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Tiêu đề Improving Grade 10th Students’ Speaking Proficiency at a High School in Dien Bien through Using Role-Play Activities
Tác giả Bùi Trung Nga Linh
Người hướng dẫn Prof. Dr. Hoàng Văn Vân
Trường học Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of Languages & International Studies
Chuyên ngành English Teaching Methodology
Thể loại M.A. Minor Programme Thesis
Năm xuất bản 2018
Thành phố Hanoi
Định dạng
Số trang 101
Dung lượng 2,57 MB

Cấu trúc

  • 1. Rationale (10)
  • 2. Research objectives (12)
  • 3. Research questions (12)
  • 4. Scope of the study (12)
  • 5. Design of the study (12)
  • CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW (14)
    • 1. Speaking (14)
      • 1.1. Definition of speaking (14)
      • 1.2. Difficulties in speaking (14)
      • 1.3. Teaching Speaking (17)
        • 1.3.1. Aspects of speaking (17)
        • 1.3.2. Types of speaking activities (19)
        • 1.3.3. The role of teachers in teaching speaking (23)
        • 1.3.4. Assessing speaking skills (25)
    • 2. Role-play (27)
      • 2.1. Definition of role-play (27)
      • 2.2. Types of role-play (28)
      • 2.3. Procedures for making successful role-play activities (31)
      • 3.1. Techniques/methods used to improve students‟ speaking skill in general (35)
      • 3.2. Prior studies on using role-play to enhance students‟ speaking proficiency in particular (36)
    • 4. Summary (38)
  • CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY (39)
    • 1. Research type (39)
    • 2. The setting of the study (40)
      • 2.1. An overview of X high school (40)
      • 2.2. The course outline of teaching and learning English (40)
    • 3. Selection of the participants (42)
    • 4. Data collection methods (43)
      • 4.1. Class observation (43)
      • 4.2. Testing students‟ performance (43)
      • 4.3. Semi-structured interviews (44)
      • 4.4. Questionnaires (44)
    • 5. Data analysis (44)
    • 6. Data collection procedure (45)
      • 6.1. Research cycle (45)
  • CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION (48)
    • 1. Research findings (48)
    • 2. Discussion of the research findings (53)
    • 1. Conclusion (54)
    • 2. Implications (55)
    • 3. Suggestions (55)
      • 3.1. For teachers (55)
      • 3.2. For students (56)

Nội dung

Rationale

English has been used more and more widely, and it is considered as one of the most important languages in every part of the world It plays an instrumental role in all aspects such as education, travel and business, internet, and so on It helps people communicate with each other even they come from other countries

Understanding the necessity of English in the development of society in the integration and globalization in general and of each individual in particular, the demand for learning English Vietnamese people gets stronger and stronger power

That is the reason why the teaching and learning English has been paid more attention recently in Vietnam, and it cannot be denied that English is now a compulsory subject in language teaching programs at many schools and universities

In teaching language, there are four major language skills taught such as listening, speaking, reading, writing Of all the four skills, speaking seems intuitively the most important: people who know a language are referred to as „speakers‟ of that language, as if speaking included all other kinds of knowing (Ur, 1996, p.117) It can be understood that when a man goods at speaking; he also goods at listening, reading and writing He will know how to use language actively to express and convey the message to the listeners easily Actually, the recent research also demonstrated that speaking is an important factor which helps the learners form and develop their language learning process such as developing listening skills (Regina,

1997), writing skills (Trachsel & Severino, 2004) and reading competence (Hilferty,

2005) Although it is considered as the central skill integrated with other skills, it is also seen as one of the most difficult and challenging skills that the language learners have to face Thus, this is the reason why the students are not interested in speaking lessons as well as find it very difficult to participate in speaking activities

Based on my observation and teaching experience, there are some problems in teaching – learning speaking I can see that most my students are unwilling to participate in all oral activities because of nervousness, lack of confidence or ideas

They tend to sit passively, take notes, rarely contribute to any lessons, and even let the teacher talk all the time Another problem is, most the pairs get stuck when teacher asks them to act out in front of the class They do not know how to express what they want to say in English, and they are afraid of making mistakes

Furthermore, the results of each speaking examination are usually low, therefore, as a teacher of English at a high school, I would like to find a certain suitable method to help my students have ability to communicate confidently in English During attending four years at Hanoi National University of Education and from my own experience, I realize that creating enjoyable and effective activities in the classroom plays a vital role; moreover, the learners‟ language performance will be more successful if they practice in real or realistic communicative task, so I think that using role-play technique can be seen as a good way to motivate and give students opportunities to enhance their speaking skills As identified by Harmer (2001, p.352), role-play can be used as the teaching tool to encourage students‟ oral fluency or to train them to be aware to speak in specific situations by playing role to be another person in that case This leads the learners to practice directly and have experiences in solving the problems in real world situation as natural as possible In line with Harmer, Ladousse (2009, p.5) also states that role-play is an enjoyable activity and does not threaten the students It brings up various experiences into classroom such as broadening the knowledge about grammar, vocabulary and creating more chances for the children to make the conversation, communication games and humanistic exercises In other words, the students can have more opportunities to speak by doing these activities

The above reasons have inspired me to conduct an action research to on

“Improving grade 10 th Students‟ speaking proficiency at a high school in Dien Bien through role-play activities” I hope that the research will make a little contribution to enhance the quality of teaching and learning speaking skills as well as teaching and learning language for both teachers and students at this school.

Research objectives

This action research is conducted in order to:

 Seek how “role-play” activities improve English speaking skills and develop communicative skills for the grade 10 th students at a high school in Dien Bien.

Research questions

In order to achieve the objectives mentioned above, the study is designed to answer the following research question:

 “How does role-play help grade 10 students at a high school in Dien Bien overcome their difficulties in speaking lessons?”

Scope of the study

students‟ difficulties in learning speaking English as well as examine how role-play activities help them improve their speaking ability Thus, there is only one grade 10 class at a high school in Dien Bien is selected for study.

