skkn cấp tỉnh some suggested techniques for teachers and 10 11th grrade students at lam kinh high school to teach and learn english vocabulary effectively

In Lam Kinh high school as well as in the other high schools in rural and mountainous areas, teaching and learning English has been taken into consideration.. Check out these teaching st

PART A: INTRODUCTION

I Rationale for the study

In recent decades, English is considered as an international language It is the major language of intercommunication, international commerce, business, science, culture and so on In Vietnam, the economic open-door policy pursued by the Government has created a huge demand for using English Therefore, there has been a positive trend of teaching and learning English across the country English is also introduced to the educational curriculum from primary education (optional) to tertiary education (compulsory) [5]

In Lam Kinh high school as well as in the other high schools in rural and mountainous areas, teaching and learning English has been taken into consideration Vocabulary is considered an important tool to help students interpret their items ultimately lead to successes in language skills such as speaking, listening, reading, writing etc It is also vocabulary that partly facilitates the movement of “passive” knowledge into “active” language use Roughly speaking, students are getting more competent and confident in using language since they own the rich storehouse of vocabulary knowledge

Teaching vocabulary in EL is crucial to a student’s language development and communication skills After all, without adequate words, it’s difficult to relate thoughts, ideas, and feelings about who we are and how we interpret the world around us But how do we achieve this goal without making students memorize lists of EL vocabulary that will be forgotten after the next pop quiz? Check out these teaching strategies for how to teach vocabulary to EL students – whether you’re giving in-person lessons or teaching English online

In order to help teachers and students build up passion for English, have strategies for teaching and learning vocabularies effectively so that student can

improve their English skills, I choose the topic of study: “Some suggested techniques for teachers and the 10 and 11 th grade students at Lam Kinh High school to teach and learn English vocabulary effectively”

II Aims of the study

The aims of the study are to raise students’ interest in English and investigate some effective techniques and strategies in teaching and learning English vocabularies Some main purposes covering the study are summarized

as follow:

+ To investigate some techniques and strategies for teaching and learning vocabularies

+ To help English teachers, especially teachers of English at upper secondary

schools to find out effective techniques to deal with teaching and learning English vocabulary effectively in the new textbooks with the hope of helping

teachers and students improve their skills in English language

III Objects of the study

This study has been carried out to search for a better and more effective Note: At this page, the paragraph “In recent decades……tertiary education (compulsory)’’ is consulted from Reference number [3].

ways and strategies for teaching and learning English vocabularies in order to

help teachers and students to gain success in improving English skills

IV Methods of the study

To achieve the aims mentioned above, a detailed study is used The theoretical background of the study presented in my study comes from documents

on the internet and many published books written by different authors on language teaching The statistics and data collected for the study come from the students and the English teachers at Lam Kinh upper secondary school by making observation through English lessons in the classroom Through theoretical and practical experience in leaning environment at Lam Kinh high school, I myself build up the topic

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

I Theoretical background

1 What is vocabulary [5].

Graves (2000, as cited in Taylor, 1990) defines vocabulary as the entire stock of words belonging to a branch of knowledge or known by an individual

He also states that the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, which includes words and expressions Krashen (1998, as cited in Herrel, 2004) extends Graves‘ definition further by stating that lexicon organizes the mental vocabulary in a speaker‘s mind An individual‘s mental lexicon is that person‘s knowledge of vocabulary (Krashen, 1998, as cited in Herrel, 2004) Miller (1999, as cited in Zimmerman, 2007) states that vocabulary is a set of words that are the basic building blocks used in the generation and understanding of sentences

According to Gardener (2009, as cited in Adger, 2002) vocabulary is not only confined to the meaning of words but also includes how vocabulary in a language is structured: how people use and store words and how they learn words and the relationship between words, phrases, categories of words and phrases (Graves, 2000, as cited in Taylor, 1990)

