (2016), Kalantari & Hashemian (2016), that the effectiveness of applying four speaking strategies. What is more, one point should be noted that the expression of ideas and word utility were the other two factors that affect the overall students’ performance. In other words, students agreed on the great contribution of all 10 teaching strategies in the whole process of a speaking lesson, but they still worried about the moments when they occasionally feel nervous with expressing ideas in their mind. This worrying put the researcher a motivation to have further study about how to improve the students’ performance. In addition, of 90 students investigated, the result showed the score range from 5 - 8 accounted for two-thirds of the overall score. This finding, in the post-speaking phase, is one of the new findings compared to Kalantari & Hashemian (2016), Najarzadegan, Dabaghi & Eslami-Rasekh (2017), and Hidayat & Krismanti (2022) and it conveys two main meanings. Firstly, it is accepted and recommended to utilise these teaching strategies in the learning environment since the highly positive feedback and results were expressed in the figures. Secondly, teachers can vary their teaching activities, from time to time, since one could be implemented in a particular class meeting. In addition, the results from the interview also showed some major findings from students’ perspectives about improve communicative competences. To begin with, the current study also found the same results from Chanh (2021a; 2021b), Chau (2021); Van et al. (2021) that many students have difficulties in specialized terms and referred to follows their own topics. They feel confident in their comfort zones which they can control their vocabulary and grammar effectively. Although they are able to produce more ideas with appropriate grammar, they still do not want to do that. This causes a lot of unseen resistance for language learners when they want to move further in language proficiency. Moreover, most students in the survey agreed that they worry about failure. In all phases of a speaking lesson, they worry about their mistakes when they produce words and sentences which causes the feeling of being shy to the teacher and other students. What is more, students usually think of the easiest way to handle over. They use simple words and simple structures in their talk and it was more convenient for them to come up with the speaking tasks. The problem is that the more they follow this mindset, the more they do not have any more progress in higher level of language proficiency. From these findings, the current study agrees with the previous studies from Singh & Han (2010), Romero et al. (2012); Dawson et al. (2014), Kim & Shin (2014), and Sayuti et al. (2020) that it is important to create interesting lessons so that students can perform their creativity and train their English language proficency. In addition, from the questionnaire, students were also asked about their perspectives to improve learning results, some students mentioned the way the teachers delivered the lesson, which means how the teachers explained the activities to them. Students thought that the points were really important because students could work individually and in groups effectively. “It would be better if teachers should explain the rules of the exercise and ask us to prepare at home.” or “Students should learn how to organise ideas logically beforehand”. or “I have no ideas about that since that was fine with me”. From those activities, students felt so nervous when they are required to stand in front of the class and present their opinions. This problem occurred here because of different reasons. Firstly, they were ashamed of other students in the class and most of whom were average and low-performance in speaking a foreign language. Secondly, speaking activities were usually done in pairs or groups, so the class was easily noisy and not concentrated. Thirdly, teachers did not cover all students, so some students took advantage of the opportunity to speak Vietnamese or work on their own. Finally, teachers could not detect and correct all errors of students with the large-class size and limited time. In order to conduct the speaking strategies more effective, the process of developing speaking skills requires careful preparation. This includes the suitable types of activities that take place before, during, and after a speaking lesson. Before performed in classes, it is necessary to determine what the required content should be communicated to the students, where to spend more time, how to best convey the ideas to the students, and the procedure of doing it so that students are able to understand fully and apply the target language. During the lesson, Vietnamese language teachers need to recognize and know how to handle arising situations, adjust their voices, and express topics clearly with vocabulary appropriate to students’ abilities. Gestures and facial expressions are also very important. What is more, speaking tasks can be 28 implemented individually or, in pairs or groups. In a pair-work activity, the teachers should keep clear explanations beforehand so that all the requirements are met then. In groupwork, the teachers need to set up the kick-off meeting and, at the same time, provide detailed guideline of the tasks to the groups. Therefore, the rules are also important and strictly followed. After the speaking lesson, teachers need to allow students to express their ideas about the lesson, explain any arising problems or confusion for students. Therefore, it requires teachers to have good pedagogical strategies, be proactive in creativity, and always improve practice strategies in many different forms, with many different types of exercises suitable for each lesson content to inspire excitement and encouragement all students to practice enthusiastically. Regarding the current social-cultural context, students are in need to develop and fulfil physically and mentally. Hence, speaking performance proceeds further steps in their career success (Alharbi, 2015; Faez & Karas, 2019; Khamkhien, 2010). Learning English today needs innovation to create fundamental conditions for students to gradually get used to and love a new language which was the same as the studies of Styfanyshyn & Kalymon (2020); Yusuf & Mabagits (2020); Angelini & GarcĆa-Carbonell (2019) and Pabro-Maquidato (2021). From the findings, students need to develop and fulfil themselves. In parallel with the efforts from the students, the integral responsibility of the teachers in classroom management becomes more and more important which was found similarly in Ma (2012). Moreover, the current study has also served as clear fundamental knowledge compared with findings from Salehi et al. (2015), Prabawa (2016), (Chien et al., 2020a, 2020b), and Sayyora (2021) in which the types of speaking strategies and their effectiveness into EFL classroom environments. The above task-based activities have made a positive contribution, creating a transformation for future generations, so they should be continuously encouraged to apply in an authentic environment. All these activities have their advantages and disadvantages, so depending on the conditions of each class, there should be appropriate task-based activities of teaching speaking skills. When applying the above task-based activities in the textbook to enhance students’ knowledge, students are able to improve their classroom interactions and intellectual development by taking part in and discussing the lesson to achieve the learning outcomes. These findings are significant because of satisfying the current needs: Students are required to achieve content knowledge and linguistic features as well. (Rose et al., 2019). Even in the teaching process, language teachers are able to enhance their teaching strategies to meet students’ needs and level (Van, 2021; Chau, 2021). Therefore, they would have more spirit of learning motivation by performing manipulations with activities that flexibly apply techniques to contribute to inspiration and passion for language learning. To sum up, the current study has already addressed the current issues in a speaking lesson which ten teaching strategies are useful ones to apply into classroom environment. These strategies can be changed in accordance with the context so that students can learn with their motivation. Although the study has been implemented with 90 students which quite ensures the minimum requirements for the overall results, the time constraint is also another problem. However, it is hoped to contribute a better way to improve English teaching and learning in Vietnamese and global contexts. 6. Conclusions By providing the speaking strategies and their effectiveness of applying them into EFL contexts, the current study has served as a primary supplement to help students to be fluent in communication skills in which they feel more motivation both in the controlled and uncontrolled settings. From the survey, the most important feature is that language teachers need to enhance students’ interests by delivering some mentioned task-based activities so that they are not so much under pressure when attending a language class. Besides, this study also augments students’ autonomy to be more responsible of their own learning. This leads to enhance independent learning skills to promote life-long learning in Target No.4. Quality Education of United Nations sustainable development goals. Students will have necessary skills to work in real-life situations in a Vietnamese and multicultural environment. 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