Design of the study

The study is organized into three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion

 Part A, Introduction, introduces the importance of learning English, especially learning speaking English; presents the rationale, the objectives when applying the role-play activities to improve speaking skills for the students who have never been acquainted with this technique before

 Part B, Development, is divided into three chapters:

 Chapter I defines some key terms related to this topic with a critical literature review of previous related studies

 Chapter II illustrates the research methodology with the elaboration on the participants, data collection and analysis instruments as well as research procedure

 Chapter III analyzes and discusses the results found from the data to get the answer to the research questions

 Part C is the conclusion of the study which summarizes and synthesizes the main issues discussed in the thesis, points out some implications of the research and recommends some suggestions for teachers, students and further studies.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Speaking

There are some definitions about speaking that have been proposed by different experts in language learning As asserted by Brown and Yule (1983, p 55),

“speaking is to express the needs – request, information, service, etc.” It means that the speaker says words to the listener not only to express what he/she needs but also to obtain information or services In order to strengthen the statement, McDonough and Shaw (2012, p 157) add this is a procedure that creates utterances with the particular purposes when people communicate with each other, and this process may involve expressing ideas and opinions Based on these two definitions, it can be understood in a simple way that speaking is a process of communication between the sender and the receiver to exchange information, ideas, opinions, views, or feelings

Besides, Chaney and Burk (1998, p 13) have another definition of speaking basing on linguistics They state that speaking is “the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts” while Nunan (2003, p.48) defines that “Speaking is the productive aural/oral skill and it consists of producing systematic verbal utterances to convey meaning” These researchers‟ opinions have some differences but they share one perception; that is, speaking is identified as a process a person uses the language to express his or her ideas, feelings and thoughts and shares information to other through communication

From these above definitions, speaking skill is always related to communication It can be stated that speaking can be seen as a skill which uses language accurately to express meanings, and to get knowledge and information from other people in the whole life situation

Of the four language skills, speaking remains the most difficult skill to master for the majority of English learners, and they are still incompetent in communicating orally in English As highlighted by Afisa and Yolanda (2015, p 9), there are four difficulties in speaking faced by students such as student‟s lack of vocabulary, poor pronunciation, poor arrangement of words and anxiety Learners‟ lack of vocabulary is the result from their limited knowledge of meaning and small vocabulary; this leads to difficulties in understanding the conversation Therefore, it is necessary to provide the students with the suitable amount of vocabulary to help them study speaking easily The next difficulty the students experience is poor pronunciation of words This is because many English words may be pronounced in one way but may be written in another For example, the students tend to confuse and feel difficult in pronouncing when some words end with the /s/ sound but it is pronounced as /z/ sound The students are also confused in arranging words in correct order Then, there are still some mistakes in their grammar The last difficulty mentioned in Afisa and Yolanda‟ dissertation is the students‟ anxiety

They are often afraid in speaking English because they are worried of making mistakes In addition, they are unconfident and nervous when the teacher asks them

The difficulties in learning speaking English come from various reasons

According to Ur (1996, p 117), there are four factors that cause difficulty in speaking such as inhibition, nothing to say, low or uneven participation and mother tongue In producing English speech, students are worried about making mistakes, fearful of criticism, or simply shy Sometimes, they have no motive to express their thinking, feelings by themselves If speaking is a compulsion, there is are few learners who can talk while the others choose to be silent during the lesson Mother- tongue use is the last factor causes speaking difficulties to the learners Students tend to use the mother tongue with their friends because it is easier to interact

Sometimes, the difficulties also come up from the learners, teaching strategies, curriculum, and environment (Raba‟ah, 2005, p.193- 194) Brown (2001, p 270-

271), in contrast, claims other eight factors that cause to speaking difficulty to students which can be represented as follows:

 Interaction According to Brown (Ibid.), clustering refers to fluent in speech This is one of the aspects make speaking more complicated because a fluent speech is a phrasal not word by word The second factor is redundancy It tells about the speakers‟ ability in providing the clearer meaning, but most students do not know how to make short meaningful utterances Next, reduced forms are the common troubles the learners get in learning process They usually use during native speakers‟ conversations In order to improve speaking skills as well as communicate naturally like native English speakers, it is quite challenging for the non-native English speakers Here is an example for illustrating this factor: I want to go for a spin = I wanna go for a spin In this example, it can be seen clearly that the item “wanna” is reduced from the phrase “want to”, and it makes the speaking become better The fourth factor is performance variables which refer to the students‟ performance of hesitations, pauses, backtracking and correction, such as the use of “fillers” like “uh, hm, as we know, and so on Commonly, the learners tend to answer the teachers‟ questions directly in a shortest way without thinking and do not know how to continue this topic to make it better For instance, when the teacher asks “Do you like playing football?”, instead of answering more information about it, the learners just say

“Yes” and finish their conversation immediately The next aspect is colloquial construction It refers to the students‟ use of informal language ability in ordinary or familiar conversation The quality of speaking will be decreased if the learners apply rigorous formal sentences in all conversations The other factor mentioned by Brown is rate of delivery The rate refers to the speed at which a person speaks: quickly or slowly Speedier talkers prevent listeners from absorbing the ideas while slow talkers make the receiver feel uncomfortable Stress, rhythm and intonation are the aspects that cause difficulties to the students‟ learning speaking Different from other languages, English has its own stress, rhythm and intonation Those aspects belong to the pronunciation stress and are executed in order to convey meaning, message and feelings by changing the tone Obviously, if keeping in the same tone, speakers cannot convey what they want and what they say means The last factor is interaction which needs the creativity of conversational negotiation

Speaking is one of the central elements of communication which enables students to use their English to communicate in real life situation; therefore, speaking is often seen as the most important aspect that attracts attention from many researchers and teachers Nunan (2003), in reporting a study conducted by Kayi (2012), expresses “what the teaching speaking to teach ESL students means” According to him, teaching speaking is teach to the students produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns; use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language; select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting, audience, situation and subject matter; organize the students‟ thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence; use language as a means of expressing values and judgments; and use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which is called as fluency In order to reach these above objectives, it is important that teachers should care about the elements of an effective communication such as aspects of teaching, activities to promote students‟ speaking, the teachers‟ role in teaching speaking and the way to assess students‟ speaking skills These components will be discussed in detail as follows

Aspects of speaking can also be divided as many ways According to Hughes

(2003, p.118), there are five components of speaking, namely pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension Pronunciation refers to the way a word is pronounced To make the communication become better, it is necessary that students know how to pronounce the words clearly so that the others can understand the meaning of messages Grammar is another important component of speaking Using the correct grammar structure will help people know the real meaning of the sentences that the speakers would like to convey The third aspect is vocabulary This can be seen as the most important element in speaking English or other languages because it will show a person‟s speaking ability by using various suitable vocabulary in conversation Next, speaking is a process of exchanging ideas between speaker and listener; therefore, a smooth and accurate speaking will make human easy to understand the meaning Comprehension is the last aspect the students should master in communication In order to make effective communication, both speaker and listener have to understand other‟s meaning

Similar to Hughes‟s viewpoint, Roger et al (2005, p 99-100) and Richards (2015, p.426-427) summarize speaking aspects into two main types: accuracy and fluency

They define accuracy as follows:

“Accuracy involves the correct use of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation

