skkn tiếng anh thpt SOME EXPERIENCE IN IMPROVING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL FOR STUDENTS

However, Vietnamese students, especially students at High Schools get a lot of difficulties in learning and practicing English speaking skill.. That is the main reason why they don’t get

DONG NAI DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

DONG NAI CONTINUATION HIGH SCHOOL

-SOME EXPERIENCE IN IMPROVING ENGLISH SPEAKING

SKILL FOR STUDENTS

Name: TRAN THI THAO

From: DONG NAI CONTINUATION HIGH SCHOOL

Bien Hoa, May 2016

CIRRICULUM VITAE

I PERSONAL INFORMATION

1 Name: TRAN THI THAO

2 Date of birth: September 20th, 1983

3 Sex: Female

4 Address: 18E Nguyen Ai Quoc Street, Trung Dung Ward, Bien Hoa City, Dong Nai Province

5 Mobile: 0988474498

6 Position: English Teacher

7 School: Dong Nai Continuation High School

II QUALIFICATION

1 University education diploma: Bachelor of Art

2 Graduation year: June, 2005

3 Training field: English

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 The feasibility of learning English

Nowadays, it can’t be denied that English is becoming the common tongue

of our global language Whether you live and work in an English speaking country or need English for travel and fun, English is the passport to success and

a deeper understanding of our quickly changing world Therefore, teaching and learning English is very important and necessary since mastering English is the best and the shortest way for us to have a great deal of opportunities to reach the success of life

However, Vietnamese students, especially students at High Schools get a lot of difficulties in learning and practicing English speaking skill They often fall into confusion when speaking English because of lack of professional knowledge, confidence, and a good learning method as well Besides, the passive learning environment with the same and boring lessons without interesting extra- activities prevent them from practicing and improving English That is the main reason why they don’t get the effective result in learning English, especially English speaking skill

2 Rationale

Communication is the most effective way to encourage students to use a foreign language However, for a long time, speaking skill hasn’t been highly appriciated, we only estimate students through their qualification and knowledge without measuring the ability of using language It is high time we needed to pay much attention to this skill to help students communicate confidently and fluently To have successful lessons, teachers have to create the interesting studying environment to attract students’ attention so that students will feel more confident in communicating with others in English.

Speaking skill is quite difficult to teach, especially for students who have lost their basic knowledge and those who are too passive in communication So teachers need to find out the best and the most suitable methods to attract students’ attention in study

For the above reasons, in the process of teaching speaking skill, I have applied and elicited some experiences to develop and enhance this skill for students I have tried to find out the best teaching methods for myself also help students understand the importance of this subject more and feel interested in it

So I have decided to choose the theme” SOME EXPERIENCE IN IMPROVING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL FOR STUDENTS” for my study

3 Scope of study

- In my thesis, I intend to deal with how to improve the efficiency of teaching speaking skill for students through some personal experiences

- It is only used in teaching English speaking skill

- It is not necessary to classify the students’ qualification

4 Methodology

- Strategic method: quantitative

- Comments, assumptions and conclusion of the study are based on the data analysis

- Survey questionnaire, personal observation by attending classes

PART B: CONTENT

1 Reality

In fact, students at Continuation High School find a lot of difficulties in learning English, especially speaking skill because of their shortage of knowledge and vocabulary that makes them feel less confident in speaking English Moreover, English is not a compulsory subject at this kind of school Students don’t have to take it at High School Graduation Examination So they don’t appreciate it, they only learn it to cope with the tests and examinations without having real interest in it Therefore, it is hard for teachers to transmit the knowledge as well as the passion in studying this interesting and important foreign language subject

2 Solutions

2.1 Form and method to organize speaking lessons

This is the main skill to decide the success or failure in communicating activity If the class is quiet and students don’t want to speak, that lesson doesn’t succeed If the class is juicy and active and a lot of students enjoy speaking, that lesson is considered as a great success

Therefore, teachers should organize the “opening class” – we may allow students to leave out their permanent seats to find their favorite partners or students can stand at their seats to speak in pairs or in groups (students shouldn’t sit when speaking) This helps students feel not only comfortable when speaking but also easy to express the meaning of each sentence to the listeners

