một số biện pháp để phát huy tính tích cực học tiếng anh cho học sinh lớp 10 thông qua một số hoạt động trong sách giáo khoa tiếng anh

iii BINH ĐỊNH DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING TUY PHUOC NO. 1 HIGH SCHOOL A STUDY ON SOME WAYS TO ENHANCE THE 10 th FORM STUDENTS' ACTIVENESS IN LEARNING ENGLISH THROUGH SOME LEARNING ACTIVITIES IN THE ENGLISH TEXTBOOK Name: Nguyen Bui Thuy Linh, M.A. School’s name : Tuy Phuoc No.1 High School Tuy Phuoc, April 2012 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES iv LIST OF FIGURE v PART A : INTRODUCTION I. The Statement of This Problem………………………………………………1 1. The Reality of The Problem Requiring The New Solution to solve……………1 2. The Meaning and Effect of the New Solution………………………………….2 3. The Scope of the Study 2 II. Method and Procedure 3 1. Literature review and theoretical background 3 1.1. Literature Review 3 1.2. Theoretical Background 3 1.2.1. Overview of Communicative Approach 4 1.2.1.1. Theories of Communicative Approach 4 1.2.1.2. Purposes of Communicative Activities 5 1.2.2. Learner- centered Approach 6 1.2.3. Active Learning 8 1.2.3.1 De finition8 1.2.3.2. The Good Language Learner 10 1.2.4. Factors Affect Students' English Learning 11 1.2.4.1.Motivation 11 1.2.4.2. Interest 13 1.2.5. Promoting Students' Activeness in Learning English 14 1.2.5.1.Climate Variables 14 1.2.5.2. Instructional Variables 15 1.2.5.3. Teacher's Characteristics 16 3 1.2.6. Overview of Learning Activities 17 1.2.6.1.Prominent Features of Leaning Activities 17 1.2.6.2. Classification 17 1.2.6.3. Principles of Selecting Appropriate Work Tasks 18 2. Measures for Implementing and Time to Create This Solution 19 2.1. Research Design and Procedures 19 2.1.1. Research Design 19 2.1.2. Research Procedures 19 2.2. Methods of Data Collection ' 20 2.3. Population of the Data Collection 22 2.3.1. The Population of the Questionnaires 22 2.3.2. The Population of the Classroom Observation 22 2.4. Data analysis 22 PART B: CONTENT I. Aim and Objectives 23 II. The Description of The experience Initiative’s Solution II.1 : Findings and discussion 23 2.1.1.Students' Activeness in Learning English …………………………………23 2.1.1.1. Students' Attitudes towards English Language Learning 25 2.1.1.2. 10 th Form Students' Involvement in the Lesson 25 2.1.1.2.1. Students' Involvement in the Lesson 29 2.1.1.2.2. Reasons for students not involving in Classroom Activities 29 2.1.1.2.3. Students' Willingness for Communication and Discussion the tasks with others 30 2.1.1.2.4. Frequency of Finding Chances to Practise English inside and outside Classroom 31 2.1.2.The Implementation of the Learning Activities in the English Textbook.31 2.1.2.1. The Learning Activities Developed in the English Textbook 32 2.1.2.2. The Frequency of Organizing the Learning Activities in the English Textbook 36 4 2.1.3.The Influence of the Learning Activities in the English Textbook on Students' Activeness 38 2.1.4. Teacher's Role and Classroom Atmosphere in Enhancing Students' Activeness in English Language Learning 41 2.1.4.1. Teacher's Role and Characteristics in Enhancing Students' Activeness in English Language Learning 41 2.1.4.2. The Influence of Classroom Atmosphere on Students' Activeness in English Language Learning 48 II.2 : Implications for enhancing students' activeness in learning English …49 2.2.1 Textbook Renovation 49 2.2.2. Making Writing Activities much more Meaningful and Interesting 52 2.2.3. Improving the Teacher's Classroom Management 53 2.2.4 Other Suggestions 55 PART C: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS FOR… 56 FURTHER RESEARCH REFERENCES Survey questionnaires APPENDIX 1 __ For teachers APPENDIX 2 __ For students 5 PART A: INTRODUCTION I . The Statement of This Problem: English nowadays has become more and more popular and has been widely used in Viet Nam. It is one of the major subjects in many schools and an indispensable means of communication at present. With such a trend of development, learning English is, therefore, important than ever before. All learning is active in a certain sense, but some kinds of learning are more active than others. Here, active learning is defined in one sense to mean that the learner uses opportunities to decide about aspects of the learning process. The stimulation of learning activities and regulation processes, or teaching students how to learn, is likely to lead to the best performance in the long run. 1. The Reality of The Problem Requiring The New Solution to solve: It is of great importance that we should take students' English language learning into consideration. However, in Viet Nam, many students are not fully interested in learning English in class. On the one hand, they seem to be shy and fearful of making mistakes. On the other hand, we lack a language environment and sufficient learning activities. In that reality, there have many problems catching pedagogues' attention, i.e, how to organize learning activities effectively, how to develop interesting study atmosphere in the classroom in order to enhance students' activeness in English language learning. Being aware of this urgent problem, I have a great desire to study the current activeness of students especially the 10 th form students at high schools in Tuy Phuoc High School and Quoc Hoc High School and to investigate the learning activities in the English textbook which contribute an important role in enhancing students' activeness in learning English. That is the reason why I choose the topic "A study on some ways to enhance the 10 th form students' activeness in learning English through some learning activities in the English textbook for my experience initiative. 