In controlled and guided activities, the focus is usually on accuracy and the teacher makes it clear from feedback that accuracy is important Ongoing correction is often appropriate during accuracy activities In freer activities the teacher is hoping for the correct use of language but is also keen to encourage the students‟ attempts to use the language they have in order to communicate In feedback the teacher will probably comment on correct use of language but also on how successfully the students communicated” (Roger et al 2005, p 99)

“Accuracy can refer to a number of different of a person‟s spoken English It conventionally refers to features of grammar, pronunciation and word choice, but, as we have seen from the discussion above, there are many other aspects of spoken language that are involved in oral communication, including choosing appropriate topics, using language that matches the formality or informality of the occasion and using conventions associated with different genres – such as conventional ways of opening and closing small talk and conversations”

And they define fluency as follows:

“Fluency can be thought of as „the ability to keep going when speaking spontaneously‟ When speaking fluently students should be able to get the message across with whatever resources and abilities they‟ve got, regardless of grammatical and other mistakes Normally, students should not be corrected during fluency activities However, in feedback afterwards you can comment favorably on any strategies the students used to increase their fluency.” (Roger et al 2005, p 100)

“Fluency involves maintaining the flow of speech without disruptive pauses, restarts and breakdowns It usually develops when students have a good grasp of grammar, vocabulary and fixed expressions, and can access them automatically and can focus on the meanings they wish to express without being distracted by a search for grammar or vocabulary or the correct expression”

Based on these classification, it is considered that accuracy and fluency are the two significant elements that the teachers should focus on in teaching speaking skills In my own situation, I realize that most students tend to have troubles in choosing what words to say, confusing the verb tense when making the sentences as well as lack of confidence in speaking Therefore, it is necessary that as a teacher I should be ready for finding and guiding the suitable ways to help them improve these aspects

There are many activities to promote students‟ speaking ability suggested by researchers which are represented as follows:

Drawing on several research of many scholars, Kayi (2012) presents the following thirteen activities to promote students‟ speaking: a Discussion

After a content-based lesson, a discussion can be held for various reasons The students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about an event, or find solutions in their discussion groups Before the discussion, it is essential that the purpose of the discussion activity is set by the teacher In this way, the discussion points are relevant to this purpose, so that students do not spend their time chatting with each other about irrelevant things b Role-play

Role-play

There are many types of activities used to teach speaking skills such as jigsaws, task-completion, opinion – sharing, information – transfer, but the most common activity which is usually used in speaking lessons is role-play In defining of the term “role-play”, it is also defined in some different ways According to Ladousse

(1987, p 5), he defines role-play in separated word: “role” and “play” He states that when students assume a „role‟, they play a part (either their own or somebody else‟s) in a specific situation „Play‟ means that the role is taken on in a safe environment in which students are as inventive and playful as possible A group of students carrying out a successful role-play in a classroom has much in common with a group of children playing school, doctors and nurses, or Star Wars Both are unselfconsciously creating their own reality and, by doing so, are experimenting with their knowledge of the real world and developing their ability to interact with other people (Ladousse) A few years later, Roger et al (2005, p 105) share the similar point of view “A role-play is when students take the part of particular person: a customer, a manager, a shop assistant, for example As this person, they take part in a situation, acting out a conversation.” Simultaneously, Richards (2005, p 20) makes a shorter definition about role-play, he highlights that “role-play is an activity in which students are assigned roles and improvise a scene or exchanged based on given information or clues.” From these definitions mentioned above, the role-play can be described easily as a technique which people imagine to become others or be themselves in a specific situation in order to create a real world in scenario

Role-play is regarded as one of the most effective teaching methods in teaching and learning foreign language because of its conveniences As Harmer (1991) points out, role-play can help the students have the motivation in learning, and students will have more opportunities to show off themselves candidly and comfortably Ladousse (1987, p 6-7) agrees with Harmer‟s opinion about why teacher should use role-play in the classroom He claims that role-play is used to help the teacher train their students in speaking skill in any situation, and students also can develop their social speaking skill from a low level by using role-play

However, role-play activities should be appropriate with the students‟ language teaching syllabus Besides, he also states that role-play helps students learn how to interaction with each other in a range of situations around their life, and it will be become a good mask to shy students Finally, role-play activities are fun activities because it not only improves students‟ learning attitude, motivation but also increases the learning atmosphere From the explanations above, it can be concluded that role- play plays an important role in teaching speaking lessons It will help students have a range of knowledge such as vocabulary, structure, intonation, and pronunciation about close topics around their daily life to improve their speaking skills easily This is really a good challenge and opportunity to practice language in various situations In addition, students are also trained to deal with unpredictable nature of language to enhance their

“conditional reaction” in speaking better

Based on the observation, role-play activities might be appropriate to learners at a high school in Dien Bien city By doing this, pupils can make communication creatively and meaningfully when they are applied the real situations in real life As a consequent, they will have more opportunities to practice and expand their speaking capability naturally In other words, the more opportunities students practice, the more successful they will have

According to Ladousse (1995, p.13), there are four types of role-play The first one is the role which is resembled the situations in students‟ life like a doctor and a patient, or the interactions between teachers and students in the class The second type of role-play is playing in a variety of situations that students may or may not have direct experience For example, a customer is complaining or a passenger is asking for information The third type of a role-play activity is that students play themselves basing on indirect experience but the teacher will give many indirect examples with the information about it An organization or a person; for instance, will explain to the volunteers about a project of protecting the environment The last type of role-play is fantasy roles In this type, students can play themselves in imaginary situations like playing astronauts in the moon

Considering types of role-play, on the other hand, Littlewood and William (1981) divide role-play into four other types The first one is role-play through instructions

Students will be given cues, and response to their partner basing on suitable cues

The second type is role-play through cues and information (open-ended dialogues)

There are some guides for the questions which will be given to only one student, and the other has to respond The third type is role-play controlled through particular situation and goals The last one is role-play in the form of debate or discussion which means that the students practice the situations in free selection without cues or information provided from the teacher

Holding different ideas from the two authors mentioned above, Byrne (1986, p.115) categorizes role-play activities into two shortened ways These are scripted and unscripted role-play According to him, a scripted role-play is a role-play activity in which students use prompts or scripts provided by the teacher to make the dialogue basing on the same or nearly same situations in the textbook For more details, Doff (1988, p.231-234) illustrates this type by giving a model conversation between a customer named Angela and a post office clerk described as follows:

Angela: Good morning I want to send a letter to Singapore

Clerk: Yes, Do you want to send it by air mail or ordinary mail?

Angela: I think I‟ll send it by air mail I want to get there quickly How much does it cost?

Clerk: To Singapore? That will be 30 pence, please Angela: (give the clerk 50 pence) Here you are

Clerk: Here‟s your stamp, and here‟s 20 pence change

Angela: Thank you Where is the post box?