2 Principles for teaching vocabulary :

To be to remembered new vocabulary, new vocabulary needs to be learnt

in context, practised, and then revised to prevent students from forgetting Teachers must make sure students have understood the new words, which will

be remembered better if introduced in a "memorable way" (Hubbard et al 1983:50) Bearing all this in mind, teachers have to remember to employ a variety of techniques for new vocabulary teaching

- Provide a context for new words: We will help the students guess the meanings of the new words and remember easilier

- Do not present too much new words at once Teach a few words(active words) and allow students to practise and use them a lot This will help them remember new words easily

- Practising new words in context is more important than memorizing isolated words Students may be required to learn the meanings of words but

Note: At this page, section 1“What is vocabulary”& section 2“Principles for teaching

vocabulary”are consulted from Reference No.[5]& No.6 respectively

they must also be given the opportunity to use them productively in speaking and writing

- Teach your students skills for guessing new words, especially when

reading The meaning of words can be inferred from the different types of contexts and from looking at affixes (parts) of the word

- Avoid translation as much as possible If the students are always having words translated, they are really only communicating in their own language , not

in Eglish Also, students do not usually remember vocabulary that has been translated Only use translation as a last resort, when it would otherwise take too long to communicate in English

- Avoid using the dictionary a much as possible When reading or listening ,students should first try guessing or ignoring new words so that they can continue without stopping Also using a dictionary when speaking or listening often slows down communication In writing, using a dictionary can be beneficial It helps students express themselves more clearly

- Practise the new words in context first, practise in chorus, and then individually

- Active words are needed to teach first, ignore the passive words

Those are the principles for teaching vocabulary Have you taught vocabulary follow those principles? In my opinion, if all of us follow those principles strictly, our students won’t find it difficult to remember new vocabulary any more and we will get better feedback from our students

II Practical background

1 Background of the study

1.1 Description of the English syllabus at upper secondary schools

The new textbooks chosen are English 10, 11- Global Success by Nha Xuat Ban Giao Duc Each consists of 10 lessons which have been covered through out the school year with mid-term and end –of- term tests in between Each lesson is divided into 8 periods with the aim of giving the students basic knowledge of English and practice four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing skill By using this textbook, we can develop our students’ communicative competence and our students can learn real things from daily life At the end of each term, students have an exam for four skills

1.2 Description of the students at upper secondary schools

Most of students of LamKinh high school have already learned English for at least four years at lower secondary school but many of them are at the low level

of English proficiency Another fact is that most of the students are from rural areas in ThoXuan district Consequently, individual differences in learning styles, identities, attitudes, motivation, etc are unavoidable and may cause the teachers some problems during their teaching In addition, their lack of awareness on the importance of English as well as motivation makes them not interested in learning English Although most of them have already learnt English for at least four years at lower secondary school, their knowledge of English is still poor and limited Some students can even hardly say a complete sentence in the target language

1.3 Description of the teachers at upper secondary schools

At Lam Kinh High School, there are totally 6 teachers of English, including me, aged from 36 to 46 Half of us graduated from Hong Duc University in Thanh Hoa province and none of us have been to any English speaking countries The number of female teachers formed the majority (5 female teachers and only one male teacher) All of us are enthusiastic with their career and had at least 15 years experienced in teaching English

However, in terms of methodology, the teachers in our school usually employ the traditional methods of teaching especially Grammar-translation method They often apply this method in teaching English In other words, they focus on analyzing the grammar rules, not on the acquisition of language skills

They spend most of the classroom time explaining new words, analyzing grammar structures and translating texts into Vietnamese Students often listen and take notes passively This leads to low motivation in students and creates very few chances for them to improve their communicative competence

