ApplyingJigsaw technique to teach speaking skill for 12th graders

NGHEAN DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING NAM DAN HIGH SCHOOL TEACHING EXPERIENCE APPLYING JIGSAW TECHNIQUE TO TEACH SPEAKING SKILL FOR 12TH GRADERS (ÁP DỤNG KỸ THUẬT JIGSAW ĐỂ DẠY KỸ NĂNG NÓI CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 12) Subject: English Writer: Phan Thị Vinh Group: English School: Nam Dan high school Year of experiment: 2020 -2021 CONTENT PART INTRODUCTION I RATIONALE Among the four skills, speaking is one of the most important to be developed for language learners Despite its importance,this skill has been overlooked in schools due to different reasons such as theemphasis on the development of reading techniques, vocabulary and structural patterns to meet the requirements of all compulsory exams, especially university entrance examinations It is also a demanding skill for the majority of students at Nam Dan high school in particular and those at other high schools in general Students, especially 12th graders, not only pay no attention to learning this skill but have no motivation in speaking lessons as well A large number of students revealed that they are bored with the repetition of speaking activities in the classroom such as: questions and answers, reading out loud the dialogue They also think there is no need to improve speaking as this skill is not required in the exams Consequently, a large number of high school students are found to be at a very low level of spoken English Many of them can hardly complete a simple sentence about familiar topics such as hobbies or families Moreover, when working in groups, a frequently used activity in most speaking lessons, more advanced learners tend to participate more actively than weaker learners In other words, the stronger students even dominate whereas the weaker ones don’t even try, which may result in their frustration, boredom, loss of concentration or disruptive behaviors Having been working as a teacher of English for more than 10 years, I have always been making every effort to find out the most efficient teaching methods to improve this situation It is important for the teacher to create an active learning environment in the classroom, where learners are aware of their responsibilities and actively involved in their group works From the best of my knowledge about Jigsaw technique, I strongly hold the belief that it will make a great contribution to improving this situation at my school Jigsaw has been designed to promote cooperation by making individuals dependent on each other In this technique, each student is responsible for learning a part of a broad topic and teaching it to other learners That is, each learner is dependent on other group members to learn the main topic It encourages students’ participation in a classroom where learners have a critical role for success and this depends on active cooperation and participation From the reasons above, I have seen the need to adapt activities encouraging students to speak by applying jigsaw technique, and therefore would like to a research entitled: “ApplyingJigsaw technique to teach speaking skill for 12th graders” II AIMS OF THE STUDY The study will focus on exploring the effects of jigsaw activities on students’ attitudes towards the speaking activities, their participation in these activities and students’ speaking proficiency III THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY This study was carried out among 12th graders from two classes at Nam Dan high school and Thanh Chuong high school, who were taught by the speaking activities adapted using jigsaw technique IV METHODOLOGY This research is a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods The data will be collected via survey questionnaires, the pre-test and post-test PART CONTENT I THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL BACKGROUND Speaking skill Researchers have different definitions of speaking Lado (1961:239-240) defines speaking ability as: “The ability to use in essentially normal communication, stress, intonation, grammatical structure and vocabulary of the foreign language at normal rate delivery for native speakers of the language” According to Nunan (1989),speaking is “ an interactive process two persons or more are involved in a real-life situation they exchange talk or use the language so as to fulfill a certain communicative purpose or accomplish a certain social function.” Additionally, Burns & Joyce (1997) stated that speaking is also defined as an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information Its form and meaning are dependent on the context in which it occurs, the participants, and the purposes of speaking.Leaners need to acquire some speaking aspects to have a good speaking skill As proposed by Brown (2001: 168), those aspects are pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and accuracy Teaching speaking means teaching how touse language for communication, for transferring ideas, thought or even feelings to other people The goal of teaching speaking skill is to communicate efficiently Therefore, language activities is speaking class should focus on language use individually This requires the teacher not only to create warm and humanistic classroom atmosphere, but also to provide each student