Some experiencec of teaching english speaking skill for students grade 6,7 camngoc secondary school

The combination of active teaching methods inspeaking skill which helps lessons become more lively and students feelconfident to speak English is not easy.. Thus, how do we do to apply t

A - INTRODUCTION

I THE REASONS OF CHOOSING TOPIC:

Vietnam has been currently developing and integrating with the world - aknowledge-based economy and an informative society with difficulties andchallenges To have a common language with other countries in the region andthe world, English plays a really important role

Foreseeing the importance, English was taught at the early time Besides,many people understand that they have to use language to communicate andwork This is also the reason why learning English in secondary schools isalways concerned by parents, students and teachers Therefore, English hasbecome a necessary subject at all educational levels

However, learning English is a process of trying, effort Both teachersand learners must always cultivate more knowledge everyday In order to havepatience during the process of learning English, teachers should evokeexcitement of learning a foreign language

In fact, evoking the excitement of learning English is not a simple thingbut it requires creativity, mobility of teachers and rhythmic combination oflearners

Being an English teacher, I always research and think of solutions and theeffective direction which helps them be fond of their suject and apply flexiblespeaking skill in life However, according to the program of changing the newEnglish textbooks, a book whose both good content and form satisfies the topicsthroughout four skills: listening –speaking – reading - writing I would like tomention is speaking skill The combination of active teaching methods inspeaking skill which helps lessons become more lively and students feelconfident to speak English is not easy

Thus, how do we do to apply the methods of active teaching to teachingspeaking English skill which help students become confident when usingEnglish?

With my small experience as well as through experience of teaching in

the classroom, I explore the following issue: "Some experiences of teaching English speaking skill for students grade 7 in typical English program at Cam Ngoc secondary school"

II RESEARCH PURPOSES:

By presenting this topic, I would like to share my small effort to helpEnglish teachers in secondary schools in the district to have more ideas onteaching speaking skill making lessons lively and flexible Besides, I also made

a selection of methods which suit the activities in class Moreover, I would like

to contribute a little of my effort to create excitement of English suject

III RESEARCH SCOPE:

In order to research on this issue deeply and carefully, I focused on how

to apply active teaching methods in teaching and practicing English speakingskill at secondary schools However, the object of study I tended toward was

students class 7 In the process of teaching students class 7, speaking skill isnot new but it is not easy to apply Therefore, practicing speaking skill will benecessary It creates a solid foundation to help students feel confident ofcommunicating in English in schools and their life.

IV RESEARCH METHODS:

To research this initiatives experience, I used two main groups of method:

1 Method of theoretical research.

- Look at the pedagogical documents related to research problems onactive teaching methods and teaching speaking skills in English subjects

2 Method of practical research

- Checking , remarking , actual observations, exchange, conversations,summarizing the experience One of the most important methods is summarizingthe experience

V NEW CHARACTERS OF INITIATIVES EXPERIENCE.

Comparing with previous experience , this one is researched on teachingspeaking skill and applied to new textbook 7 in English typical program.Thecontent and structure researched mainly are in Communication part.Steps inteaching this skill mainly tend to teaching and learning actively The speakingskill’s activities are very various and can help students speak English fluentlyand confidently

B - CONTENTS

I RATIONALE:

According to the project "Teaching and learning foreign languages in thenational education system in period 2008 - 2020" approved by the PrimeMinister on September 30th, 2008 The main aims of foreign language educationsystem is to complete renovation of teaching and learning foreign language inthe national education system, implement the program of new foreign languageteaching and learning at all educational levels, train levels in order to achieve asignificant step into qualifications by 2015, capabilities of using foreignlanguage of human resources, especially in some priority fields ; by 2020 themajority of young people who have graduated from secondary schools, collegesand universities have the capacity of using foreign language independently.Theyare confident in communicating and learning, working in integration,multilanguage, multicultural environment ; make foreign language becomevariable strength of Vietnamese people

Thus, learning English is not only reading text, understanding grammarlike it ever did before but learners now represent in four skills : listening,speaking, reading, writing, and especially, speaking English proficiently,confidently will serve usefully for work and integration life

So as to achieve above aims,it requires innovation in teaching andlearning foreign languages in the curriculum with content, appropriate trainingprograms to overcome the limitations and difficulties that students encounter.

