Some experience for grade 6 students at dien bien secondary school on how to learn listening well

I Introduction Rationales Nowadays, following the trend of national integration English contributes a significant part in many areas, including Education English is not only a communication tool but also a key to the cultural treasure of mankind On the other hand, with the rapid development of information technology, learning English becomes more urgent and easy for all ages, especially for secondary school students English has long been one of the main subjects in their curriculums However, learning and using English requires both a diligent and creative training process for both students and teachers, not day by day, especially for the first-graders Like grade 1, grade Most of them are still surprised, with both teachers and friends Therefore, learning English becomes more difficult, especially Listening skills As an English teacher at Dien Bien Secondary School for nearly 10 years, I am very concerned about this issue In the 2018 - 2019 school year, I was assigned to teach classes When I first received the class ( September, 2018 ), I conducted a small survey of their English Listening skill and received the following results Class 6C (48 students) 6H Exellent Good 10 Average Below Weak 15 average 14 (29.16%) 12 (4.18%) (14.58% ) ( 20.83 %) ( 31.25% ) 10 15 14 (54 students) (18.51%) (26.31%) (25.92%) (22.22%) (7.04%) Looking at the survey results, we can realize that only the number of students who meet the required number of students in the class is very low (35.41% in grade 6C and 46.29% in grade 6H Objectives and tasks of the topic In this situation, being an English teacher of grade students, who have been learning English for many years, I personally want my students to hear better, can successfully master the information they have heard in daily communication To so, find the key to cause of the problem: "Why you listen badly?" In the process of teaching and learning to observe students, I find that most of them not know how to learn It is often difficult for students to listen In the class, students often say that although there are many words in the lesson, they can’t hear Therefore, based on the knowledge gained at the University and the experience accumulated for nearly 10 years, I created this experience initiative to answer the question that was asked, and help my students to learn Listening skill better Object and scope of the study With the scope of this small initiative, I boldly dive into the issue "Some experiences for students in grade to learn good listening." I was assigned to teach classes 6C and 6H in the school year 2018 – 2019 at Dien Bien secondary school, so I applied this research method in my own classroom 4.Research Methods Based on the practical experience of nearly 10 years working at Dien Bien Secondary School, I realized that most of the students’parents have invested for their chidren to learn in some English centers but not fully know the information about the center, the course as well as the level of children, but just follow the general trend Moreover, teachers at these centers are not entirely British Therefore, learning efficiency is not high, or in other words is not effective In addition, some families hire tutors for their children at home These students are only allowed to complete homework for all the subjects according to the timetable, hardly learning new knowledge This is very dangerous, will gradually create a reliance on students, lazy thinking, reduced ability to remember With this research topic, I hope that I will solve a part of that problem that I have mentioned above, creating the best conditions for them to take the exam effectively, contributing to small secondary development of the education sector Students will be categorized before listening, each of the students will be new listeners with increasing difficulty levels II The content of the initiative The situation of teaching and learning listening at Dien Bien secondary school At Dien Bien secondary school, there are teachers of English, all teachers have approached and used relatively the techniques of listening well, proactively teaching with a method of organizing a lesson to listen and coordinate quite well, active teaching techniques In addition, the classrooms are well equipped with multi-purpose projectors, loud - speakers and radios It’s good for the listening process, helping teachers to use these devices more Therefore, the lessons taught become lively, charismatic and highly effective Students have been accustomed to each lesson Most of students can listen and recognize the voice of native speakers, listen to the songs with simple, moderate content, understand the teachers' requirements and assignments In addition, Dien Bien secondary school is one of the schools in Thanh Hoa city, so it is very convenient for students to attend English listening classes in some English centers to develop their listening skill However, there are still some students who have don’t want to study, lazy to write, limited listening ability Moreover, there are relatively difficult parts to listen to, a lot of knowledge, a little time to listen, difficult words that students can hardly understand Students are also unfamiliar with the speed of reading and speaking in English tapes, especially for students in grade So how to overcome these weaknesses, contribute to improving the quality of listening skills, helping students be more confident in communicating and using English as a second language? Some measures to teach and teach English listening skills to students 2.1 What is listening teaching Listening is a