applying warm up activities in teaching speaking lessons for the 10th form students at nhu xuan high school

However, how to teach and learn speaking effectively is still a challenging question to both teachers and students at many gigh school despite teachers’s efforts to provide students with

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

1 Introduction 2- 3 1.1 Rational of the study 2

1.2 Aims of the study 2- 3 1.3 Scope of the study 3

1.4 Method of the study 3

2 Contents

2.1 Theoretical background 3- 5 2.2 Some problems before applying this experience initative 5- 6 2.3 Some solutions to the problem 6-15 2.4 The effect of experience initative 15-16

3 Conclusion and proposal 3.1 Conclusion 16

3.2 Proposal 16-17

4.References 18

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1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 The reasons of the study.

English is one of the most dominating laguage of the world which is having its impact on every field of work It not only provides us an access to world scholarship and world trade but also gives the youth a chance to get a good job and join the international activities Undoubtedly, English plays a much greater role in the world that it is evitable for people to ignore it fully

Nowadays, with the development of economy and relationship between nations English becomes an effective means of international communication It is used as the official language in many fields of life such as economics, politics, science, technology, sports and many others This leads to an increasing demand for English learning, especially speaking skill People need oral communication in daily life more than written words Therefore, the teaching of speaking has recently been paid more attention to learners It can’t be deniable that the ability to use verbal communication in a second language effectively contributes to the success

of learners at school time as well as in their lives However, how to teach and learn speaking effectively is still a challenging question to both teachers and students at many gigh school despite teachers’s efforts to provide students with opportunities

to develop their communicative skills

Nhu xuan high school is situated in a moutainous district where students do not have many opportunities to communicate with foreign people Therefore, Their English is not good, especially English speaking skill A great number of students are afraid of learning to speak English and say that it is difficult for them to be good at this skill and there is not a real language environment for them to do their practice every day Many students find it very difficult to express their ideas in English due to nervousness and lack confidence in front of the class As a result, they are afraid of speaking skill, the class is tense and passive because students don’t want to say out their thought

All the aboved mentioned reasons and factors have inspired me to conduct a research titled : “ applying warm-up activities in teaching speaking lessons for the

10th form students at Nhu Xuan High School”

1.2 The aims of the sudy

The major aims of the study are :

- To emphasize the role of warm- up activities in teaching speaking skill

- To investigate the present situation of teaching and learning speaking of the

10th form at Nhu Xuan high school

- To provide some useful warm-up activities to get students in the right mood for seaking and help them feel more confident and eager to speak English in speaking lessons

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- To investigate the effectiveness of using warm-up activities in teaching speaking lesson at the three classes 10 A3, 10 A4, 10 A5 of Nhu Xuan high school

1.3 The scope of the study

The study focuses specifically on some warm- up activities applied in

teaching speaking lessons to the 10th grade students at Nhu Xuan high school, namely, three classes 10 A3, 10 A4, 10A5

1.4 The methods of study

- Studying materials : I have read some books and materials on internet about how to motiavte students to speaking effectively by using warm- up activities

- Delivering survey questionaire and observing speaking lessons: To fulfill this study, I have delived some survey questionaires to students and teachers and observed some speaking classes to find out the teachers’s and students’ attitudes towards teaching and learning speaking

- My real teaching at three 10th form classes at my school

2 CONTENTS

2.1 Theoretical background

a Definition of speaking skill

Speaking is “ the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non- verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts” ( Chaney, 1998, p.13 ) Speaking is a crucial part of second language learning and teaching Despite its importance, for many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues However, today’s world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students’ communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in each communicative circumstance

Speaking is being capable of speech, expressing or exchanging thoughts through using language “Speaking is a productive aural/oral skill and it consists of producing systematic verbal utterances to convey meaning (Nunan, 2003, p.48).” (Harmer, 2001) notes down that from the communicative point of view, speaking has many different aspects including two major categories – accuracy, involving the correct use of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation practised through controlled and guided activities; and, fluency, considered to be ‘the ability to keep going when speaking spontaneously’ Bygate (1991, p.3), also emphasizes knowledge of the language, and skill in using this knowledge for an effective communication Language knowledge and skill in using it, are considered two fundamental elements of an effective communication

Speaking is the most important skill, corroborates: “ of all the four skills, speaking seems intuitively the most important People who know a language are reffered to as “ speakers” of the language, as if speaking included all other kinds of

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knowing, and many of not knowing, and many of not most foreign language

learners are primary interested to speak” (Ur, 1996, p 120).