Therefore, teaching English speaking means that teaching students:

- Fluency in English to express purposes, capable of thinking and logicalsequence

- How to say sounds in English and use English sentence patterns

- Use words, accent and intonation

- Select the appropriate words and phrases in every context

- Proficient, fluent use of English as possible

II STATUS OF PROBLEM:

1 Structure English textbook 7:

According to the educational renovation programs and project of changingnew textbooks by 2018, teachers have the opportunity to use English textbooks

7 With topics as well as content are extremely various tied to the students’daily life The content of the book includes 12 units and is divided into fourmain topics:

+ Topic 1: About the people: Unit 1: My hobbies, Unit 2 :Health, Unit 3:

Community Service

+ Topic 2: About Culture: Unit 4: Music and Arts, Unit 5 : Vietnamese

Food and drink, Unit 6: The first University in Vietnam

+ Topic 3: About Travel: Unit 7 : Traffic , Unit 8 : Films, Unit 9 :

Festivals Around the World

+ Topic 4 : About society in the future : Unit 10 : Sources of Energy, Unit

11:Travelling in the future, Unit 12: An overcrowed World

Interspersed among these topics is Review 1,2,3,4 helps students review thevocabulary, grammar and how to communicate in every topic

In addition, each unit in English textbook 7, there are 8 parts divided intoseven periods:

+ Period 1: Getting Started: Helping students become familiar and excited

with the topic of the lesson

+ Period 2: A closer look 1: Provide students the necessary vocabulary for

the topic of the lesson

+ Period 3: A closer look 2: Provide the necessary grammar for the topic of

+ Period 7: Looking Back and Project: Review the knowledge of total

lesson and provide opportunities for all students to do small projects in groups

2 Status of teaching to speak English 7:

In fact, In the current teaching, the application of textbooks in teachingEnglish 7 had a certain number of difficulties

* About teacher’s qualifications:

According to the project of teaching and learning English in the nationaleducation system by 2020, English teachers must have the capacity of teachinglanguage two levels higher than general teaching level However, the currentsituation is that some teachers do not have enough standards to meet appropriaterequirement of teaching the new textbook and they are afraid of learning to improvetheir expertise and follow the content of English textbooks 7

Besides,teachers felt embarrassed in designing complementary activitiesand combine the activities in the book The content is relatively long compared

to the time prescribed in a period Teachers had difficulty in arranging activities

in a period and they didnot have much time to correct students’ speakingEnglish and pronunciation

It isnot only about the foreign language competence but also theknowledge of the unit, some teachers still felt quite new to the topic of thelesson Sometimes they have searched to get ideas about new topics

Example: English 7-Unit 8- Films It is about the film in textbook,

many English teachers didnot understand the information of films,so sometimesthey are embarrassed to explain the content

Or : English 7-Unit 11 - Travelling in the future -Communication,

the topic is about transports in future, teachers had no idea to find a goodsolution to the traffic problem in the future

* About renewing teaching methods:

Besides, the traditional methods trend to spread information one way:teachers explain, students copy These methods waste teachers almost the time

in class and students are modest to practice Such learning no longer suits withcurrent trends and especially, learning a foreign language is necessary topractice constantly until fluently, turning what we understand to what they used.Therefore, it requires teachers to renew active teaching methods to help studentsspeaking English more confidently

With speaking skill focused on the period like Communication, Projectand a small part of 6 periods This skill is the most difficult of four skills but is

particularly important With such difficulties, if teachers make arrangement aswell as combine flexible alternative activities, the students can speak morefluently and confidently

3 Status of learning to speak English 7:

In fact, teaching as well as educational programs of orienting capacitydevelopment of the current study, students are centeral and focusing on theoutput quality of learning is very noticeable

