(SKKN 2022) SEVERAL MEASURES TAKEN TO IMPROVE THE STUDENTS’ RESULT OF ENGLISH SUBJECT IN THE GRADUATION EXAM AT THUONG XUAN 3 HIGH SCHOOL

1 Contents I PART A Introduction Rationale of the study English is one of the core subjects in the high school graduation exam, which has a direct influence on the results of the students Recently, the result of English subject in the graduation exam of Thanh Hoa in general and Thuong Xuan high school in particular has always been ranked in low position compared to other provinces Like other teachers, I’ve been wondering how to figure out effective teaching methods to improve the result as much as possible However, most of my students were afraid of this subject As a result, they only set the goal of “avoiding score1” when studying and taking the exam They always thought that this was a difficult subject becausetheir knowledge about it was limited, and it was impossible for them to master this language The form of multiple-choice exams more or less made them hope on luck rather than make effort to study As a teacher in charge of the whole 12thgrade in my school, I realized that I needed to help my students change their negative thinking and attitude towards the subject, thereby enhanced their interest in learning, and only by that way could I improve the quality of teaching and students’ learning outcomes Therefore,I always tried to explore, learn, innovate, and apply a lot of measures during the process of teaching, and draw out "Several measures taken to improve the students’ result of English subject in the graduation exam at Thuong Xuan High School” This is a combination of many steps, a whole process of flexibly applying all measures to get the best results, just being stuck in one step would affect the final result Aims and objectives of the study With the reasons above in my mind, the specific aims of the study accordingly are:  To present several measures to improve the results of English subject in the graduation exam for students at Thuong Xuan High School  To demonstrate the possitive results brought about by applying several measures in teaching and learning English for the graduation exam Objects of the study In this study, I intend to share with other teachers some practical experience in dealing with low-level students in mountainous schools like Thuong Xuan Methods of the study With reference to its characteristics, this study can be categorized as action research The following instruments are applied to collect data for this study: • Reading reference books, discussing with other teachers, applying in teaching, observing, and drawing out experiences 3 • Conducting mock tests and analyse the result Remarkable points of the study The study tends to help imrprove students’ score in the graduation examination Also, it will provide teachers with some experiences and mateirals to cater for their teaching II PART B DEVELOPMMENT 1.The situation before applying innovative experience Thuong Xuan High school is located in a moutainous area with students mostly from ethnic minority groups My school lacks English teacher with only people teaching 13 classes In addition, I was a new teacher at Thuong Xuan High school, tasked with teaching the entire 12th grade (5 classes) in the last school year At the beginning of the year, when I taught the students for the very first classes, I was worried because most of them lack the basic knowledge of English The average English score of those students in the high school entrance examination in 2018 was 3.22 and that in the first Mock test (December 2020) for the graduation exam was only 2.85 Most of the students were afraid of English, not ready to acquire knowledge, lazy to study old lessons and have almost no preparation for new lessons The English test was always an obstacle for them because of their poor vocabulary and grammar They determined that they only needed to avoid score to pass the exam, so they did not attach great importance to or focus on the subject Most of the students at my school belonged to ethnic minority group, whose economic conditions were still difficult After school, they had to help their parents with their housework, even some of them had to worry about earning extra income to cover their lives, so studying had not been a top priority The number of students taking the university entrance exam was small, most of them only aimed to pass graduation, the goal was not high, leading to a decreasein study motivation, and low results are inevitable Measures adopted to solve the problems 2.1 Identify characteristics of students and set appropriate goals - Bearing in mind the characteristics of the students in my school as mentioned above, I realized that I had to have a suitable goal and break down the goal for easy implementation If I set too demanding aim, it would put pressure on both the students and myself as well, and could