skkn applying some useful speaking activities to enhance the 10th form students’ activeness at 4 tho xuan high school

TABLE OF CONTENTSSỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO THANH HOÁ TRƯỜNG THPT 4 THỌ XUÂN EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE APPLYING SOME USEFUL SPEAKING ACTIVITIES TO ENHANCE THE 10TH FORM STUDENTS’ ACTIVENESS AT 4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO THANH HOÁ

TRƯỜNG THPT 4 THỌ XUÂN

EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE

APPLYING SOME USEFUL SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

TO ENHANCE THE 10TH FORM STUDENTS’ ACTIVENESS

AT 4 THO XUAN HIGH SCHOOL

Người thực hiện: Đỗ Thị Sen

Chức vụ: Giáo viên

Đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT 4 Thọ Xuân

SKKN thuộc lĩnh vực (môn): Môn Tiếng Anh

THANH HOÁ NĂM 2018

1 INTRODUCTION……… 1

1.1 Reasons for choosing the research……… 1

1.2 Aims of the research……… 1

1.3 Object of the research……… 2

1.4 Methods of the research……… 2

2 CONTENT……… 3

2.1 Theoretical background……… 3

2.2 The reality of the problem……… … 5

2.3 Measure implementation……… 8

2.3.1 Brainstorming ……… 9

2.3.2 Information Gap Activities……… 11

2.3.3 Playing Cards………. 13

2.4 Result……… 14

3 CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS……… 15

3.1 Conclusion……… 15

3.2 Suggestions……… 15

REFERENCES……… 16

APPENDIX……… 17

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Reasons for choosing the research

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 It is also a "useful tool" and a

"master- key" to discover the world of science, technology, education, culture, business and diplomacy With such a trend of development, learning English is, therefore, important than ever before It is of such great importance that many students are more and more interested in learning English 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

Speaking skill is a very important skill when learning English Today’s world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students’ communicative skills, because, only in that way, learners can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in teacher communicative circumstances Many language learners regard speaking ability as the measure of knowing a language These learners define fluency as the ability to converse with others, much more than the ability to read, write or comprehend oral language

The real situation of English language teaching in Vietnam shows that speaking

is the skill students usually neglect and are not good at even though they have very good grammatical knowledge Students’ learning methods depend much on teachers; students still are quite passive in their learning process In order to improve the students’ speaking ability, teachers can use many kinds of communicative activities

Being aware of this urgent problem, I have a great desire to study the current activeness of students especially the 10th form students at 4 Tho Xuan high school and to investigate the learning activities in speaking lesson That is the reason why

I choose the topic “Applying some useful speaking activities to enhance the 10 th

form students’ activeness at 4 Tho Xuan high school”.

1.2 Aims of the research

The aims of the research are:

- To investigate the situation of teaching and learning speaking to the 10th graders in classroom

- To investigate the effectiveness of using games in teaching speaking to the 10th

graders at 4 Tho Xuan high school

- To provide some suggestions and implications for the improvement of speaking teaching at 4 Tho Xuan high school by using games in addition to other techniques

1.3 Object of the research

The research focuses specifically on using games in warm up activity in teaching speaking to the 10th graders at 4 Tho Xuan high school, namely, 3 classes 10A2, 10A4 and 10A5

1.4 Methods of the research

In the process of carrying out this research, the survey questionnaire is used to collect data The survey questionnaire including pre-task and post-task survey questionnaire is for students from 3 classes 10A2, 10A4 and 10A5 at 4 Tho Xuan high school

2 CONTENT 2.1 Theoretical background

Speaking, as Bygate (1997) definites, involves not only the use of the right sound in the patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also the choice of words and inflections in the right order to convey the right meaning

O’Malley and Pierce (1996) states that speaking seems to be an important skill that a learner should acquire It is very important in order to enable students to communicate effectively through oral language because the disability of the students to speak may lead them to be unable to express their ideas even in a simple form of conversation

Common speaking activities

A variety of activities can be used to develop speaking skills Below are some common ones:

* Role play

* Information gap activity

* Problem – solving

* Other picture card activities

Motivation

Motivation is generally defined as an abstract concept used to describe the

willingness of a person to expand to reach a particular goal For language learners, mastery of a language may be a goal In linguistic, sociolinguistic and second language acquisition, a number of language learner motivation models have been postulated

Oxford and Shearin (1996) points out: “Motivation is important because it directly influences how often use L2 learning strategies, how much students

interact with native speakers, how much input they receive in the language being learnt (the target language), how well they do on curriculum-related tests, how high their general proficiency level becomes, and how long they preserve and maintain L2 skills after language study is over…”

Language games

Language games mean games related to language Hadfield (1987) classifies language games into may categories as follow:

+ Sorting, ordering, or arranging games

+ Information gap games

+ Guessing games

+ Search games

+ Matching games

+ Labeling games

+ Exchanging games

+ Board games

+ Role play games

Definition of “Teaching speaking”

- The goal of teaching speaking skill is communicative efficiency

- Learners should be able to make themselves understand, using their current proficiency to the fullest They should try to avoid confusion in the message due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, and to observe the social and cultural rules that apply in each communicative situation

- To help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking, teachers can use

a balanced activities approach that combines: language input, structured output and communicative output

- To use language as a means of expressing values and judgments and organize their thought in a meaningful and logical sequence

- To produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns

- To use word and sentence stress, and intonation

- To select appropriate words and sentences

- To use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which is called as fluency?