Clerk: You want the air mail box It‟s over there, by the door

(Adapted from Teach English Trainer's Handbook: A Training Course for Teachers)

In order to teach this type based on the dialogue, the teacher should do some steps as follows:

Firstly, the teacher guides the role-play by writing the prompts (what? / where? / air mail/ cost/ post box) If necessary, go through the prompts one by one by asking the questions and getting students to find the answers to help them know more about the content of the dialogue sample

Secondly, the teacher can call two good students or act out him or herself with a student to practice the dialogue One is Angela and the other plays the post office clerk

They can improvise the conversation to the similar one by changing the underline words in the dialogue such as new places and prices, or making another conversation shorter than the presentation dialogue which still covers the main points

Finally, the teacher will call out a few pairs of students to get them have other conversations in turn based on the prompts This type also can be organized by asking students to practice in pairs before perform in front of the class

Another type of role-play activity mentioned by Byrne (1986) is unscripted role- play Different from scripted role-play, unscripted role-play is a type of activity that the situations do not depend on the text books It can be understood more easily that the students perform their roles in free way without any script After the instructions or illustrated pictures are given by the teacher, the learners have to decide the suitable language that they will use and brainstorm the ideas the conversation should be developed Then, they will have enough time to practice before performing in front of the class Clearly, in order to do this activity, the good preparation from both teachers and students is extremely necessary Here is an example of procedure in the unscripted role-play:

Situation might be: You meet some foreign visitors to your country They are interested in your school Answer their questions about it

Topic: Health Situation might be: A visitor to your town is ill Find out what is the matter with him/her Tell him/her where to find the doctor

In order to teach the unscripted role-play, the teacher gives some topics or some suitable situations related to the topic and ask the students to choose a suitable topic and discuss what they have to say to develop that topic in pairs or in groups Then, the students will be encouraged to try out the role-play privately before performing their conversation based on what they prepared before class Instead of following a rigid procedure, the teacher can create and develop an appropriate way to make sure that all the students in class are willing and excited to engage in the role-play activities

From the explanation above, the teacher can select a suitable form of role-play depending on the level of the students For the beginners or who does not good at English, the teacher can choose the scripted role-play while unscripted role-play should use for the upper level students to develop their creative thinking and motivation

2.3 Procedures for making successful role-play activities

Summary

From all the above information, it can be seen that there is a range of useful activities applied in teaching speaking for the students currently including role-play activities; however, speaking is not an easy skill that whoever can master Actually, there has not been a study relating a role-play activity affecting 10 th grade students‟ performance in the speaking classes at a high school in Dien Bien yet Moreover, based on my observation, I realize that most teachers tend to teach grammar than foster pronunciation, vocabulary and give more opportunities to the students to express their ideas These are the reasons why I would like to conduct a research on improving students‟ speaking ability by using role-play activities.

METHODOLOGY

Research type

As stated, this research entitled “Improving grade 10 th students‟ speaking proficiency at a high school in Dien Bien through using role-play activities” was an action research The aims of the study were to find out the difficulties students experience in learning speaking as well as to know how role-play activities affect the improvement of students‟ speaking proficiency

There were two cycles in this research and each cycle included four steps, namely planning of the action, implementing the action, observation and doing reflection

This procedure of action research was proposed by Kemmis and McTaggart (1998, p.14), and it could be presented as follows:

The setting of the study

I named the school where I carried out my research X to ensure its information security This study was conducted at X high school placed in a small town in Dien Bien city Founded in 1966, X high school was known as one of the oldest schools with good teaching quality in Dien Bien

At this school, the teachers tended to use the mix-methods between the traditional method and the audio-lingual method to teach their students; however, they still felt fail in improving their students‟ speaking skill Thus, it was necessary to seek a suitable way to minimize the difficulties in teaching and learning English and enhance the quality of English speaking lessons

The students who attended to X high school have the age range from 15 to 18

Among them, there is a large difference in students‟ attitudes in learning English

Some of them were very interested in English, and the others; however, just focused on the other main subjects like Math and Literature Although they had acquired English since they were at grade 6, their English proficiency was still not good and they tended to unable to practice in each speaking lesson In fact, all these students had never engaged in any role-play activities in their classes; therefore, this was a chance to apply a new technique to help them balance all the subjects as well as feel interested in learning English as other subjects

2.2 The course outline of teaching and learning English

In this research, the textbook “Tiếng Anh 10” was used for the grade 10 th students

This textbook consisted of 16 units which wa s equivalent to 16 different topics, but

I chose only eight topics because I just want to introduce to the students how to use role-play in the class and focus more role-play activities to see how role-play activities are actually effective in the classroom Each speaking lesson had diverse activities such as individual work, pair work, group work, role-play In order to evaluate the effectiveness of using role-play, so I asked students to work in individual and group work in the short time and concentrate on practicing role-play activities To be more specific, the main activities and topics in terms of speaking skills were presented as follows:

Table 3: Speaking activities and topics designed for class 10A1

A day in the life of…

Pair work Ask & answer questions basing on the table on page 14-15

Individual work  Using the pictures, talk about

 Tell your daily routine Role -play Scripted Role activity: Talk about daily routine

Individual work Rearrange the sentences to make a conversation

Pair work Complete the conversation with suitable words, then practice with a partner

Role-play Scripted role-play activity:

Choose one of four topics (weather, last night‟s TV programs, football, plans for next weekend), then make the conversation between : A teacher and a student, or:

Individual work Thinking some items relating about somebody‟s background Pair work Making questions and answers about somebody‟s background Role-play Unscripted role-play activity: A journalist and a student: People‟s background

Individual work Basing on the questions on page 47, fill in the blanks with the right questions

Pair work Practice the conversation with the partner Role-play Scripted role-play activity:

Making a new friend (A student and a student who meet each other for the first time)

Pair work Ask and answer about the uses of modern inventions (Task 1- p.56) and you Group work Talk about the uses of information technology Role-play Unscripted role-play activity: A seller and a customer

Group work Read the information on page 66, make a conversation to decide the best seat for each person mentioned in Task 1

Individual work Talking in front of the class: Which seat do you think is the most suitable for you? Why?