complex language activity, which is one of the main purposes of teaching and learning foreign languages When speaking, the ideas are often not arranged in a strict sequence like when writing, there are many redundant words, from buffering, or not grammatical It can be said, spoken off, hesitant When reading can read and reread many times, while listening to others, we can only listen once So, when teaching listening, in addition to general tricks that can be applied to listening skills, teachers also need specific tricks for listening activities of students Listening consists of two levels: * Level 1: (Identify or distinguish) The recognition of sounds, words, and words is related to each other When this ability becomes automatic, the listener can reproduce, behave and respond to what they hear * Level 2: (Option) The listener understands the words that are useful to understand the speaker At first, I understood the sentences, the words were short, simple, and later understood the longer sentences 2.2 Study listening activity * Listening in daily life There are two main ways to listen - Entertaining listening: through listening to radio, watching television but can still conduct another job simultaneously - Listen with focus: is the intentional listening activities, want to capture some information For example, listening to news on the radio or television, listening to instructions, explanations, listening to lectures In this case, the listener mainly focuses on the important points because they know what they want to listen This helps listeners only pay attention to the right content, which make listening more effectively * Listening in language learning environment Mainly focused on listening and developing listening skills There are some following main types of listening in learning a foreign language - Listen to the main idea - Listen to find the necessary information - Listen to confirm the previous guess - Listening to perform communication tasks are in place - Listen to details (both content and language structure) 2.3 Conduct listening techniques - Confidence building - Sentence stress reception - Topic interpretation - Listening to the main idea - Recognising details - Dictations - Listening to capture necessary information - Sequence diagram - Spelling grammar - Listening-recording 2.4 Organize different listening activities * Helping students listening effectively In fact, in the two classes I teach, listening is still a difficult skill for the majority of students To overcome these difficulties, teachers can use the measures that I have tried to apply in classes as follows: - Introduce the topic, the content related to the listening , explain concepts if necessary - Raising questions to help students predict what content to listen to - Introducing new words (if necessary ) - Giving guidance questions when listening - Divide the listening process into steps For example: + The first time: listen to the main idea, answer the general questions + The second time: listen to more details - If the lesson is long, divide the lesson into short paragraphs for students to listen to, have different specific listening requirements * Predict what is coming (prediction) It is really necessary to predict the content related to the listening part Through these predictions, they can visualize a number of vocabulary related to the listening in a certain context This activity can be carried out with storylines or a conversation For example, when listening to a conversation about asking for directions, the teacher can stop after a character's question line in the conversation and ask students how the other character will respond What words will be used When listening to a story, the teacher can stop at the appropriate sections and ask questions such as: What just happened? Where did it happen? What will happen next? before listening to the whole story Example : English – Unit ( My neighbourhood – page 45 ) Listen to the conversation between a stranger and Duy’s dad Fill in the Blanks with the word you hear A : Excuse me Where is the supermarket? B : Go to (1) the end of the street It’s on your (2) _ A : And where is the (3) ? B : It’s in ( 4) _ Take the ( 5) , and it’s on your left Tape script: A : Excuse me Where is the supermarket? B : Go to the end of this street It’s on your right A : And where is the lower secondary school? B : It’s in Le Duan street Take the second right and it’s on your left A : Great ?Where can I have some coffee ? B : Quynh Cafe in Tran Quang Dieu street is a good one A : How can I get there? B : Firt turn left, then turn right Go straight It’s on your left A : How about an art gallery? B : First take the third left Then go to the end of Le Loi Street, and it’s on your right * Listen to assert your guesses about the listening’s content: Before listening, the mining teacher suggests what students already know about the content of the problem to listen, what is not clear, what is not know Then, listen to and relate your knowledge to the content you need to listen to Example: English - Review ( units 1, 2, - page 37 ) An and Mi are talking on the phone Listen and circle the part of the house you hear Kitchen Bathroom garden bedroom garage living room In this part, after listening to the request, the students can know that they will hear about the house, but not know what it is Would that be the names of the rooms or the names of the appliances in the room? But when they read the suggestions given, they would be limited to listening only about the rooms Tape script : An : Are you at home alone? Mi : No, every one is at home An : Where is your mum? Is she cooking in the kitchen? Mi : No, she is watering