2. The Meaning and Effect of the N ew Solution "Active learning has a long and distinguished history. Again and again the idea of learners getting involved in the learning process instead of passively receiving information from an instructor has been considered the essence of education. No doubt 6 good teachers have always known that learning is enhanced when students get involved to discover, manipulate or personalize information"[22]. Active learning connects it to mental activity in another sense: it refers to the extent to which the learner is challenged to use his or her mental abilities while learning. Thus active learning on the one hand has to do with decisions about learning and on the other hand making active use of thinking. Active learning can be more attractive for learners than more passive forms of learning because they can become more motivated and interested when they have a say in their own learning and when their mental activity is challenged. Being involved in the decisions about learning they can connect to their prior knowledge and their own needs and interests. In finding out things independently, they can follow their own interests and motivation. In the process they can learn to make decisions and take responsibility. Moreover, active learning is important because of opportunities for learning to learn. Students can learn how to learn by practising how to do it. Giving them responsibility for parts of the decisions that can or should be made is one way to teach them how to learn. In earlier times, one thought that learning to learn and active learning were for the elite. Only the best students were expected to learn actively. For the weaker students highly structured forms of teaching were to be preferred, so was the conventional wisdom One reason why they are weak students turned out to be that they are not able to learn actively. When the weakest students learned how to learn and think, their learning performance improved drastically (see, for instance, Palincsar and Brown, 1984). Active learning is also important for teachers. Motivational and burn out problems of teachers may disappear when students are more motivated and more active learners. Besides, teaching will become more intellectually challenging when students are learning actively and independently. Hence, the problem I am concerning about which learning activities in the English textbook implemented in the class make student learn more actively. As an English teacher, I truly believed that this study would be a great contribution to my current teaching. 3. The scope of the study With a limited fund of time and ability, this study only investigates the activeness of 10 th form students in two high schools. The paper also only studies some learning 7 activities in the English 10 textbook for enhancing students' activeness in learning English. II. Method and Procedure 1. Literature review and theoretical background 1.1.Literature Review There have been many pieces of writing about "active language learner" by foreign methodologists and linguistics. According to Paul Eggen and Don Kauchak (1999), a motivated learner can be viewed as " someone who is actively engaged in the learning process". They suggest some ways of promoting and maintaining active engagement through the concept of Interest. They also emphasize the important role of interest and give some strategies to increase interest such as capture students' attention, maintain students' involvement in the learning. In the book entitled "Teaching principles and practice" by Cole and Chan (1994), they mention student engagement as students' involvement and active participation in learning activities. They suggest the most frequently used measure of student engagement is the amount of time that a student engaged in learning tasks. They also refer to some techniques to promote active engagement and success rate among students. In addition, in "Language teaching methodology", David Nunan introduces some characteristics of the "good" language learners, and mention learning styles and learning strategies that mainly focus on learner as well. Regarding students' activeness, some Vietnamese writers such as Dang Thi Kiem (2003) and Nguyen Van Vien (2003) also mention students' activeness through reading comprehension and pairwork and groupwork activities. Although active learning has been mentioned in a number book, there has so far not been any study discussing how to enhance the activeness of high school students at grade 10. 