Role-play Scripted role-play activity: A ticket seller and a passenger

Individual work Talk about the common and the main features of the types of the mass media (Task 2- p.76)

Group work Discuss the different types of the mass media Answer the questions (Task 3) Role-play Unscripted role-play activity: A Boss/

The story of my village

Individual work Match the plans with its possible result

(Task 1- p.85) Group work Practice the conversation (Task 2), and continue the conversation with the ideas in Task 1 Add some more possible results (if possible)

Role-play Unscripted role-play activity:

 neighborhood meeting (a villager and the leader of the local government)

 an interview: a journalist and the leader of the local government)

Selection of the participants

The subjects for this study were 32 grade 10 th students at class 10A1 including 20 females and 12 males Both males and females had the same age and have learnt English at least four years, and they had had at pre-intermediate level of English

There were two reasons why this research aimed at the grade 10 th students at the X high school First of all, it was a new teaching method for the students who have graduated from the secondary school and entered in high school, therefore, I thought that role-play activities would be easier in application for these newcomers

Secondly, the students‟ speaking ability was limited and different From what I observed, I could see that the students are always shy when speaking They tended to spend a lot of time translating their ideas from Vietnamese into English before speaking out fully sentences In addition, they also had some difficulties in making what they want to talk about The reasons caused to these difficulties might come from the lack of vocabulary, social knowledge.

Data collection methods

The data collection methods aimed to collect both qualitative and quantitative data

The data was collected from observation of the students‟ learning process in the classroom, semi-structured interviews, tests, and also giving them questionnaires

The combination of these data collections enhanced the reliability and validity of the data In line with the aims of this research, I used the observation sheets, teaching diaries, interview, and questionnaire data as the instruments of the data collection A brief information about the data collecting techniques and instruments was presented as follows

I used the observation at all the lessons in my research process because I think that this was a very important way to follow the students in learning procedure During the observation, I collected the data by observing class situation It recorded in the form of observation sheets and the teaching diaries after each speaking lesson The observation sheets were used to obtain information about implementing of the planning and the procedures of the actions In addition, the teaching diaries were used to record the students‟ activities during the class and evaluate the students‟ learning results through each lesson

Testing students‟ performance was done before and after implementing the actions

Before carrying out the action, I conducted a pre-test as the basic knowledge to do the research and base on it to evaluate the improvement after implementing role- play activities.At last, I conducted two post-tests at the end of the first and second cycle to measure the development of the learners‟ speaking skills after implementing the action Three examinations had the same content and form, and the topics were based on those in the textbook

Two semi-structured interviews were used to know the effectiveness of the actions The interview were used for two students who had highest and lowest score in the pre-test and post-test The reason for choosing semi-structured interviews is that I would like to create a friendly and comfortable working environment for both the teacher and the students Besides, I would like to find out the difficulties in the students‟ learning process before and after applying role-play activities in class, and ask for feedback as well as suggestions from teacher and learners to enhance the teaching method The results of the interviews were recorded in the form of interview transcripts

In this study, the questionnaire was designed for 32 students There were two questionnaires included both open-ended and close-ended questions, and were used after having the result of two tests The purpose of those questionnaires was to seek the students‟ attitude toward to learning speaking through 2 cycles of applying role- play activities At the same time, the questionnaires were used to take note the learners‟ expectations and suggestions from this course.

Data analysis

The data collected was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively All of the data gather from observation sheets, teaching diaries, questionnaires, and interview transcripts were analyzed qualitatively, while the data obtained from the tests were analyzed quantitatively The steps of the data analysis included collecting the data, comparing and cross checking the data from the observation sheets, interview transcripts, teaching diaries, and students‟ test results.

Data collection procedure

This research was carried out within the first semester of the 2017 – 2018.In this process, I implemented the actions in two cycles, and there were four procedures implement in this action: planning the action, implementing the action, observation during implement the action and doing reflection The procedure was described as follows: a Planning the cycle

In this phase, basing on the problems that students had in learning speaking lessons, I made some plans to choose the suitable actions In the planning actions phrase, I and the English teacher worked together to prepare the lesson plans The plan for each cycle was described as follows:

In planning the first cycle, I applied two types of role-play activities in cycle 1, namely scripted role-play activity and unscripted role-play activity The situations and the conversation guidelines were based on each topic in the textbook “Tiếng Anh 10”

In cycle 2, I reviewed the result of the discussion and the plan based on the problem appearing at the first cycle The situations still were based on the topics in the textbook and were practiced by students with the same types of role-play in the first cycle (scripted role-play activity and unscripted role-play activity) b Action and observation of the cycles

I grouped two steps in one with the aim at implementing the action and observing the effects of the action at the same time After each lesson, I took notes and wrote the teaching diaries on how the students reacted to the action and some obstacles during the class In detail, the action and observation per cycle were described as follows:

*) Action and observation of cycle 1

In this stage, the lesson plans were implemented in the class, the learning process was observed and written in teaching diaries after that Some changes were made in relation to the students‟ learning progress; however, there existed some problems that I noted during the learning process In this cycle, the situations of role-play activities were based on the topic starting from Unit 1 to Unit 4 in the textbook

“Tiếng Anh 10” including the themes of “A day in the life of…”, “School talks”,

“People‟s background”, and “Special education” Before asking the students to practice the role-play activities, I introduced and guided two types of role-play (scripted role-play and unscripted role-play) for the students I applied teaching some aspects of speaking skills such as teaching grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation at the same time with teaching role-play Next, I asked 32 students to do the pre-test to evaluate their performance after 8 weeks of the treatment Then, I asked two students who had highest and lowest score in the test to take part in the interview to explore the reasons for this matter Next, I gave the questionnaire for

32 students to collect their opinions after learning some aspects of speaking at the same time with practicing role-play activities

*) Action and observation of cycle 2

In this stage, I implemented the revised method specified in the planning session and observed its progress The mistakes, weaknesses, changes and improvements were noted as a consideration to draw the conclusion about the whole teaching and learning process As what I did in the first cycle, I continued teaching two types of role-play with the topics starting from Unit 5 to Unit 8 in the textbook My intervention in this cycle was continuing teaching pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and providing props and background knowledge about daily life with the aim to help the students feel more interested in the lessons At the end of the implementation the action, I also asked the learners to do the post-test, interview, and questionnaire as the cycle 1 to check the improvement level after applying in round 2 c Doing the reflections

In the last step, I made some evaluations or reviews on what happens in the implementation of the action In this case, the reflection was giving the result which represented whether the action was successful or not If the action was not successful and some problems still existed, I had to repeat the action with the other suitable way in order to improve it

In this stage, my collaborator (English teacher in Class 10A1) and I discussed the problems and solutions at the end of cycle 1 basing on the students‟ test results, interview and questionnaire result Then, we discussed the next plan for changing teaching method as well as improving students‟ speaking performance for the next cycle

In this stage, the implementation and observation of cycle 2 were reflected in the discussion between the collaborator and I Furthermore, the whole problems, solutions, changes, improvements, and suggestions made in cycle 1 and 2 were discussed to conclude the overall teaching and learning process

The research procedure can be shown as follows:

Figure 2: The procedure of the research

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Research findings

This part described in more detail some actions of implementing the role-play activities in teaching and learning speaking skills The results of these actions were found through two ways For more detail, data collected from classroom observations, questionnaire and interview were analyzed qualitatively and data collected from three tests were analyzed quantitatively These results answered the research question, and they were shown as follows:

1.1 The results from observation, interview and questionnaire

This part presents the findings of the observation, interviewing and questionnaire in the cycle 1 and cycle 2

In cycle 1, the implementing of role-play was successful to improve the learners‟ speaking skills because the role-play provided a lot of opportunities to practice The opportunities enabled the students to make related expressions to the same situations in their life They said that the role-play activities encouraged them to learn many things such as learning more new words by doing glossary, pronunciation and grammar by doing exercises It can be illustrated by Student A‟s statement: “Good, very good For me, creating glossary is a good way to help me broaden my vocabulary It‟s very interesting because I can draw everything when make my glossary I can use a range of complex structures with some flexibility, and can understand and respond most questions at average speed”; and student B‟s statement “My speaking skills is improved a little bit than before thanks to learning vocabulary and pronunciation I known how to mix of simple and complex structures, and pronounced some words accurately” In addition, they felt more confident when implementing the role-play activities

However, there still existed some problems in students‟ learning process Some of them did not pay attention to the lesson, and felt quite bored when participating in the conversation Moreover, they were quite awkward when the teacher asked them to take part in solving the situation because they had never faced such a situation

In order to solve these problems, I implemented some actions in cycle 2 In this cycle, I prepared some props to help the students feel more excited when practicing the role-play activities Furthermore, I spent some time on providing the social background knowledge to help them apply in real situation, and teaching some ways to use the language as native speakers The results from obervation, questionnaire and interview showed that students felt more confident to solve the same situations in real life thanks to learning role-play and could make longer sentences accurately and fluently after this program Student A said that she could learn very things from this implementation She could use these social background knowledge to solve the difficult problems in her life; meanwhile student B stated that he could be confident to solve the same situations in real life The speaking lessons become more exciting and enjoyable than before, so he had more motivation and be more active to involve speaking activities

1.2 The results of the pre-test, post-test 1 and post-test 2

I conducted pre-test and two post-tests to evaluate the students‟ speaking skills before and after applying role-play activities In these tests, students were asked to make a dialogue based on available situation Their performances were scored into five aspects of speaking including vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, comprehension, and fluency The total marks of the pre-test and the two post-tests is evaluated based on five criteria calculated on a scale of 10, each criteria accounted for 2 marks The detailed scoring rubric of the assessment could be seen on Appendix 7 After having the tests' result, the scores were processed by the Microsoft Excel Program It was done to see the mean score of the tests Table 5 below showed the mean score of the pre-test

Table 5: The mean score of the pre-test Aspects Vocabulary Pronunciation Grammar Comprehension Fluency

The table above showed that the mean score of aspect vocabulary in the first cycle was 0.843 The mean score of pronunciation aspect in this cycle was 0.984 and 1.031 for the grammar aspect For the comprehension aspect, the mean score was 1.046; and fluency was 1.078 From this result, it could be concluded that the learners were not good at speaking English because of these aspects above; in which, vocabulary and pronunciation were two worst components that students needed to improve than the others

Recognizing the factors impeded the pupils‟ speaking skills, I changed the teaching method with teaching pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar at the same time with applying the role-play activities The result of the post-test 1 was presented in Table 6 below

Table 6: The mean score of the pre-test Aspects Vocabulary Pronunciation Grammar Comprehension Fluency

Based on the result shown in the Table 6, the average score in each aspect had a slight increase; however, this improvement still was not really effective for the students Hence, cycle 2 was conducted, and the following table presented the result of the post-test 2 after applying other teaching strategies

Table 7: The mean score of the post-test 2 Aspects Vocabulary Pronunciation Grammar Comprehension Fluency

Based on the result shown in Table 7, it could be concluded that the students‟ performance on all speaking aspects was upgraded remarkably This meant that the implementing role-play activities with providing the social background knowledge and preparing props helped the learners improve their speaking skills better The chart below presented the comparison of the mean scores among the tests

Figure 3: The comparison of the mean score of each aspect among the tests

To synthesize, the total mean scores of the students‟ speaking skills between two tests were shown as the figure 3

Figure 4: The comparison of the total mean scores of the students‟ speaking skills

Vocabulary Pronunciation Grammar Comprehension Fluency

Pre-test Post-test 1 Post-test 2

Pre-test Post-test 1 Post-test 2

In conclusion, it could be concluded that the students‟ difficulties in learning speaking were improved markedly by implementing role-play activities The following table summarized the total results through two cycles of research

Table 8 : A summary about the improvement of students‟ speaking ability

Students’ speaking conditions before acting cycle 1

Students’ speaking conditions after acting cycle 1

Students’ speaking conditions after acting cycle 2

1 Students had limited vocabulary mastery

The vocabulary mastered was richer

The vocabulary was much richer

2 Students had difficulties in pronunciation, and in constructing the sentences

The wrong pronunciation was reduced The students pronounced the words more accurately

Their pronunciation was better than before

3 Students worried in making wrong sentences

They made many correct grammar sentences, but these sentences still were unclear and lengthy

They know how to make correct sentences Their language were more abundant thanks to using implication in speaking English

4 Students were shy and passive to speak English and had low fluency

Some students were confident in speaking activities, they were more active and more fluent

Most of the students spoke confidently and fluently

5 Students had less opportunity in practicing speaking in the class

There were many opportunities for them to speak

There were many varieties of opportunities for them to speak

6 Students were not interested in practicing the tasks in the textbook, and had low motivation in speaking lessons

They looked enthusiastic in practicing role-play activities, but they still felt bored

They felt excited when implementing role-play activities by using the props

7 The mean score of the students‟ speaking was 4.984

The mean score of the students‟ speaking was better with the total was 6.437

The mean score of the students‟ speaking was reached to 7.703

Discussion of the research findings

This study set out with the aim of finding out the difficulties that students had in learning speaking English and investigating the impact of using role-play activities on improving of students‟ speaking ability The result of this study showed that lack of vocabulary, mispronunciation, having less opportunity to practice and lack of motivation were factors that caused low speaking efficiency to the students It also indicated that these above obstacles have also been improved through the use of role-play activities These findings of the current study are consistent with those of Afisa and Yolanda (2015), Sukatri (2016) and Citraningtyas (2016) Another interesting finding was that students could enhance their speaking competence and participate enthusiastically in speaking tasks thanks to using role-playing props and social background knowledge provided in a timely manner when necessary Clearly, by applying this technique, students can learn and have a rewarding playground to interact with their friends and teachers openly without any pressures

Although the student's verbal ability was improved over prior to the application of role-play activities, the test result of some students still maintained at a moderate level A possible explanation for this might be that this was a new teaching method and it is just executed in the first semester; therefore, the students do not have enough time to get acquainted with this new teaching method Thus, it is recommended that this technique should be applied regularly and and continuously for students to form their active learning habits

Conclusion

The action research was implemented for the grade 10 th students at a high school in Dien Bien city The research began in September 2017 in the first semester in the academic year of 2017-2018 with the aim at answering the research question

 How does role-play help grade 10 students at a high school in Dien Bien overcome their difficulties in speaking lessons?