the flowers in the garden An : And where is your dad ? Mi : He’s in the living room An : What is he doing ? Mi : He’s listening to the radio An : What about your younger brother? Is he with your mum? Mi : No, he’s sleeping in my bedroom My cousin, Vi is here, too An : What is she doing? Mi : She’s watching TV * Listen for the necessary information When listening, the teacher has to create the listening requirements, focusing on the important contents so that listening has a specific purpose The forms of requirements are very diverse, which can be a form of answering questions or filling out forms Example : English – Unit (My friends – page 31 ) What you see in the photos? Choose the word in the box to fill in the table Then, listen and check riding a bike hiking skiing taking part in a cooking competition playing beach volleyball taking part in an art workshop visiting a milk farm playing traditional game taking a public speaking class A B C F G H D E I * Listen to grasp the main idea (Listen for gist / for main ideas) In many cases, students need to be trained to understand the main ideas and generalizations of the lesson without caring about the details Example : English – Unit ( Television – page 22 ) PROGRAMME CHANNEL CHANNEL CHANNEL Music: Green Green summer Cartoon : The Red Spotted Squirell Film : The Lonly Giraffe Home and Garden: How to make a Dog house Our World : The Old Town of Inca * Listen to perform the next communication activities There are listening activities, often in the form of filling out tables, to serve as a follow-up activity Example: English – Unit 3: My friends ( page 31) Listen to Mr Lee, the camp leader, talking on the phone with Nick’s parents What are they doing on Day Two and Day Three at the camp? Day Two Morning Doing a treasure hunt Afternoon Visiting a milk farm and Day Three 2.5 Understand some basic principles when conducting listening activities Normally, the process of a listening lesson goes through three stages: Pre Listening, While - Listening, and Post - Listening This teaching process not only helps students understand the lesson but also helps them use listening skills in real communication This way, teachers need to clearly define the purpose of each specific lesson, so that they can guide students to perform well in the next stages * Pre - Listening This step will help students navigate, think about the topic or situation before listening The teacher asks by asking about the topic of the listening, asking the students to observe the picture, etc Maybe they say incorrectly to what they are listening, but the problem is that they are interested before listening After that, the teacher instructs the task request when listening (choose right, wrong, answer questions ) and tell the students how many times they will listen * Some tricks teaching during this period: - True / False statements prediction - Open - prediction - Ordering - Pre-question Example 1: English 6- Unit 5: Natural wonders of the world ( page 58) Nick’s family are in the travel agent’s They want to go on holiday They are choosing a place from the brochure Listen and answer the questions *Pre - listening : - Step 1: Teaching vocabulary + mention ( v ) : translation + travel agent ( n ) : imagination + interesting ( a ) : translation + book ( v ) : translation - Step 2: Open prediction Ask students to read through the questions Predict the information and then compare it with their partners Finally, listen to he key words to answer the questions 1.What other places does the travel agent talk about ? 2.What questions does Nick’s mum ask? 3.What advice does the travel agent give? 4.Is Nick happy about the choice? - Feed back students' prediction 10 Example 2: English – Unit ( Television – page 22) Listen to the text and write statements – with T for true and F for false Statements 1.The first programme starts at seven-thirty 2.There are two progammes starting at the same time The Red Spotted Squirrel lasts forty-five minutes The Lonely Giraffe finishes at ten o’clock The Old Town of Inca is in India * While – Listening This step will allow students to have many training opportunities, so they can easily make mistakes, so teachers need to fix mistakes for students and make correct answers.Some activities shown during this period: + Defining True – False + Checking the correct answer + Matching + Filling in the grids / charts / gaps + Answering comprehension questions + Selecting + Deliberating mistakes + Listening and drawing Example 1: English – unit 4: My neighbourhood ( page 45 ) Listen to the conversation between a stranger and Duy’s dad Fill in the blanks with the words you hear A: Excuse me Where is the supermarket? B: Go to (1) the end of the street It’s on your (2) _ A : And where is the (3) ? B : It’s in ( 4) _ Take the ( 5) , and it’s on your left Example 2: English – unit : Sports and Game ( page 42 ) Listen to the passage Then write T for true and F for false for each sentence 1.Hai plays chess every Saturday “ Angry Bird” is Bill’s favourite game Alice doesn’t like doing sport very much Trung is very good at football Bill’s dream is to create a new game 11 * Post - Listening: This is the practice stage after listening At this stage, students use the "While listening" knowledge and language skills in meaningful, practical communication situations After listening, students need to perform a number of exercises such as reading the text, writing a similiar text The Other students listen and give comments Example : English 6- Unit 4: My neighbourhood (page 43 ) Nick is listening to an audio guide to Hoi An Listen and fill in the gaps Welcome to Hoi An! Hoi An is famous for its (1) buildings, shops, pagodas