Speaking skill is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and processing information The peaking skill involves a communication ability to use language to chat and transmit messages in different and appropriate

situations It is to interact with participants and carry a message Petrie ( 1987 )

citied that : “ speaking is an activity which most of us spend a great deal of time engaged in apparently without any effort and with not very much thought” People

around the world produce a lot of words without making great efforts, Brown in his

turn ( 2000 )(Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997 ) defines speaking as “ an

interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information” Its form and meaning are dependent on the context in which it occurs including the participants themselves, their collective experiences, the physical environment, and the purposes of speaking It is often spontaneous, open- ended and involving Being skillful in speaking means to be able to decide what to say in the situation, saying it clearly and being flexible during a conversation when a difficult situation comes out, for that reason, speaking requires that learners not only how to produce specific aspects of language such as grammar, pronunciation and vocaulary but aslo that they nderstand when, why, and what ways to produce language? Finally, speaking has its own skills, structures and conversations that the speaker should be aware(Burns & Joyce, 1997; Carter & McCarthy, 1995; Cohen, 1996)

b The importance of speaking skill

People express their ideas and interact with each other to give or ask for

informatiom through speaking which is so much part of daily life” ( Thornburry,

2005, p.01 ).

Concerning the importance of speaking skill ( Cambridge, p.07 ) claimed

that “ speaking is a highly channenging yet essential skill for most learners to

acquire”, in additio, ( Renandya and Richards, 2002, p.201) state that “a large

percentage of the world’s language study English in order to develop proficiency in speaking” Many English foreign language students consider the mastery of speaking skill a priority Besides, they evaluate their success according to their

spoken language proficiency ( Richard, 2008,p.19)

For many teachers, teaching speaking is so important.( Burn and Goh, 1012, p.1-2) claim that “ teachers do much effort to help their students develop their

spaeking abilities For them speaking skill is important of three reasons First, all language learners should be able to communicate well with the foreign language speakers Second, many students are good at reading and writing, but thay have poor speaking and listening abilities Third, many students memorize words from dictionaries, but they could not use them to speak English or to communictae in formal situations Therefore, teaching speaking is a very important part in English language teaching and learning

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c The role of warm-up activities in speaking lessons

As we know, warm- up is an important part which contributes to the success

of a speaking lesson Warm- up helps learners put aside their daily distractions and focus on English Warm-ups also encourage whole gropu participant which can build a sense of community within the group and warm-ups can help to arouse students’s interest in sppeaking

component when planning warming up activities According to Dornyei (2001), teachers need to try and actively generate positive students' attitudes toward

learning He also claims that the key issue in generating interest is to widen the student's appetite; that is, to arouse the students' curiosity and attention and to create an attractive image for the class so that they will get more involved with it and a better learning process will take place

The importance of having warming up activities was mentioned above, but a

question remains: What is a warming up activity? Allwright (1984) considers that warm up activities are designed to attract students' attention, to help them put aside distracting thoughts, and to get them ready to focus individually and as groups on whatever activities that follow They will cause people to stop whatever they are doing or thinking and refocus their attention We could say a warming up activity is

a motivating starting point that will lead students to become animated to work efficiently in the language class For the purpose of our study, it was the activity used to encourage students' involvement and permeate the development of the whole lesson, so we avoided looking at them as isolated activities These kinds of activities might also be called zealous, enthusiastic or suggestive activities How

we can include these activities in the process of a class will be the next focus in our discussion