From several factors that cause to students‟ difficulties in speaking, namely lack of vocabulary, mispronunciation, lack of confidence and motivation, having less opportunities to practice, and other causes related to teaching method such as lack of teaching aids and textbook-based teaching, I carried out two cycles of action research with the aim at verifying the effectiveness of applying role-play in improving students‟ speaking ability This implementation brought out some significant changes

In cycle 1, there were successful and unsuccessful actions Therefore, to overcome the unsuccessful actions, there were some additional and revised actions in cycle 2 such as preparing the props and providing social background knowledge

The results of the study showed that there were some improvements of the learners‟ speaking ability First of all, the implementation of role-play activities created an enjoyable learning atmosphere that improved the students‟ motivation

Thanks to using this technique, students reduced their anxiety of learning language and were willing to engage in speaking activities to performance their speaking proficiency in the situations

In addition, role-play also could improve the students‟ confidence There were gradual improvements on their level of confidence, and they were shown through each cycle In the first cycle, only a few students could confidently perform their role-play Surprisingly in the second cycle, most of them were confident in acting their roles It could be concluded that the learners could overcome their fearfulness by using role-play activities

Moreover, there was a statistical evidence which proved that the students‟ speaking ability was improved It could be seen from the mean scores that students‟ speaking skills increased from the pre-test to post-test 1 and post-test 2 The mean score of the students‟ speaking skills was 4.98 in the pre-test was increased to 6.43 in the post-test 1, and reached to 7.70 in the post-test 2 These increasing mean scores indicated that role-play was a useful activity to enhance the leaners‟ speaking capability

From the results as presented above, it could be concluded that role-play was a trustworthy technique and should be used in promoting students‟ speaking competence.

Implications

From the research‟s results, it was found that the implementation of role-play activities made a positive contribution into improving English teaching and learning methods It could be seen clearly that role-play activities allowed both the teacher and the learners to interact in enjoyable, friendly and comfortable way By applying role-play, the students had more opportunities to communicate naturally and confidently as what they expected Furthermore, the use of role-play could improve students‟ involvement and motivate them in their learning activities; and thanks to this, the students became more active in their learning process Therefore, it is strongly suggested that the teacher should apply this technique in the process of teaching speaking.

Suggestions

improvement students‟ speaking competence, I would like to propose some recommendations that hopefully will be useful for other English teachers and students I also would like to give some suggestions for further studies

- As role-play needs a lot of preparation, teachers are suggested to be creative to enrich the materials and construct interesting situations in order to attract students‟ interest and involvement in speaking activities

- Before organizing the role-play activities for students, teachers should be sure that their students have fully understood and have had the information they need for practice

- In order to motivate students, the activities should be varied and match with the students‟ levels of language, culture and interest Sometimes, teachers can give bonus marks to encourage their students

- In role-play activities, teachers should be the trainers, observers and helpers when necessary instead of controllers Teachers should not interfere too much to avoid disrupting students‟ involvement

- Students should be aware that speaking is extremely important in English communication; therefore, they need to have positive attitude to learning

- Students need to be more eager and active when engaging in speaking activities

- Students should learn and follow teacher's instructions to achieve the best results

This research is conducted for only grade 10 th students, so future studies should be conducted with students of other grades in high school or even with university students to determine the influence of role-play on speaking difficulties In addition, it should also be conducted to teach other vital skill such as teaching grammar through role-play

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Date: September 4 th , 2017 Number of student: 32 Kind of activity: Scripted role-play activities Unit: 1

1 Students‟ interaction with each other Very bad 1 2 3 4 5 Very good

2 Students‟ attitudes towards speaking activities

3 Students‟ improvement in speaking skills

4 Students‟ improvement in presenting in front of large audience

5 Students‟ improvement in pronunciation Reduce 1 2 3 4 5 Increase

6 Learning atmosphere Not active 1 2 3 4 5 Very active

LESSON PLAN UNIT 1: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF…

By the end of the lesson, Students are able to:

- Ask and answer about weekly timetable

- Describe the activities based on given pictures

- Make use of English expression conveyed in asking for & giving information accurately and fluently according to the situation given (daily routine)

- Pronounce the words which are related to activities in daily life with the correct stress

II Teaching aids: pictures, chalk, textbook,…

III Teaching technique: Role-play

- Guiding and asking Ss to do task 1 (give handout)

- Asking Ss to practice in pairs in front of the class

- Showing the pictures and introducing the task, giving new words (if any)

- Asking Ss to work in groups and describe Quan‟s activities

- Introducing role-play, scripted role-play

- Asking Ss to work in pairs and make conversation based on given situations

(Role-play cue cards) Students select one of the following situations and make the dialogue with the partners

Situation 1: You go to the teacher’s room You ask about the schedule to register extra subjects

One student is a teacher, and another is a student Work in pairs and make a dialogue based on the cues given

Information technology: Friday/ 2p.m Biology: Saturday/8 a.m

Sign your name here, please

I‟d like/register extra subjects Information Technology/ Biology What time/ Information

How about (What time)/ Biology Saturday/ I/buzy Do/ have/ another class?

I/register/ that class How much/cost/for a lesson?

Situation 2: You meet your new friend You will talk about your activities in your daily routine

Work in pairs Ask and answer about daily routine based on the cues given

How many/subjects/in a day?

Hi Talk about your healthy (so so, I‟m good,…) Which/ class?

- Listening, checking pronunciation and grammar, & feedback

- Reviewing the main contents of the lesson

- Asking Ss to record a conversation with their friend, make glossary related to the topic and prounce those words

- Asking Ss to prepare for the next lesson

LESSON PLAN UNIT 3: PEOPLE’S BACKGROUND

By the end of the lesson, Students are able to:

- Talk about their own background and know how to ask for other people‟s background

- Pronounce the words which are related to activities in daily life with the correct stress

VI Teaching aids: pictures, chalk, textbook,…

VII Teaching technique: Role-play VIII Teaching procedure

- Brainstorming: Thinking some items relating about somebody‟s background (work in individual)

- Giving an outline of people‟s background:

 Family : parents, brother(s)/sister(s), home

 Education: name of school, favourite subjects, school work

- Asking Ss to work in pairs to make questions and answers about somebody‟s background

- Guiding them by giving sample questions:

 When and where were you born?