When teaching speaking skill I conducted the following three-stepprocedure: Pre - speaking ,While - speaking , Post – speaking For each step, Ihave known the most common difficulties students encountered in the learningprocess

a In step " Pre - Speaking" :

*About thematic vocabulary:

This is one of the most common problems students have.Because of notenough vocabulary to use in speaking English, so they find it dificult to expressideas.How to learn vocabulary, structure traditionally by recording repeatedlywords and structures with Vietnamese meaning that limit them to rememberlonger and make confused to find the appropriate words to the circumstances

* About thematic general knowledge :

With English textbooks 7, it require students to have the basicbackground knowledge of each topic However, there are some new topics thatstudents do not know making them confused when giving their ideas

Example: English7 - Unith 10 : Sources of Enenrgy, students will find

rather confused for some specialized words "carbon- footprint "or nuclearenergy that also makes students reluctant to classify kinds of energy

* How to choose the appropriate information with topic:

After having basic background knowledge, students will express their idea.However,the ideas about the topic are too broad with many different opinionsand students cannot choose which idea is right for questions or speech teachersgive so, it makes them afraid to speak, fear wrong and lack of idea

Example: Unit 1- My hobbies - Getting Started , when students

express their hobbies , they donot know to choose the typical ideas to saymaking the others can not guess her hobby referred to

b In step "While - Speaking":

Besides the difficulties in the step “ Pre-speaking”, in this part studentshave too many problems focusing mainly on how to work:

* Presentating ideas when speaking :

With the topics in English textbooks 7,in spite of being interesting,arrangement ideas is not simple.While students were speaking,they oftenexpressed so messy that listeners could not understand what their idea and

content It caused students’ speech to be incoherent, inconsistent

* About Thinking of Vietnamese translation into English:

The habit of thinking in Vietnamese to hear and speak English will makestudents inconfident to speak This is the main reason that makes them not keep

up the speed of the speaker and it is very difficult for them to describe histhoughts in English smoothly, fluently

* In groupwork skills:

Groupwork skill is an important skill for every student in their learningprocess About division of groups, because students have not been practised alot, assigning groupwork is not clear yet Excellent students work well whileother students are lazy to practice

Groupwork skill is not really good, students sometimes have too manyideas but they do not know which choice is right Students do not listen to theother members and have many arguments in groups.It takes much time todiscuss.Therefore, if we solve this difficult,students will have a good groupwork skill

c In step "Post - Speaking":

This is the output of speaking skill but students have many difficulties inpracticing speaking in class

About performance, I noticed that the students were not comfortable tospeak English, many students were not themselves when comunicating inEnglish Some became bolder, others were ashame or serious Besides, whenthey spoke in front of class,they were often afraid of wrong grammar and thatother students laughed at, so it limited speaking or they often spoke very quietlywith bow hand gestures It also made express many information ineffective

About contact practicality, students often have difficulty in contactingand moving the content they have learned as a tool to communicate

Through the research and pointed out the difficulties students oftenencountered in learning English in secondary schools, it inspired me to apply theappropriate mehods to overcome the maximum difficilties and help them havegood conditions to develop their speaking skill

III MEASURES TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM:

Foreseeing the difficulties of teachers and students as well as restrictions

of facilities conditions, I have studied and applied some specific solutions inteaching English speaking in grade 7 and has made remarkably results

Depending on each lesson, teachers will have different ways to build theprocess of his lectures With teaching speaking skill , I usually rely on thefollowing steps :

1 Before speaking (Pre – Speaking ) : introduce new language:

As having analyzed above difficulties, to help students with inspiration,

I started lessons quickly with the simple questions to lead a comfort, confident

to speak English With Pre-Speaking, I have applied the following activities:

+ Greeting / chatting in English

+ Observing a picture then asking and answering about the picture

+ A riddle

+ A language game (Crosswords, noughts and crosses, ect)

+ Do not drop the ball

1.1 Greeting / chatting in English:

Facing with the difficulty is that not know to choose the appropriateinformation for students, I have used how to explore student ‘s knowledge byeliciting or brainstorming tips In addition, I contacted old lessons related tonew lessons with many forms such as: Ask related questions ; give exercisesthey learned ;create the context or reasons related to the part " speaking "

With this technique, I have performed in some lessons in Englishtextbooks 7 as follows:

Example: English 7 Unit 11: Travelling in the future Communication: Before starting the lesson, I elicit students some questions

-closer to everyday life:

+ "How do you go to school everyday?"