oppotunities to speak, therefore, it is clear that language is very important The teacher teaches speaking by carrying out the students in certain situation when the ideas have an oral command of the language need to describe the topic Overview of Jigsaw activities The Jigsaw method was originally developed by Elliot Aronson in 1970 in Austin, Texas As Cooperative Learning technique, it has been studied by numbers of researchers at different levels and subjects There have been several modifications introduced in Jigsaw strategy In the original Jigsaw, the class is divided into groups and each group has part of the implementation to complete an activity.Each student of the group was given different material Then, all students who have the same part of material gathered to form an “expert group” In this expert group, the students discuss until they master the material After that, they return to their original group to explain the others about the material The class must fit the pieces together so complete the whole In so doing, they must use their language resources to communicate meaningfully and so take part in meaningful communication practice Below is the illustration of jigsaw techniquesutilized in this research: This technique is a method of organizing classroom activity that makes students dependent on each other to succeed Just as in a jigsaw puzzle, each pieceeach student's part is essential for the completion and full understanding of the final product If each student's part is essential, then each student is essential, and that is precisely what makes this strategy so effective It is designed to increase learners’sense of respectability toward their own learning and the learning of others Learners not only learn the material provided, but they also provide and teach the other members in their groups Benefits of using Jigsaw activities in foreign language teaching and learning Lots of researchhas been conducted to confirm the benefit of Jigsaw in primary, secondary and even university levels in developing student’s critical thinking process, communication skill and the ability to express them This technique can be useful, well-structured template for carrying out effective in class group work Like jigsaw, each piece, or each student part, is important for the completion for a full understanding of the final product Each student is indispensablebecause they each have an essential piece of information to to add to the group Cooperation and communication are necessary because no one can succeed completely unless each member contributors The advantages of Jigsaw according to Aronson (2008): - It gives students the opportunity to teach themselves about the material - Student are able to practice peer teaching, which requires in-depth understanding about the material - Students become more fluent in English as they have to explain the material to their peers - Each student has to be involved in meaningful discussion in small team This is hard to achieve in large group discussion - Each group is fostered in real discussion followed by question and answer session - Students are less dependent on teachers compared to traditional classroom because they are not the main resource of knowledge In Jigsaw, teacher has a role of cognitive guide or facilitator From Aronson’s suggestions above, it can be said that teaching speaking through jigsaw gives opportunities to the students to work cooperatively to analyze a topic and then to encourage others and share their opinion with the whole class Procedure of implementing Jigsaw technique in classroom The jigsaw classroom is very simple to use Here are ten steps in implementing Jigsaw in classroom according to Aronson (2008): - Step 1: Divide studentsinto 5or person jigsaw groups The groups should be diverse in terms of gender and ability - Step 2: Appoint one student from each group as the leader Initially this person should be the most mature student in the group - Step 3: Divide the day’s lesson into 5-6 segments - Step 4: Assign each student to learn one segment, making sure students have direct access only to their own segment - Step Give students time to read over their segment at least twice and become familiar with it There is no need for them to memorize it - Step Next is forming the Jigsaw group in which the student of should gather to with the student with same material This is called the “expert group” In this group the students have to discuss the main point of the material, solve the problem and rehearse the presentation they are going to make - Step 7: Bring the students back to their jigsaw groups - Step 8: Ask each student to present her or his segment to the group Encourage others in the group to ask questions for clarification - Step 9: Observation the process If any group is having trouble, make an appropriate intervention - Step 10: At the end of the session, as with the individual’s approach, each group would then create a presentation and share it with the entire class This method can be especially useful when introducing a new topic that contains different perspectives or subtopics or sub-areas Students should also prepare digital devices to search for more information related to their tasks and the instruments for presentation II FACTUAL SITUATION Setting of the study This study was