1.2 . Theoretical Background: 1.2.1. Overview of communicative approach: 8 1.2.1.1. Theories of communicative approach: The origins of communicative language teaching (CLT) are to be found in the changes in the British language teaching tradition dating from the late 1960s. CLT is best considered an approach rather than a method. It is a theory of language teaching that starts from a communication model of language and language use. Because of the focus on communicative activities and the concentration on language as a means of communication, such an approach has been called the communicative approach [9,P.4]. It mainly focuses on communicative proficiency rather on merely the mastery of structures. In learning and teaching activities, the range of exercise types and activities compatible with a communicative approach is unlimited, provided that such exercises enable learners to attain the communicative objectives of the curriculum, engage learners in communication and require the use of such communication processes as information sharing, negotiation of meaning and interaction. Consequently, communication has been the major aim of language teaching and learning. The goal of language teaching is to develop what Hymes (1972) referred to as "Communicative competence". The term indicates the ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom. Elements of an underlying learning theory can be discerned on some CLT practices according to Little wood (1981) and Johnson (1982). _The 1 st element described as the communication principle: Activities that involve real communication promote learning. _The second element is the task principle: Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promoting learning. _The third element is the meaningful principle: Language that is meaningful to the learner supports the learning process. Learning activities are consequently selected according to how well they engage the learner in meaningful and authentic language use. In short, communicative approach provides learners with a desired goal "Communicative competence". To obtain this, students need knowledge of language which can be enhanced through the use of learning activities appropriately. Also, 9 through learning activities, students participate more in the learning process and therefore, promote students' activeness. 1.2.1.2. Purposes of communicative activities According to Littlewood (1990), what the teacher might hope to achieve through communicative activities in the classroom may be very important because this will determine his own attitude towards it and what place he gives it in his overall methodology. The followings are some typical purposes of communicative activities that can make to language learning: * They provide "Whole - task practice". In foreign language learning, teacher's means for providing learners with whole - task practice in the classroom is through various kinds of communicative activity, structured in order to suit the learners' level of ability. * They improve motivation. The learner's major objective is to take part in communication with others. Their motivation to learn is more likely to be sustained if they can see how their classroom learning is related to this objective and helps them to achieve it with increasing success. Also, most learners' conception of language is as a means communication rather than as a structural system. Their learning is more likely to make sense to them if it can build on this conception rather than contradict it. * They allow natural learning. Language learning takes place inside the learner and, as teachers know how to frequent frustration, many aspects of it are beyond their pedagogical control. It is likely, in fact, that many aspects of language learning can take place only through natural processes which operate when a person is involved in using the language for communication. Activity (inside or outside the classroom) is, therefore, an important part of the total learning process. * They can create a context with supports learning. Communicative activity provides opportunities for positive personal relationships to develop among learners and between learners and teachers. These relationships can help to "humanize" the classroom and to create an environment that supports the individual in his efforts to learn. [15,pl7-18] 10 1.2.2. Learner- centered Approach Today, the dominant view of language teaching and learning favors a great amount of student-centered learning instead of the traditional teacher-dominated classroom. "The learner-centered approach is based on the principle that learning is totally determined by the learner. As teachers we have an influence what we teach, but what learner learn is determined by the learner alone" [12]. Along with this view, Nunan (1991) sees that a learner-centered approach is based on the belief that learners will bring to the learning situation different beliefs and attitudes about the nature of language and language learning and that these beliefs and attitudes need to be taken into consideration in the selection of content and learning experiences. [19, pl78] Obviously, there is an emphasis on the central importance of the learners and their attitudes to learning. According to Hutchinson and Waters (1989), learners were seen to have different needs and interests which would have an important influence on their motivation to learn and therefore on the effectiveness of their learning. This supports to the development of courses in which "relevance" to the learner' needs and interests was paramount. Moreover, Hutchinson and Waters also state that learning is seen as a process in which the learners use what knowledge or skills they have in order to make sense of the flow of new information. Learning, therefore, is an internal process, which is crucially dependent upon the knowledge the learners already have and their ability and motivation to use it. Furthermore, learning is not just a mental process. It is a process of negotiation between individuals and society. Society sets the target and individuals must do their best to get as close to the target as possible. The learners will certainly determine their own route to target. In the learner-centered classroom, the learners are not only involved in making choices about what and how to learn but also are actively involved in the learning process and they do all the work. Learners will pay more attention and learn better from one another since their performances and processes of negotiation of meaning are [...]