Guiding principles

The following principles are important to keep in mind when teaching speaking:

* The techniques should cover the range of learner’s needs from accuracy to

fluency

* Speaking activities should be motivating to learners

* Correction of learner errors should occur during speaking activities which are accuracy-oriented not fluency oriented

* Speaking activities should be integrated with other language skills

* Students should be encouraged to not only answer questions but also to initiate conversation and to take risks

* Students should be provided with speaking strategies such as negotiating

meaning, asking for clarification, turn-taking etc

* The teacher should design speaking activities which simulate real-life situations

so that students can learn how to speak naturally

How to teach speaking

- Definitely, by “interacting”.

- Communicative language teaching and collaborative learning serve best of this arm

- Communicative language teaching should be based on real-life situations that require communication By using this method in English speaking language classes, learners will have the opportunity of communicating with each other in the target language

- The teachers help students learn to speak so that the students can use speaking to learn

2.2 The reality of the problem

General reality

English as a foreign language in Vietnam is taught in high schools as a compulsory subject Therefore, it is of great importance that we should take students' English language learning into consideration The implementation of English teaching at present is based on the content standard Its target is to help students to reach an informational level It means that school learners are expected

to be able to have adequate knowledge to use it to communicate with others in English In fact, the English instruction in some High schools does not demonstrate

a satisfactory result Many students fail to reach the goal of the English teaching They are not able to communicate with the language either orally or in written form although they have learned English for many years Many of the learners in a speaking class are reluctant speakers This reluctance is partly due to their prior learning experience Many of them were educated in a large class in schools situated in noisy neighborhoods where opportunities to speak are severely limited Others were taught in schools where speaking was simply not encouraged Moreover, 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

The 10 th form students at 4 Tho Xuan high school

Table 1: Result of the quality test at the beginning of the school year

6

The research was carried out at 4 Tho Xuan high school with the participation

of 135 the 10th form students All of the surveyed students have learned English for

6 years However, most of them have difficulties in mastering four language skills

Of the four skills, as many of them revealed, they find speaking especially

important yet challenging one That was the reason why most of the students feel bored and unmotivated in speaking classes

The survey questionnaire used for students from 3 classes 10A2, 10A4 and 10A5 at 4 Tho Xuan high school

Table 2: Students’ attitudes and perspectives towards speaking lessons

Options Questions

A (%)

B (%)

C (%)

D (%)

Question 1:

How is speaking skill important to you?

A Very important

B Important

C Normal

D Not important at all

Question 2:

How do you find speaking topics introduced in

English 11 textbook?

A Very interesting B Interesting

C Normal D Boring

Question 3:

How do you find speaking activities introduced

in English 11 textbook?

A Very difficult B Difficult

C Normal D Easy

Question 4:

Are you willing to speak in speaking classes?

A Yes, I like speaking very much

B Yes, sometimes

C No, I’m never willing to speak

As can be seen clearly from the above table, a lot of the surveyed students think that speaking is the most difficult skill meanwhile there are only 8 % consider speaking very important More specifically, 46 % find speaking topics introduced

in English 10 textbook boring and 62% find speaking activities introduced in English 10 textbook very difficult Moreover, there are so many students who are never willing to speak in speaking classes (71%) In summary, the students are losing their interest during the lesson Therefore, an effective technique should be exploited to motivate students in these speaking lessons

Table 3: A summary of students' activeness in English speaking learning

Students' activeness in English speaking learning

Students' responses

(%)

1 The level of students' involvement in the

speaking lesson

- Very active

- Quite active

- Little active

- Not active at all

5,2 13,6 26,5 54,7

2 The reasons for students not involving in English

speaking activities

- Nervousness and shyness

- Inefficient learning activities

- Insufficient English knowledge

- Not speaking English fluently

20,8 12,6 47,3 19,3 0

3 Students' willingness for communication and

discussion the tasks with others

- Yes

- No

23,5 76,5

4 The frequency of finding chances to

practice English inside and outside classroom

- Frequently

7,5 18,3 30,2 44

The data collected from the students' questionnaire and classroom observation give us an overview of the activeness of the 10th form students in learning speaking English According to what is shown from the table 3, it can be realized that a small number of the 10th form students enjoy learning speaking English while there are still a lot of the students who have a negative attitude towards English speaking learning

Obviously, students nowadays have a clear awareness of English learning; they learn it not because they are forced to study but because they are conscious of the importance and necessity of English at present Therefore, in order to help students learn English effectively, the enhancement of students' activeness in English

speaking learning is of paramount importance

2.3 Measure implementation

Traditional classroom speaking practice often takes the form of drills in which one person asks a question and another gives an answer The question and the answer are structured and predictable, and often there is only one correct, predetermined answer The purpose of asking and answering the question is to demonstrate the ability to ask and answer In contrast, the purpose of real communication is to accomplish a task, such as conveying a telephone message, obtaining information or expressing an opinion In real communication, participants must manage uncertainty about what the other person will say Authentic communication involves an information gap; each participant has information that the other does not have In addition, to achieve their purpose, participants may have

to clarify their meaning or ask for confirmation of their own understanding

To create classroom speaking activities that will develop communicative competence, teachers need to incorporate a purpose and an information gap and allow for multiple forms of expression However, quantity alone will not necessarily produce competent speakers Teachers need to combine structured output activities, which allow for error correction and increased accuracy, with communicative output activities that give students opportunities to practice language use more freely

In classroom, besides active students some of them are still passive in the learning process It is the teachers' duty to evoke these students' interests, encourage their involvement in classroom activities

To lessen the students' fear of making mistakes and shyness, teachers should

increase students' confidence by encouraging them to contribute their ideas to the

lesson Teachers may give them some cues for the answers and express satisfaction and excitement about their ideas even silly answers It is essential that teachers

should use open- ended questions as much as possible that many answers are

acceptable This makes students to be more confident and less afraid of making mistakes

* The following activities are used frequently in speaking lesson:

- Discussions

- Reporting

- Role-play

- Simulations

- Story telling

- Picture describing