be counterproductive - Therefore, I determined that I would not set goals too high and need to systematize knowledge step by step so that the students would not be overwhelmed 2.2 Determine the amount of required knowledge - Since their goals was the Graduation exam, I felt the need to narrow down the amount of required knowledge After comparing the Illustrating Test and the Official Test in recent years of the Ministry of Education and Training, I found that the knowledge tested in the official exam was very close to the Illustrating one so it would be the basis for orientation to teach the students 5 MATRIX OF ENGLISH ILLUSTRATING TEST 2022 Level Knowledge Question content RECOG NITION Grammar and vocabulary Word form x Tag question x Lexical item Preposition Lexical item x conjunctions x Adj order Phrasal verb x Tenses sequence x 10 Adverbial clause of time x 11 collocation x 12 Lexical item (15 questions) UNDERSTA NDING LOW -LEVEL APPLICAT ION x x x Level Knowledge Question content RECOG NITION 13 Passive voice x UNDERSTA NDING 14 x 15 comparision x Communicati ve exchanges 16 Communicative exchanges x (2 Questions) 17 communicative exchanges x 18 Stress x Phonetics 19 Stress x (4 Questions) 20 Pronunciation x 21 pronunciation x 22 Closest meaning x 23 Closest meaning x 24 Opposite meaning 25 từ trái nghĩa 26 inversion 27 Subjunctive mood CLOSEST &OPPOSITE MEANING SENTENCE COMBINATI ON (2 Questions) LOW -LEVEL APPLICAT ION x x x Level Knowledge Question content RECOG NITION ERROR IDENTIFICA TIO 28 WRONG tenses x 29 Wrong pronouns (3 Question) 30 Word choice 31 Modal verbs x sentences trannformatio n 32 Reported speech x (3 Question) 33 Past simple and present perfect transformation CLOSE GAP FILLING 34 Quantity words 35 Conjunctions x (5 Question) 36 Lexical item x 37 Relative pronoun 38 Lexical item 39 Main idea 40 Detailed information x 41 Detailed information x (khoảng 180200 từ, chủ đề chương trình học) READING COMPREHEN SIION (5 Question) (about 150 word reading passage) 42 Meaning guessing UNDERSTA NDING LOW -LEVEL APPLICAT ION x x x x x x x Level Knowledge 10 READING COMPREHEN SIION (5 Question) (about 150 word reading passage) Question content RECOG NITION 43 Refering x 44 Main idea 45 Detailed information 46 Meaning guessing x 47 Refering x 48 Meaning guessing 49 Detailed information 50 Infering UNDERSTA NDING LOW -LEVEL APPLICAT ION x x x 25 questions 50% 15 questions questions 30% 10% - After figuring out the amount of knowledge contained in the Illustrating Test, I realized that it was necessary to refine to teach the parts that were suitable for my students, not all 50 sentences in the test must be practiced, but we needed to focus on easily recognized structures, suitable for students with limited vocabulary such as: “ed” pronunciation, passive voice, tag questions, adverbial clauses of time.(SEE APPENDIX) 2.3 Prepare material, exercises, and tests sources for students to practice 9 Resources from books and the internet are extremely abundant, but compiling suitable materials required a lot of time and effort It was fortunate for me to have known and participated in the "Project of 30 Mock Tests" with the contribution of more than 80 enthusiastic teachers from schools all over the country The project divided editorial teams responsible for each question corresponding to the illustrated test Thanks to that, I had a great source of exercises that were focused and suitable for my students (see APPENDIX) We also shared the Mock Tests of different provinces all over the country, which provided a variety of test sources ao that our students could practice a lot 2.4 Integrate ICT in teaching and learning A considerable amount of literature has highlighted the benefits of ICT in language learning Darasawang and Reinders (2010) stated that an online language support system helps promote learner autonomy Another contributing factor of ICTs is motivation The blossoming of multimedia technology including visual aids, sounds, video clips, animations, and so on motivates learners, “attracts their attention and elevates their interest in learning” (Kuo, 2009, p.25) What is more, the Internet connection allows learners to gain access to a huge amount of authentic materials to make English learning more enjoyable (Dang, 2011) Hence, I always tried to integrate ICT in teaching so that my students would be interested in learning and paid more attention to the lesson + SHub Classroom SHub classroom is a useful platform where teachesr can create exercise sets and tests from available files With online classes on SHub Classroom,we not only can learn in the form of video lectures, Livestream but it also provides 10 Zoom software integration Learners will easily interact directly with teachers, receive timely answers, and reduce time in the learning process Application SHub Classroom Exercise solution was born to support teachers and