 What‟s your father‟s/ mother‟s job? = What does your father/mother do?

 Have you got any brothers or sisters? How old is she/he?

 How long have you lived here?

 Which primary/secondary school did you go to? When did you start school?

 How far is your school from your house?

 What‟s your favourite subject? Or Which suject(s) do you like best?

 Did you have much homework? How did you prepare the lesson?

 Do you have difficulties in learning?

 Have you ever joined any school activities?

 Have you ever been a monitor/ punished by teachers?

- Calling some pairs to practice before class

- Introducing task and situations in role-play

- Asking Ss to work in pairs & make a conversation without any cues about people‟s background The others listen and take note errors (if any)

2 students: Imagine you a journalist, and the other is a student

Journalist: Ask some questions and take note the information collected

Student: Answer the journalist‟s questions

- Listening, asking Ss to comment, feedback

- Asking Ss to make & record a dialogue talking about their parents‟ background

- Asking Ss to make glossary to collect the new words related to the topic and prepare the next lesson

TEACHING DIARY LESSON 1- UNIT 1: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF …

Today I had a meeting with the rector of X to discuss about my plan in conducting an action research to improve 10 th -grade students‟ speaking proficiency by applying a not strange technique to urban schools, but very strange to this school _role-play Few moment later, I was introduced to the teacher of class 10A1, and had the right to participate in the first speaking lesson of the new school year The purpose of this immediate participating is that I would like to observe the way both teacher and students act in speaking lesson The results showed that the teacher and students use the mother tongue most of time They seemed quite embarrassed when having an occurrence of a stranger_me According to my observation, I could see that hey had some difficulties with their pronunciation and vocabulary; therefore, they just talked/spoke in short simple sentences The class atmosphere was quite good; however, the students weren‟t too dynamic to engage in the oral activities To be honest, there were no extra activities except two available tasks in the textbook Then, teacher allowed me to teach the last part “post- speaking”, and I applied role-play in this part I introduced what role-play was and act out an situation as the model before class In fact, students didn‟t understand what I did, and they didn‟t act out of role-play activity I gave

Next, I asked them to do glossary to collect the new words related to this topic

After finishing the lesson, I gave them a mini test to evaluate their soeaking skills The test given with some cues to help students base on it and make dialogue with their friend I spent time scoring it and returned the class 10A1 at the end of last subject I invited 2 students who had highest and lowest score to take part in my interview, and asked 32 students in class 10A1 to do questionnaire The result showed that most students assured that speaking was very important skill, they would like to speak English well as their L1 language However, they felt this is the most difficult skill, especially in learning vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar They offered more opportunities and activities for helping them improving their speaking skills

 Plan for the next lesson: - Prepare for the next lesson

- Guide Ss to practice role-play

TEACHING DIARY LESSON 2- UNIT 2: SCHOOL TALKS

In this lesson, I helped students know clearlier about what role-play was, and made an example with a situation Students seemed to be excited with this technique because they could more understand how to do role-play tasks; however, they still were unconfident to speak Before introducing the task, I gave some vocabualary to help them broaden their lexical I could see that they had a short memories with these new words and most of them pronounced wrong words I spent a ot of time teaching pronunciation, so there only had 2-3 pairs presented in front of the class I thought the percentage of lesson‟s success just reached to 30% I continued asking them to make glossary at home, and practice their pronunciation by checking the pronunciation on “Oxford Learner Dictionary” Furthermore, I also asked them to record their role-play with their partners

 My plan for the next lesson:

- Introducing new type of role-play: “Unscripted role-play” with example

- Before practicing, asking Ss to discuss in group about the vocabulary (isolated words, lexical chunks), the possible questions in given situation

- Asking Ss to make glossary and pronounce the words

TEACHING DIARY LESSON 3- UNIT 3: PEOPLE’S BACKGROUND

In this lesson, I saw students seemed to be OK with role-play activity

Students known the way to use glossary and prounce words correctly They said this method is useful for them because they didn‟t have to learn by heart in the bored way They were quite interested when becoming the interviewer

They could move around the class and ask everyone they like That made them fun and more active The task of role-play without any scripts were quite difficult for them, but they could apply the sample questions presented before

They seemed to be interested in this activity because they can ask any questions that they want with no control or limited questions from the teacher

Their expressions were more natural than the previous lessons However, maybe the introduction was presented and guided in a long time, I still couldn‟t control my time The solution for this problem here might be I will reduce the task in the textbook

I evaluate this lesson‟s success was about 45%

For the next lesson, I had to limit their motion in class because it will affect to other classes if I can‟t control The necessary steps still continuous

TEACHING DIARY LESSON 4- UNIT 4: SPECIAL EDUCATION

In this lesson, I could see that students could acquire a range of vocabulary and they could use them quite good However, the pronunciation sometimes were wrong, especially in stress word and linking word I will continue fixing it for them day by day The role-play activities with cues still will be executed, and I allowed them to feel free to practice with their partners

In this lesson, I realized that students‟ speaking skills was improved significant They could prounce better than the lessons before, and used a range of vocabulary in their role-playing I also appreciated the success of the lesson was higher than before a little bit Its‟ about 55%

At the end of the lesson, I asked them to do a post-test 1, invited 2 of them who had highest and lowest score to take part in my interview, and asked 32 students to do questionnaire to check the effectiveness of role-playing in cycle

1 From that, I could find out the existed problems that cause students‟ difficulties and think some way improve it in the next cycle

Students are discussing the dialogue

Students are acting as interviewer/ jounalist

Students are practicing role-playing with some notes

Students are acting as a Civic Group Meeting

I PRE-TEST Role-play situation

Imagine that you are best friend, and you are making arrangement through telephone by using the following cues:

#1: Role – play situation (Scripted Role-play Activity)

Imagination Student A: Last week, you absented from the beginning lesson, so you don‟t know the timetable for the next days

Student B: You are classmate‟s A You will notify to A the timetable

Make the conversation by using the following cues:

 What subjects ……… on … ? , What time………… ?

#2: Role – play situation (Unscripted Role-play Activity)

Student A: You are student, and you go to the school late because the traffic is stuck

Student B: You are English teacher, when you see a student attend to the class late

How do you solve this situation?

#1: Role – play situation (Scripted Role-play Activity)

Student A and B: Two of you will make a conversation to talk about the film that you like the most

Here are some cues to help you add more details in the conversation:

#2: Role – play situation (Unscripted Role-play Activity)

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