... The population of the questionnaire: As mentioned above, questionnaire was distributed to 200 10 th form students at four classes of Tuy Phuoc 1 High School and Quoc Hoc High school.in Qui Nhon city To get more information, a questionnaire for 10 teachers in charge of 10 th was carried out at two above high schools In The process of getting information, teachers also gave useful and good ideas for the... Classroom observation was made in eight classes at two high schools, four classes at Tuy Phuoc 1 High school and four classes at Quoc Hoc High school 2.4 Data analysis: This study presents both qualitative and quantitative results basing on the data collected from the questionnaires and classroom observation In summary, questionnaire is chosen as the main method while observation is arded as a subordinate... classroom observation and questionnaires for teachers and students at Tuy Phuoc 1 High School and Quoc Hoc High school Thirdly, the data collected was quantitatively analyzed to discuss the research questions 24 2,2.Methods of data collection: As mentioned in the previous parts, the paper aims to some ways to enhance 10 th form students' activeness in learning English through some learning activities... addition, the data collected form questionnaire will be analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively 27 PART B: CONTENT I Aim and Objectives: This paper aims at studying on how to enhance 10 th form students' activeness in learning English through some learning activities in the English textbook This paper is intended to: - Investigate how active the 10th form students are in learning English - Investigate learning... expected to respond without giving their names Thus, the information maybe objective and reliable The questionnaire for students consisting of 15 questions was distributed to 10 th form students of Tuy Phuoc 1 High School and Quoc Hoc High school The questions were translated into Vietnamese before handed to the informants so that students can understand all the questions easily The questions then were translated... ways are given by Eggen and Kauchak that affect classroom climate - Order and safety: Classroom as secure places to learn Effective schools are places of trust, order, cooperation and high morale For students to be motivated to learn, school must be physically and psychologically safe places - Success: According to Eggen and Kauchak (1990), once a safe and orderly environment is established, student's... reason, we can see that students learn English just because they like it, they consider it one of the most interesting and exciting subject in the school curriculum 29 Being one of the most important subjects at school, English is compulsory to all high school students but few of the students learn English for this reason Obviously, students nowadays have a clear awareness of English learning; they... the ability of speaking English of the 10 th form students is quite limited They find it difficult to express their ideas in English so the students are less involved in the lesson This is the result of the syllabuses which focus on grammar, vocabulary and reading skill in previous school years The students have few opportunities to develop speaking skill Thus, 10th form students now meet some difficulties... subordinate method but very useful way to collect the data Real behaviors of the students and teachers were noted down In this study, observation was carried out at 8 classes at Tuy Phuoc 1 High School and Quoc Hoc High school During my observation, some criteria were set so that my work would be carried out more effectively They are as follows: 1 Students' attitudes towards learning English _ Paying attention... important at all 2 28 3 What are your reasons for learning English? - A compulsory subject at school 14,5 - Better job in the future - Knowledge of another culture 19,5 - Your favorite subject 18,5 - Others 61 0 According to what is shown from the table 2.1, it can be realized that a large number of high school students enjoy learning English (77, 5 %) while there are still 22, 5% of the students who . study the current activeness of students especially the 10 th form students at high schools in Tuy Phuoc High School and Quoc Hoc High School and to investigate the learning activities in the. HIGH SCHOOL A STUDY ON SOME WAYS TO ENHANCE THE 10 th FORM STUDENTS' ACTIVENESS IN LEARNING ENGLISH THROUGH SOME LEARNING ACTIVITIES IN THE ENGLISH TEXTBOOK Name: Nguyen Bui Thuy. study only investigates the activeness of 10 th form students in two high schools. The paper also only studies some learning 7 activities in the English 10 textbook for enhancing students'