students more conveniently in the process of teaching, reviewing and learning, teachers can post exercises here for students to use students can study and homework, if students are facing difficult problems and not know how to solve them, they can take photos and send them to SHub Classroom so that friends and other students can help solve the exercises Thanks to this application, my students could practice frequently, and I could observe their learning process easily List of classes on Shub classroom One of the tests that my students took + Quizizz 11 Last school year was one with many fluctuations during the Covid-19 pandemic I used Shub classroom software to give students more practices and also usedQuizizz to increase students' interest in learning Quizizz is a gamebased educational app, which brings multiplayer activities to classrooms and makes in-class exercises interactive and fun Using Quizizz, students can inclass exercises on their electronic devices Unlike other educational apps, Quizizz has game characteristics like avatars, themes, memes and music, which are entertaining in the learning process Quizizz also allows students to compete with each other and motivates them to study Students take the quiz at the same time in class and see their live ranking on the leaderboard Instructors can monitor the process and download the report when the quiz is finished to evaluate students’ performance Using this app in the accounting classroom helps stimulate students’ interest and improve students’ engagement Design and start a quiz (game): Quizzes can be designed in different formats like true or false, multiple choices, etc Instructors can choose to set the quizzes as public or private If the quizzes are public, they can be shared with other instructors In class, instructors can start a quiz by sharing a game code (generated by the website automatically) to students, students can enter the game code and join the game easily on their mobile devices Each student will see a unique avatar assigned to him/her when joining the game They usually start to get excited at that time Instructors can monitor students’ joining the game (with their names and avatars shown on the screen) and start the game when all the students have joined Instructors can customize the game in several ways, such as turning on (off) the background music; ranking based on correction rate only or both correction rate and time used for completing the quiz; ranking showing all the students or only the top five students; shuffle questions or not, etc Besides using it for in-class exercises, instructors can also set the quizzes as homework so that students can work on the questions on their mobile devices after class Doing a quiz (game): After answering each question, there is immediate feedback in the form of a meme shown on the screen Funny pictures pop up with sentences like “good job” if the answer is correct or “try again” if the answer is wrong Students are amused by the memes and feel relaxed and motivated to answer the next question One of the special characteristics about Quizizz is the leaderboard, which shows the live ranking of students based on their performance Students can see their live ranking throughout the quiz Finishing a quiz (game): instructors can end the game when all the students finish the quiz Students can review all the questions (with both their own answers and solutions) and ask questions Instructors can easily highlight important questions based on the correction rate and help students figure out where they need to improve The quiz reports are available on the website and can be downloaded as Excel files Google Classroom Integration: Quizizz can be integrated with Google Classroom This integration facilitates assignment 12 tracking and enhances student safety since they are authenticated using their school Google accounts (Medvedovska, Skarlupina, & Turchyna, 2016) + Plickers Plickers lets you poll your class for free, without the need for student devices Just give each student a card (a “paper clicker”), and use Android smartphone or tablet to scan them to instant checks-for-understanding, exit tickets, and impromptu polls Best of all, the data is automatically saved, student-by-student, at plickers.com My students were very excited to answer questions using plicker cards as they could see their name on screen and know the result immediatetly 13 2.5 Take care of students and encourage them to study, especially the low-level ones During the teaching process, I always paid close attention to each student For weak and low-level students, I always spent time with private tutoring, explaining the problem in the most understandable way, giving them more practice on the easy questions Timely detect difficulties and problems to help and encourage them to make effort + Provide questions from easy to difficult for students to answer to create excitement