+ "What do you see traffic problems khi you go to school?"

Students enthusiastically answered these questions closer to everydaylife making students comfortable to speak English And sometimes somestudents' answers were really interesting and special (Example: The students

saw the problems: the rubbish is on the road and the People use the places to buy breakfast, etc.)

1.2 Observing a picture then asking and answering about the picture:

As one of the important items in teaching English, pictures or illustrationsare used in the "Before" and has many advantages, helping students navigate thelesson and answer some questions involved The observations helps studentshave a clear vision of the topic of the lesson today

Example : English 7 - Unit 3 - Community Service - A closer look 1, I

used the tonation of native speakers to teach students vocabulary then test their

knowledge I let them select pitures suiting learned words (Checking vocabualary: matching the pictures with the Phrases) From such activities I

have expanded for them to discuss and describe, gave the way to helpcharacters in those situations

+ People in a flooded area: people are in the water → They need food

and clothes

+ Elderly People: there are old people → They need to look after.

+ Sick children: the children are in the hospital They need some

medicines

+ Homeless people: The people are in the bench without a house→ Give

them a place to live

+ Diabled people: They can’t walk or they can’t see → They need our help.

Example 3: Unit 9: Festival Around the World- Communication.

Before entering the lesson, I supplied the students with some vocabulariesrelated to the content of the new lesson to help students have a look on the Westfestivals Thanksgiving

TURKEY CANEBERRY

GRAVY STUFFING FEAS

Instead of reading, I got students to hear the tonation of native speaker,then repeat chorus ,chorally To check vocabulary ,teachers can check in severalways such as: Get students to work individually and correct their pronunciation

or teachers speak Vietnamese, students repeat English or get students to play

games called "make sentences by using these words"; "what and where", "ordering vocabulary" This helps students understand faster and apply the to the context

better , prepare better for the coming lessons

1.3 A riddle:

In teaching English to children, using games as an effective and usefulmeasure to create fun learning environment and attract students into the lesson,

contribute to improving the ability to acquire knowledge and training foreignlanguage skills for students And I used the puzzle method (A riddle) to helpstudents have a look on the topic they are ready to speak and give some furtherinformation.

Example : English 7- Unit 9: Festivals around the world- A closer look 1: I help students remind the previous lessons and consolidate their

knowledge about the name of the festivals by calling students to describe thepicture that they chose and offer their simple typical description

+ "You can see the old man in red"

+ "You can throw the water Into everyone What is it? ".

1.4 A language game (Crosswords, noughts and crosses, ect)

In teaching English to children, using games as an effective and usefulmeasure to create fun learning environment and attract students into the lesson,contribute to improving the ability to acquire knowledge ; training foreignlanguage skills for students and stimulate their pleasure and inspire theirspeaking ability

Example: English 7 Unit 5: Vietnamses Food and Drink Communication: I got students to participate in games to consolidate learned

-vocabulary and consult to talk about food of the groups By participatingnoughts and crosses game in groups, It will stimulate the struggle between thegroups and make them to forget shyness when speaking English

Eg: The lemon is too sour to use this food.

1.5 Don’t drop the ball:

This technique is used as a familiar game to communicate It helpsstudents remember longer and create their speaking reflections

This method is often used in Pre-Speaking When entering the class I took

a little ball with me and asked a few short questions, for example: "Did you have

a good weekend ? ".