1.4 Description of physical setting

In most upper secondary schools, English teaching and learning activities are mostly carried out inside the classrooms which are designed for lecture lessons with the only classroom equipment: a blackboard, tables and a desk The only type of teaching aid that the English group has is some cassette recorders and pictures In term of class size, the number of students in an English class is quite large, from 40 to 50 This large number causes a great deal of difficulties for the teaching and learning activities The materials for reference and self-study are not available for teachers and students at schools In the school library, there are only some English books that are not really helpful for teachers and students

2 Difficulties

2.1 Students’difficulties in learning English vocabulary.

The information from the data collected clearly shows students have many difficulties in learning grammar, pronouncing, especially in learning vocabulary Students’ limitation of vocabulary leads to the difficulties in mastering reading, speaking, listening and writing skills They also have trouble

in doing tests because of the lack of vocabulary Even they can’t find out any suitable methods to follow when they want to concentrate on learning vocabulary

In addition, many teachers of English at high schools don’t care much about teaching vocabulary They only pay attention to grammar or they still use old methods- translation when teaching news words They get students to understand and remember new words passively

2.2 Teachers’ difficulties when teaching English vocabury

Not only the students but also the teachers at LamKinh high school coped with numerous problems when teaching English vocabury The difficulties the teachers at LamKinh high school were coping with were the factors from the students such as the low level of English proficiency of the students, low background knowledge and their low motivation The next

difficulty was the problem of large class There are so many students in a class that teachers are dificult to control the students They had to face difficulties in shortening a big gap among their students‟ different abilities In the same class, some students who were good at English were attentive and active while many others were de-motivated and ignore the lesson The good ones usually dominated the activities that pair work and group work were needed while the weaker ones were shy and even contributed nothing

With all the difficulties mentioned above, it was necessary to have workable solutions to overcome the existing problems for further improvement of teaching and learning vocabularies in English lessons

III Some suggestions for teaching and learning vocabularies effectively in the class at Lam Kinh High school.

1 Teaching relevant EL vocabulary[6].

Be aware that if you focus on vocabulary that can’t be put to immediate and repetitive use in your students’ day-to-day lives, it will be relegated to the quicks and of short-term memory and soon forgotten, thus rendering all your hard work useless Teaching vocabulary in EL is of vital importance to long-term use of classroom lessons Be sure to choose vocabulary that is connected to your students’ lives and can be easily applied to their world outside of the classroom

2 Following steps for presenting new Vocabulary[6].

- Step 1: Use a suitable technique to elecit or show the meaning of the new vocabulary

- Step 2: Model the pronunciation clearly ( 3 times )

- Step 3: Ask students to repeat the word chorrally and individually

- Step 4: Correct students’ s pronunciation

- Step 5: Write the words on the board and students’ s copy down on their notebooks

- Step 6: Check that students clearly understanding the meaning& pronunciation

- Step 7: Draw students’ attention to aspect of vocabulary such as part of speech , callocation , frequency etc

3.Eliciting techniques for teaching vocabulary

What are the techniques for introducing and teaching new vocabulary? 3.1.Showing pictures or drawings

Because drawings and photos are fairly universal and understood by most people, this is perhaps the best way to present new vocabulary The internet is chock-full of photos and pictures, and there are a variety of stock photo websites

to choose from

Teacher can use the following pictures with the help of the Power point software presentations to introduce the new words

Note: At this page, the section 1 “Teach relevant EL vocabulary” & section 2.”

2 “Follow steps for presenting new Vocabulary” are consulted from Reference number [6].

Example 1: UNIT 3: MUSIC - I: GETTING STARTED[2]

English 10 (Global Success) (page 28) Activity 1:Presenting new words

Teacher shows some pictures and does as the followings:

1 ’musical instruments

T: Look at the picture! These are musical

instruments ‘’musical instruments’’

S: ‘’musical instruments’’

T: So what does the word ‘’musical

instrument’’ mean in Vietnamese?

S: “Nhạc cụ”

2.trumpet

T: Look at this picture! This is a trumpet

Now “trumpet”.

S: “trumpet”.