and houses They are older than in other cities in Viet Nam The streets are very narrow, so it is more (2) to walk there OK Let’s start out tour! First, go to Quan Cong Temple To get there, walk (3) _ for five minutes The Temple is on your left (4) go to The Museum of Sa Huynh Culture Take the second (5) Turn right, and it’s on your (6) _ Then, have lunch at Cafe 96 Its “Cao lau” and “banh vac” are very good Turn left and take the (7) _turning on your right.Finally, go to Hoa Nhap Workshop to buy presents for your friends Turn left, then turn right The Workshop is (8) Tan Ki house 12 Depending on the characteristics of each lesson, teachers can carry out the 3step process of listening comprehension for students, especially the first step so that they can help them to form and develop excitement and ability, focus, know how to use information to guess what to listen to Thus, students will be more proactive and confident when listening After listening and doing the exercises, 13 the teacher should summarize the conversation based on the information already in the lesson 2.6 Conduct multi-dimensional methods Many teachers think that teaching the listening part is the most difficult and most students think it is the most difficult to learn So how to teach students how to listen well? How can students make rapid progress during their time in secondary school? I often encourage students to practice listening with some of the following methods: - Watch many TV shows or movies in English / with English subtitles Listen or watch many times, before reading the subtitles Then, read the subtitles again, mainly checking the words that are heard or guessed, or words that students can pronounce back but don't understand how to write and what they mean Through this, they discovered that a word which they have seen before is easy to say in some way, but in different pronunciation After that, not look at the subtitles again but listen again a couple of times The attached images make students understand more or less the content of the listening, without translating each sentence By the way, students will be able to capture the main part of the news content - Listening to listening practice books with cassette tapes or listening to news via English radio and television programs such as VTV News, Talk Vietnam, Listen to tapes and write down what you hear, then compare it with the dialogue at the end of the book or the answer provided by the teacher This method is arguably the most effective, although it will take a long time for students to practice Students can compare and see the mistakes they make - Learn or listen to English songs, and sing along while listening Choose some of the songs you like, find out about it and listen After that, memorize and sing in parallel with the singer, and try to pronounce as well as keep the speed and the field right, because often the language in the songs is more difficult to hear than the usual sentences It may be difficult to hear phrases that are read 14 intertwined, stuck, or listening to some important words or misinterpreting a word that leads to content bias - Listening through fairy tales, poetry, fiction, proverbs and famous works.understand a word or phrase, try to repeat as many times as you have heard, then turn over the script to compare 2.7 Apply questioning techniques when teaching English listening skills During the teaching process, the question is always used as a popular tool and almost indispensable in every lesson In a listening lesson, I often use many different types of questions such as: Yes-No questions; Alternative questions; Wh-questions; Multiple choice; True-False The types of questions that are answered by taking the sentences heard directly in the lesson are often easier but with sentences that require reasoning and evaluation to answer, it is difficult to choose the type of questions to study Listening, guessing and answering are required for teachers to be flexible 2.8 Combine listening practice into other technical groups a Basic training technique group These are prerequisite tricks in forming students' ability to listen to English * Formation of attention focused attention when listening: Have students listen to each sentence or phrase, and the teacher call the students individually Practice giving students the sense and habit of listening to classmates One way to help students focus on listening is that teachers often ask questiions, students have to reuse information from what they have said to answer.These are prerequisite tricks in forming students' ability to listen to English Example: English 6- Unit 10: Our houses in the future (Page 74) Student A says: "Outside my window, I can see beach and the water I see chidren playing Where is my house” After student A finished, I called any of my students to answer the question: "What can A see outside his window? Where is his house? " 15 * Besides, teachers can integrate teaching some English songs for more lively lessons * Practice listening to the stress of the word and the stress of the sentence When listening to a word, we should practice listening to the stress of that word When listening to a sentence, pay attention to the stresses in the sentence and then combine those accents to guess the meaning of the whole sentence Example : English – unit : My friends ( page 54 ) Listen, then practice the chant Notice the rhythm We’re having a picnic We’re having a picnic Fun! Fun! Fun! We’re bringing some biscuits We’re bringing some biscuits Yum! Yum! Yum ! We’re playing together We’re playing together Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! *Practice listening and recognizing easy sounding