Warm- up is an effective way to help the students begin to think in English and to review previously introduced material Different types of warm ups help provide variety and interest in the lesson A warm up to prepare students for a period of concentration may involve physical movement with activities that keep them active by standing up, walking, jumping, matching pictures with sentences or vocabulary, drawing or writing personal experiences or stories, and singing or listening to familiar songs and chants These are, among others, enjoyable and motivating warms up

2.2 Current status of the problem before applying innitiate experience.

To begin with, Nhu Xuan district is considered a poor, mountainous district

of Thanh Hoa province Although my school is located in the centre of district,

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Students’s English is in bad quality There is not a real language environment for them to do their practice every day Students don’t have many chances to communicate with native speakers

Secondly, there are too many students in a class Normally, each class has about 40 students In addition, all of the classes are fixed with rows of desks This makes it difficult for teachers for teachers to oraganize communicative tasks and keep control of the class

Thirdly, most of the students are not good at the language, especially their communicative competences are poor although they have been exposed to the new curriculum since they were in secondary school Normally, most of them don’t know how to talk about the topic about the topic given They can’t make up the ideas to express in English because their vocabularies, structures are still limited Many students find it very difficult to show their ideas in English due to nervousness and lack confidence in front of the class They feel shy, they are afraid

of being laughed at, being lost face with their friends when they have mistakes As

a result, they are afraid of speaking skill, the class is tense and passive because students don’t want to express their thought

A large number of students are afraid of learning to speak English and say that it is difficult for them to be good at this skill Moreover, their awareness of importance of being good at this skill is not really made clear because speaking skill is not usually included in their exams, so they often learn English only for their written exams, not for communication According to the survey carried out at the beginning of last school year at my school, more than 70% of the students reported that they are worried about their English speaking skill They said that they could hardly make a simple conversation in English or express what they thought Importantly, most of them assumed that speaking is very difficult for them

to master Therefore, if students do not learn how to speak or do not get many opportunities to speak in the language classroom, they may soon get de-motivated and lose interest in learning On the other hand, if the right activities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a lot of fun, raising general learner motivation and making the English language classroom fun and dynamic

2.3 Some solutions to the problem

UNIT 1 : A day in the life of

Warm-up: (4mn) : Matching

- Ask sts to close their books

- Deliver the handout

A B

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1 Civic education a Tin học

2 Technology b Vật lí‎‎

3 Maths c Sinh học

4 Literature d Thể dục

5 Physics e Địa lí‎‎

6 Biology f Giáo dục công dân

7 Chemistry g Văn học

8 Physical education h Lịch sử

9 Geography i Công nghệ

10 History j Toán

11 Informatics k Hóa học

- Ask them to match one item in column A with one item in column B

- Ask them to work in groups in 2 minutes, then check this exercise in chorus

- Ask sts to read aloud the names of these subjects in chorus

- Asks the class : when do you have English lesson?

- Gets the aswer from the class and lead in the new lesson: Today, we are going to talk about timetable

Unit 2 : School talks

- Warm-up ( 4mn ) : Completing the dialogue

- Introduce the situation and write a short dialogue on board:

"Suppose that you meet a friend at the supermarket You are very busy What will you say to open and end the conversation."

A: ( 1)

B: Hi Lan How are you?

A: I’m fine Thank you And you?

B: I’m very well Thanks I haven’t seen you for a long time Let’s go somewhere for a drink

A: Sorry, ( 2)

- Ask sts to complete the dialogue in pairs

- Ask some pairs to report

- Ok, that’s a short conversation between A and B (1) & (2) are two ways to start and close a conversation

Today, we will practice speaking conversation having stating and dosing sentences

Unit 3 : People’s background Warm-up (4mn): Game : Giving questions about people's background.

- Divides the class into four teams

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- Aks students to discuss and give questions to know some information of a person’s background in two minutes

+ family + education

+ experience

- The team has more correct and faster questions will win the game.

- Elicits the answers from four teams

- Gives feedback and declares the winner

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