and strengthen their confidence + Regularly check their understanding during class 14 + Organize students to study in groups so that good students can help weak students improve + Pay attention to avoid disparaging, discriminatory attitudes that make them discouraged and ashamed in front of their friend  The effectiveness of the measures in teaching  On the students Directly teaching and monitoring the children's learning process, I have noticed obvious changes in their thoughts and actions The students were more excited with each lesson, and no longer afraid or chose answer randomly without reading questions as before They had clearly determined what their goals werein the test, and knew how to solve those exercises Quizziz application has made the class more exciting, students who had not been ready to participate before, when joining in activities, also responded enthusiastically and paid more attention to the lesson to be able to participate with their friends On the teachers: -Joining in the project with teachers from all over the coutry gave me precious opportunities to improve my knowlegde and teaching methods as well I also have a plentiful source of exercises and tests for students to practice regularly, which helped me save time to compile documents  On the school:  15 - Last year, the English average score in the graduation exam was higher than that of any year since my school was founded It couldn’t be denied that the result was thanks to the innovative of methods presented in this report Results and evidence of the improvement of students Average score 12A1 12A2 4,52 3,68 12A3 3,64 12A4 3,79 12A5 4,23 Overall Target score (assigned by Thanh Hoa Department of Education and training) 3,99 2,92 Official result of graduation exam in acedemic year 2020-2021 - Comparison of the average score of students in the High School entrance exam and that in the Graduation exam (the same students) - High School entrance exam (2018) Graduation exam (2021) 3.0 3,99 The average English score in the graduation exam at Thuong Xuan High School in the 2020-2021 school year ranked 67 out of almost 100 schools in Thanh Hoa (increased 23 levels compared to the previous school year) 2019 – 2020school year 2020-2021school year Average score 2,67 3,99 Rank 90 67 III Conclusion 16 It can be seen that the application of the above measures contributed to the significant improvement of the results in the national graduation examination 2021 of the students at Thuong Xuan High School The students partly changed their thinking and attitude towards learning English Thereby, the teachers who directly taught them like me also gained a lot of experience and lessons that can be applied to the following years The combination of those measures has made teaching and learning more exciting and effective Therefore, teachers should continuously study to learn more teaching methods and apply to the teaching work so that each lesson would be more exciting and effective Besides,teachers should take care and pay attention to students of all levels to satisfy their needs in time.Teachers also need to study from various sources to gain more knowledge and to adapt with the constant changes in education nowadays and always take students as the priority, try their best for the sake of students Signature of Principle Thanh Hoa, May 18th, 2022 Hereby, I certify that this study is the result of my own experience and has not been submitted by any other Writer Trần Thị Thu Hiền 17 REFERENCES [1]Dang, X T (2011) Factors influencing teachers’ use of ICT in language teaching: a case study of Hanoi University, Vietnam The 4th edition of the ICT for Language Learning Conference Retrieved April 27, 2014 from http://www.conference.pixel-online.net [2]Darasawang, P., & Reinders, H (2010) Encouraging autonomy with an online language support system Computer-Assisted Language Learning – Electronic Journal, 11(2) Retrieved April 10, 2014 from http://callej.org/journal/11-2/darasawang_reinders.html [3] “"Dự án giáo viên Tiếng Anh, (2022) Tuyển tập đề thi thử TNTHPT 2022" [4]Kuo, L L (2009) The effects of Youtube listening/viewing activities on Taiwanese EFL learners’ listening comprehension Doctoral dissertation, La Sierra University, the USA Retrieved January 4, 2014 from http://www.proquest.com  ... the results in the national graduation examination 2021 of the students at Thuong Xuan High School The students partly changed their thinking and attitude towards learning English Thereby, the. .. Comparison of the average score of students in the High School entrance exam and that in the Graduation exam (the same students) - High School entrance exam (2018) Graduation exam (2021) 3. 0 3, 99 The. .. A Introduction Rationale of the study English is one of the core subjects in the high school graduation exam, which has a direct influence on the results of the students Recently, the result of