Meanwhile, if teachers ask students to sit in their permanent seats without going around or standing in the speaking lessons for the sake of the noise of the class, students will become passive and inhibitive Therefore, students can not bring into playing the “vocabulary” which they have because the gesture, the eye glance and the action also are the “vocabulary” in communication of each language that helps the listeners to understand the conversations Moreover, if students only communicate with the same partners each day, the communication

will become tedious and students don’t know well about the character of each person in class

In process of speaking, teachers should advise students to:

- Think in English, not translate into Vietnamese

One of the most serious mistakes that we often make is the trend to

translate from our mother tongue into English before speaking This will lead to

a language barrier immediately For instance, when we want to cancel an appointment, we will think in our heads: “I would like to cancel that appointment.” And then we translate that sentence into English We will get trouble because we can’t remember or don’t know the words “cancel”,

“appointment” to make the sentence “I would like to cancel the appointment” If

we think in English, we won’t get this problem and we can have many ways to express this situation in English For example, “I'm sorry I'm not free tomorrow” or “I am afraid I can’t come tomorrow” and so on…

- Using simple structures

When you speak, no-one pays attention to how simple or complex the structures that you utilize to estimate your ability, even nobody realizes the level

of the structures that you are using So, you should use the most simple sentences and structures for more convenience in communication

- Always speak slowly

Most students believe that the faster they speak English the more similar they are foreigners because English learners find difficult to catch up with the information when the native English speakers talk since they speak quite fast However, the opinion “the faster you speak the better you do” is an entire mistake We should advise students to speak slowly and exactly If students speak slowly, their tune and stress will become softer if not their pronunciation will be heavier and more difficult to comprehend

- Speak loudly enough

This is an important key in communication because when you talk to one person or one hundred people, you need to speak loud enough so that all people there can hear you easily

- Pronounce all the sounds in words

As mentioned above, practice speaking English with a slow speed will help you to have time to concentrate on sounds of words Maybe right now, you miss out the last or middle sounds of words This does not have influence on speakers but causes difficulty to listeners Hence, we had better advise students

to focus on each sound of words and not omit any sounds, especially the final sounds of words like “s”, “ed”, “t”, “p” so on………

- Be confident with your English ability

For instance, when someone asks you “How is your English?” you should not reply: “Oh, my English is very poor, I have no chance to practice”, you would rather respond: “I love to speak English” or “My English is improving” These answers will help you to feel more confident When you are self-confident, you won’t be afraid of speaking English

2.2 Preparation and arrangement for speaking topics.

It is not necessary to use all the tasks in the textbooks because this will make students not only become rigid and passive but also reduce students’ creative ability in communicating activities Hence, teachers should guide students to use the tasks in the textbooks to create dialogues which are suitable with their ability, then practice them in pairs or in groups at school (each student

or group may carry out some different tasks)

When making plan, teacher can reorder the tasks in textbooks as long as they are going from easy to difficult ones so that students will feel more natural

in speaking If teachers do not prepare carefully, the speaking lessons are easy to become disconnected and this leads to the boredom and tiredness for both learners and teachers So teachers have to prepare the lessons logically and

avoid the “dead time” as much as possible Too much “dead time” in a lesson makes students feel distracted, tired and unenthusiastic in speaking

Example: Unit 15 Space Conquest- Speaking

Before speaking:

- Teachers can start the lesson by giving out picture of spacecraft and ask+ What is it?

+ What is it used for?

+ How do you call a person who flies a spacecraft?

+ Can you tell me some famous astronaut?

- Teachers present some pictures of popular astronauts then ask some information about these people

+ Where are they from?

+ What are they famous for?

+ When did they fly into space?

………

While speaking:

- Teachers ask students work in groups: take turns to talk about the important events in space exploration.

- Ask the representative of each group to talk about one of the above astronaut, the other students guess who is the person their friend taking about?

Ex: He is an American astronaut He flew into space on 20th July, 1969 He

is the first humans to set foot on the moon Who is he?

- Teachers introduce the news about a famous Chinese astronaut then ask students work in pairs: ask and answer the questions

A: When did China launch its first manned spacecraft into space?