T: So what does the word mean in

Vietnamese?

S: “cái kèn”

Example 2: Unit 6:GENDER EQUALITY-Part I:GETTING STARTED[2]

English 10 (Global Success) (page 66) Activity 1:Presenting new words

Teacher shows some pictures and does as the followings:

1 kindergarten (n) /ˈkɪndəɡɑː(r)tn/:

T: Look at this picture! This is a trumpet

Now “kindergarten”.

S: “kindergarten”.

T: So what does the word mean in

Vietnamese?

S: “trường mẫu giáo”

2 surgeon (n) /ˈsɜː(r)dʒən/: bác sĩ phẫu

thuật

T: Look at the men in the picture! He is

a surgeon Now “surgeon”.

S: “surgeon”.

T: So what does the word mean in

Vietnamese?

S: “bác sỹ phẫu thuật”

Note: At this page, the example 1 and the example2 are extracted from Reference number [2]

3 pilot (n) /ˈpaɪlət/: phi công

T: Look at the men in the picture! He is

a pilot Now “pilot”.

S: “pilot”.

T: So what does the word mean in

Vietnamese?

S: “phi công”

To conclude, teaching vocabulary through pictures will give some advantages for the students The interesting and colorful pictures can motivate the students to learn vocabulary Using Pictures is also an easy way to help the students remember and understand what they have been studied Therefore, students’vocabulary can be improved considerably

3.2 Presenting vocabulary with realia

Another way of providing words is using the real things(realia) which the teacher may bring in to the classroom, or even find in the classroom already When learning a word that is related to the real things around our lives, the students can understand and remember words longer, and when they forget, they can recall those words by looking at things that they used to use before

Example: U.5: INVENTIONS-VII: CLIL: COM PUTER HARDWARE [2]

English 10 (Global Success) (page 59)

When teaching vocabulary of section VII- CLIL, the theme of this lesson is

Computer hardware , so teachers just need to use the computer equiped in the classroom to teach new words related to computer: processor, RAM,…

When teachers point at objects, students can find it easy to identify the meanings

of new words, we need not explain the words , even not say the meaning of the words

Note: At this page, the example of secion 2 Present vocabulary with realia is extracted

from Reference number [2]

T: Look ! This is the “processor” ( point at the processor)

T: what is it in Vietnamese?

S: “Bộ xử lí trung tâm”

T: Right

Teacher continues with other parts of the computers as this way

After some words have been taught in class, teachers instruct students to practice simple sentences with those words at home From there, students can remember words and phrases in a simpler way With this method, students can use the correct words and practice using them in daily life

3.3 Introducing new words in the context

If we want students to move vocabulary into their productive vocabulary (in other words, if we want students to be able to use words accurately), we need

to present the new words in context Being able to use the context (the sentences

or paragraphs that surround the word) to figure out the meanings of new words

is an essential skill that all teachers want their students to be able to master one day

In ordinary reading, there are a number of clues that help you to determine the meaning of an unknown word They are synonyms, examples, contrast,etc

Here are the steps for introducing new bword in context:

+ Read the sentence that contains the word carefully

+ Look for context clues in the sentence to help you understand the meaning You can even read the sentences around to look for clues

+ Choose the answer that the context indicates

Example 1: UNIT 6: GENDER EQUALITY

Part 3: Reading – For an equal world [2]

English 10 (Global Success) (page 69) Activity 2: Read the text and circle the correct meanings of the highlighted words and phrases

Gender equality has been greatly promoted around the world However, there are still many challenges that women face

First of all, there are still girls who are forced to get married before the age of 18 In many places, parents may see child marriage as a way to protect daughters from violence However, many of these young girls become victims

of domestic violence Child marriage also carries serious health risks as young

girls are not physically developed to give birth

Secondly, more than half of the world's uneducated people are women.