pairs, sounds that are difficult to pronounce, how to connect sounds in native speakers This is an obstacle for students to listen to native speakers Teachers can use "ship or sheep" training materials to teach, this practice needs to be done in a regular and consistent manner while training new words, introducing new grammatical structures, or performing activities "Listen and read" or "read" in each lesson unit In addition, teachers can perform a number of games to help them both relax and strengthen their sound recognition skills and how to connect specific sounds closer to native sounds b Technical training group focus These are ways to help students practice listening comprehension skills in a conversation or a reading textbook There are two main measures: * Combine "Listen and read" or "read" sections: 16 Teachers create more listening opportunities for students by exploiting the language in these sections and designing a variety of listening exercises The "listen and read" section is a conversation to introduce the topic and new vocabulary and grammatical structure but also includes the language that students have learned Therefore, it is possible to exploit certain parts of this stage to practice listening skills Teachers create listening situations by giving real-world situations, actual family life, or real stories, etc In addition, teachers can give pictures related to the listening This step is designed to help students get excited and recognize the subject's direction Example: English 6- Unit 1: My new school ( page 7) - Set the scence: Look at the picture and answer the questions How many people are there in the picture? Who are they? What are they doing? - Ask students to listen and answer the questions Have students to listen to the tape twice to discover new vocabulary as well as its new structure and stress * Organize students to actively listen and creatively "listening" parts in textbooks Depending on the characteristics of each lesson, teachers can carry 17 out the three-step process of listening comprehension for students, especially the first step so that they can help them form and develop excitement and ability Focus on the focus to hear and know how to use information from the questions or pictures, charts in listening exercises to make a base to speculate what is listening Thus, students are more active and confident when listening Example : Englisch – unit : Our Tet holiday ( page 68 ) Mai and her mother are going shopping for Tet Listen and tick ( V ) the things they will buy Peach blossoms Banh chung New clothes A tie Sweets Fruit Chocolate biscuits 18 c Extensive training technique group Provide some extra exercises by selecting some language courses at the same level from such documents as doing short weekly, monthly tests, correcting lessons and assessing in class The results of these papers need to be kept in chronological order to help students easily identify their own progress, as well as let teachers communicate with their parents about their child's learning The result After applying the listening skill teaching methods that I presented above in classes 6C and 6H of Dien Bien secondary school, I found that students learned harder, interested in listeninG They also pronounced words more accurately, which help them to be more confident in communicating inside or outside the classroom I also easily find every weak and strong point so that I can have the best teaching method that suits each student's level Here are the results Class 6C 6H Total 48 54 Class 6C Time of survey months months Exellent Positive behavior 55% 70 % Good 14 Needs work behavior 45% 30 % Average Below Weak 18 average (48 students) 6H (18.75% ) ( 29.16%) 14 19 ( 37.5% ) 15 (10.41%) (4.18%) (54 students) (25.92%) (27.77%) (7.4%) (3.7%) (35.18%) III CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Conclusion 19 With the teaching methods given in this initiative , I hope to partly help teachers reduce the boring and difficulty of a listening lesson, and stimulate the interest in learning of the students, help them be more confident in communication and achieve higher results in learning Recommendations This is the experience that I have been achieved through the University and where I am teaching English now – Dien Bien secondary school Anyway, it will still have problems I am expected to be taken into encouragement with the campaign I always try my best to find the best way to improve my English listening skills I hope Education Department and Dien Bien secondary school would equipped us an English teaching room so that we can teach and learn effectively Give my sincere thank you ! Thanh Hoa, April 10th2019 Confirmation Thanh Hoa City Education I hereby declare this initiative is and Training Department written by myself, no photocopy from any others Written by Nguyen Viet Phuong REFERENCES 20 Textbook of English ( pilot programme - part ) Text book of English ( pilot programme - part ) Images from some websites in the internet ( laodong.vn, soha.vn, sapo.vn, khoahoc.tv, thuthuattaimienphi.vn ) 21 ... initiative, I boldly dive into the issue "Some experiences for students in grade to learn good listening. " I was assigned to teach classes 6C and 6H in the school year 2018 – 2019 at Dien Bien secondary. .. initiative The situation of teaching and learning listening at Dien Bien secondary school At Dien Bien secondary school, there are teachers of English, all teachers have approached and used relatively... with storylines or a conversation For example, when listening to a conversation about asking for directions, the teacher can stop after a character's question line in the conversation and ask students