After finishing the question, I tossed the ball toward students so that theycould catch it.If the student did not answer the question, I quietly took the ball,repeated the question and did again to another child

When students answered the questions, I signaled to them to toss the ball

back to me If the student answer a short answer, for example, "Yes", I did not

catch the ball when they came back me and let it fall off the floor and expresseddissatisfaction After a short time, I picked up the ball and asked that student:

"Where did you go?" and tossed the ball back to that student I continued doing until the students answered more fully and asked again, for example: "To the movies How about you? " At that time, I expressed satisfaction and caught the

ball,then tossed it toward another student for them to answer the question

2 While speaking ( While- speaking ) :

After attracting the concentration, attention of all students in theclassroom, teachers give speech purposes and the instructions

* The types of exercises in "speaking" skill, I have applied as follows:

- Controlled Speaking (Controlled practice)

+ Repetition drill and Substitution drill

- Free Speaking (Free practice / Production)

+ The list of main ideas and Hot seat

- Practice groupwork skills

2.1 Controlled Speaking (Controlled practice)

Students relied on situations tips (through drawings, words, givensentence structures or conversation samples) to practice speaking as required.Studnts practiced in individuals/pairworks/groups under the control of theteachers (correct pronunciation, grammatical errors, given word cues ).Students call individuals or pairs to practice (talk again) speaking as required

a Repetition drill (repeated exercise ):

With the advantages of this exercise form, the students will get used to thestress system, rhythm and intonation of English Therefore, the meaning isexpressed Besides, students can get used to the sound system of English

through listening - speaking Then students will get used selecting appropriatevocabulary for each question and context.

For example: Unit 1: My hobby - Getting Started I gave questions and

answers cues, each student practiced as models

Eg: A: Do you like cycling?

B: No, I do not / Yes, I do.

Students practice based on a table of hobbies given phrases, it helpedstudents shape what the speaking content was

b Substitution drill: (Replaced Exercise)

Substitution assignments mainly appear in "GRAMMAR PRACTICE" insome units Students practice listening – speaking as samples based onstructure Therefore, we should proceed from the simplity to the complexity sothat students can practice easily and deepen the knowledge of learned language

In addition, I also used more pictures and photos in order to develop theuse of this method

For example, English 7- Unit 5: Vietnamese Food and Drink - A

closer look 2 Students have been learning the structure “ How much and How

many “ then I gave them assignments when they had understood the usage and

I got students to make questions based on cues

2.2 Free Speaking (Free practice / Production):

a.Speaking outline of each lesson (The list of main ideas)

When speaking about the students’ own experience, their friends,relatives or hometown Teachers should not restrict their ideas and languageand should get them to speak freely to promote their creativity We shouldcombine frequent use between pairswork and groupswork so that they have

more opportunities to use English.We also should encourage them relate to thereal situation in their own lives.

Example 1: English 7- Unit 2 : Health- Skills 1 I got students to make

3 main ideas when talking about sport habits and calorie consumption I askedstudents to write basic ideas as follows:

+ What activities you do.

+ How long you do them everyday.

+ How many calories you use to do these activities.

After students made outline, I asked them to work in group of 2 or 3 andpractice speaking topic Students listen and comment on their partners’ speech

b Hot seat :

I guided students to work in groups and in turn students would sit on thehot seat position.Their task was to talk about the ideas of the topic I gave.Thenthey moved to other groups to share their group's ideas

Example: English 7- Unit 8: Films- Skills 1: I got students to work in

groups to choose the movie the group liked best and build information for

outline they and I had designed Students would base on the outline : types of film, actors / stars, the plot, review, and prepare information to share Then I

guided students to move to other groups to receive different information and listen to the share of the group

Besides, students would listen and note the information they heard andunderstood from other groups.Finally, I would get the students to choose whichgroup has the best film

Student ‘s note samples

2.3 Practice groupwork skills :

In order to solve the problem of groupwork skills, I did as follows : Students would practice speaking in pairs and in groups I arranged in pairs or

in groups with all excellent,good, average, weak levels so that they couldexchange knowledge with each other I set out a monitor to assign its members

to work obviously