This means fewer girls than boys go to school or stay long at school Girls who receive an education are less likely to marry young They can also have better job skills and can earn higher salaries Education gives girls the opportunity to have a better life and give back to their communities

Note: At this page, the example 1 of section 3.3 Introduce new words in the context is

extracted from Reference number [2]

Thirdly, women are often paid less than men In other words, women have to work longer than men to earn the same amount of money Differences

in career choices might be one reason Women tend to become nurses,

secretaries, or shop assistants, which are low-paying jobs, while men choose

high-paying careers as surgeons, airline pilots, or engineers

1 domestic violence

a action taken to please someone

b.behaviour intended to hurt someone you live with

2 uneducated

a having little or no formal education at school

b not having many jobs opportunities

3 low-paying

a giving money to a person

b providing very little money

Procedure:

Step 1: Ask students to look at the words being asked about and the two answer

choices If they are familiar with the word, guess which answer is correct Do not mark the answer sheet yet

Step 2: Read the sentence in which the word appears If you were unfamiliar

with the word, see if context clues in the sentence or in the sentences before or after help you guess the meaning

1 In many places, parents may see child marriage as a way to protect daughters

from violence However, many of these young girls become victims of domestic violence.

2 more than half of the world's uneducated people are women This means

fewer girls than boys go to school or stay long at school

3 Women tend to become nurses, secretaries, or shop assistants, which are low-paying jobs, while men choose high-low-paying careers as surgeons, airline pilots,

or engineers

Step 3: Look for context clues in the sentence

1 parents/ child marriage/ protect daughters from violence

However( Sự đối lập)/ become victims/ domestic violence.

2 more than half/ uneducated / women./ means fewer girls/ than boys/ go to

school

3 low-paying jobs / while men choose high-paying careers

Step 4: Look at the two choices and their meanings and choose the answer that

the context indicates

1 Choice (b) is suitable and closest in meaning

The choice (a) are not suitable in the context

2 Choice (a) is suitable and closest in meaning

The choice (b) are not suitable in the context

3 Choice (b) is suitable and closest in meaning

The choice (a) are not suitable in the context.

Example 2: UNIT 8: A LONG AND HEALTHY LIFE

Part 3: Reading – How to become independent [2]

English 11 (Global Success) (page 89-90) Activity 3: Read the text again and match the highlighted phrases in the text with their meanings

A First, make sure you can safely get around by yourself using public

transport, walking, or cycling Second, learn to communicate well and develop good relationships with people Do some part-time jobs and get to know how to manage your money You should also learn to cook healthy meals for your family Finally, help your parents with household chores like cleaning and doing laundry

B To begin with, identify the problem and come up with as many solutions as

possible Write down the options, so you can review the advantages and disadvantages of each one This will help you see which option could be the best for you Don’t base your decision on emotion only Once you have made your

choice, create a plan of specific steps to move forward Then carry out your

plan, and think about whether you have achieved the result you wanted

1 get around a to produce or find an answer or a solution

2 come up with b to perform and complete something

3 carry out c to go or travel to different places

Step 1: Ask students to look at the words being asked about and the two answer

choices If they are familiar with the word, guess which answer is correct Do not mark the answer sheet yet

Step 2: Read the sentence in which the word appears If you were unfamiliar

with the word, see if context clues in the sentence or in the sentences before or after help you guess the meaning

1 get around: First, make sure you can safely get around by yourself using

public transport, walking, or cycling

2 come up with: identify the problem and come up with as many solutions as

possible

3 carry out: Then carry out your plan, and think about whether you have

achieved the result you wanted

Step 3: Look for context clues in the sentence and choose the answer that the

context indicates

1 “get around” can match with c “to go or travel to different places’ because

they can use the words ‘transport, walking, cycling’ as clues

2 “come up with” can match with a “to produce or find an answer or a

solution” because of the clues: identify/ problem/ solutions

3 “carry out” can match with b “to perform and complete something” because

of the clues: plan/ achieved the result