- Ask the representative of each group to talk in front of class

Ex: Major-General Pham Tuan, born on February 14th , 1947 , was the first Vietnamese cosmonaut, born in Quoc Tuan, Thai Binh in northern Vietnam He joined the Vietnamese Air Force in 1965 and fought in the Vietnam War against

American aggression He joined the Soviet Union’s Intercosmos programme on

April 1st, 1979 On July 23, 1980 , he went on board Soyuz 37 to outer space

along with Soviet cosmonaut Viktor Gorbatko Pham was in space for 7 days, 20

hours and 42 minutes He completed 142 orbits, and returned on July 31, 1980

On July 23rd, 1980

Through this method, students themselves have thought, searched and spoken out everything they need Moreover, they feel more interested in speaking lessons with new and diversified topics They are eager to attend the next speaking lessons to talk with their friends, express their communicative ability

This not only facilitates for good students to express themselves but also helps all students in class, especially the bad, shy and passive students to have chances to speak English Because when we divide class into groups and ask them to prepare at home, good students will help bad students to practice the lessons carefully so they won’t feel strange in speaking in front of other people They are more and more confident in speaking and communicating at public which they didn’t dare to do before

There are a lot of tips for teachers to apply in a lesson However, the importance is that teachers have to know how to choose the suitable tips for each topic to attract attention of students without dampening or causing the encumbrance for students That is a real success When designing a speaking lesson, teachers have to design it from easy to difficult one and each part in the lesson has the connection to each other

Therefore, teachers have to combine the tips in the parts “_ before speaking_ while speaking_ after speaking” logically so that students can carry out speaking constantly and get interest from the beginning to the end of the lesson

2.3 Preparation knowledge for students to speak and handle with the situations effectively

There are lots of sources of knowledge from which students can collect, but the problem is how they use and accumulate them effectively If we don’t guide them, they may speak out without having concrete purposes Therefore, we should give out the communicative sentences and dialogues, simple and short situations so that students can put them into practice smoothly and they will feel interested in speaking Then we can use those sample sentences and dialogues to impose in the speaking topics in textbook to help students feel more confident and they can speak better The importance is that we have to know ways to transmit knowledge to suit with students’ taste We have to search pictures, relevant materials, and vocabulary for the lessons: we can use the overhead projectors to show these pictures for students to practice speaking By this way,

we not only inspire the students’ studying spirit but also save the time for explaining the meaning of new words When students look at the pictures, they will not care of the vocabulary, they only think of the ways to express those pictures correctly Consequently, students do not get stressed on vocabulary and they will feel more confident in speaking – their speaking skill will be improved

2.4 Concrete steps for teaching the speaking lessons.

+ Before speaking We can use the activities:

- Interviewing

- Recall/ retell the story or dialogue

- Role play/ taking a survey

- Discuss the main idea

- Summarizing the main points

+ Uncompleted dialogue: Students practice the dialogues which were deleted some words (each dask is a word)

B: It is 7 million.

A: What is the area of the city?

B: It is 946 square km

A: How many national days are there?

B: There are seven national days in New York

- Teachers ask a pair to read the whole dialogue, then delete some words

in the dialogue and ask another pair to practice

A: When was New York _?

B: It was _ in 1624

A: What is the of the city?

B: It is

………

- Teachers continue the work until all the words disappear and all

students learn the dialogue by heart

3.2 Picture stories

+ Teachers collect pictures that have the suitable contents with the topics + Teachers model by playing the roles in comics, using the suggestions in pictures to create the languages for characters

+Teachers can suggest by asking the questions:

“What is happening in picture A?”

“What do you see in picture B?’’

+Teachers can ask students to rearrange the pictures in the correct order of the story -> Then students look at the pictures and retell the story basing on the content of the pictures

Example

Text book 10 Unit 1 A Day in the Life of…

Speaking_ Task 2:

-Teacher asks students to look at the pictures and tell the activities

Teacher: What is Quan doing in picture a?

A: He is getting up

Teacher: What is he doing at 2:15pm?

- ask the representatives of each group to report in front of class

Group A: Quan often gets up at 2pm and stars reading books from 2:15 to 4:30pm After watching TV for about 30 minutes, he goes to the stadium to play football with his friends from 5:15 to 6:30pm………

3.3 Chain drills

+ Teachers give out the practicing topics

+ Teachers start the lesson by asking a question for a student This student answers the teacher’s question then he or she has to ask another student a

question That student answers his or her friend’s question and asks a question for the third student…… And this chain drill practicing form is continued until all students in class are spoken

+The questions must be asked basing on the given topics but it is not

necessary to develop the sentences in a correct conversation

Teacher: What is Tet?

Hung: Tet is the time when Vietnamese people celebrate the beginning of

spring and it is also the start of lunar New Year When is Tet, Lan?