conducted at Nam Dan high school in Nam Dan district, and Thanh Chuong high school in Thanh Chuong district, whose students are famous for traditional fondness for learning and great academic achievements The reason I chose Thanh Chuong high school for the ndresearch site is that it bears some similarities to Nam Dan high school, where I am working The most common thing is the level of English proficiency of the participants Moreover, in each school, the teaching and learning facilities has frequently upgraded to create a favorable learning environment for students and help student to be fully developed, especially for teaching and learning English The library provides students with an enormous source of learning materials and references Classrooms for grade 11 and 12 at Nam Dan high school is equipped with a projector, which is frequently used in English lessons Although efforts have been made, there are also some obstacles which result in the unexpected outcomes of teaching and learning English in both schools Firstly, the majority of the students pay little or no attention to learning English as it is not the subject for their university entrance examination Moreover, although all of the students have learned English since the first year of secondary schools, many of them lack foundation background knowledge, which discourages them to learn the subject As a result, their performance in learning English is quite poor To deal with these problems, most of the teachers here always try to improve their professional knowledge; however, many of them find teaching this subject effectively is a demanding task Students’ level of speaking proficiency This part is the presentation of scores of the pre-test, which was conducted before the application in order to investigate students’ level of spoken English proficiency and to ensure that the students in two groups were of the same level Content of the test relates to familiar topics they have already learnt Due to time limitation, this was done within optional periods Students picked up the topics randomly, had minute to prepare and then had 3-5 minutes to make a short presentation in front of the class Students performances were assessed according to scales assessment rubric, adapted from TFU Foreign Language Assessment Rubrics, including poor (between 0.0 and 4.5 points), average (between 5.0 and 6.5 points), good (between 7.0 and 8.5 points) and exceptional (between 9.0 and 10 points): Assessment Rubric for speaking performances The chart below presents pre-test scores of the participants at the two research sites It is clearly from the chart that in both schools, a large percentage of the students were at Poor and Average level, only a small number of them got good grades and no one was obtained exceptional scores The mean scores of the students at Nam Dan high school and Thanh Chuong high school was 4.86 and 4.79 respectively As can be seen, there were minor differences between the scores of the participants at the two research sites These results show that the learners’ levels of speaking English competence were approximately the same and were very low before the application Figure 1: Results of the pre-test Factual information from the teachers’ questionnaires There are teachers of English at Thanh Chuong high school and other teachers at Nam Dan high school, most of whom are well trained and graduated from universities in our country All of the teachers always make efforts to improve their professional knowledge; however, most of them find teaching this subject, 10 Question 7:Talk about the benefits and drawbacks of printed books 46 APPENDIX SPEAKING ASSESSMENT RUBRIC Rating Demonstrated competence EXELLENT • Uses a variety of structures with only occasional grammatical (9.0 – 10) errors • Speaks smoothly, with little hesitation that does not interfere with communication • Pronunciation and intonation are almost always very clear/accurate GOOD (7.0 – 8.5) • Uses a variety of vocabulary and expressions, but makes some errors in word choice • Uses a variety of grammar structures, but makes some errors • Speaks with some hesitation, but it does not usually interfere with communication • Pronunciation and intonation are usually clear/accurate with a few errors AVERAGE (5.0 – 6.5) • Uses limited vocabulary and expressions • Uses a variety of structures with frequent errors, or uses basic structures • Speaks with some hesitation, which often interferes with communication • Pronunciation andintonation errors sometimes make it difficult to understand POOR ( < 5) • Uses basic structures, makes frequent errors • Hesitates too often when speaking, which often interferes with communication 47 • Frequent errors with pronunciation and intonation 48 APPENDIX RESULTS OF THE PRE-TEST AND POST-TEST Results of the pre-test and post-test obtained at Nam Dan high school No 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Full name Nguyễn Hà Trâm Phạm Hữu Việt Nguyễn Hữu Bùi Đoàn Linh Hoàng Tấn Đặng Thanh Đậu Ngọc Hoàng Trọng Nguyễn Thị Khánh Vương Đình Khánh Trần Văn Phạm Thị Thảo Nguyễn Cảnh Nguyễn Thị Bùi Thị Lê Nguyễn Hải Nguyễn Thị Nguyễn Thị Bảo Nguyễn Văn Lê Anh Nguyễn Thị Thanh Nguyễn Thị Thúy Lê Thị Lê Hồng Bùi Thị Mai Đinh Thảo Phùng Thế Ngơ Thị Hồi Trần Thị Ái Nguyễn Anh Nguyễn Văn Lý Hồ Thị Nguyễn Thị Anh Anh Bình Đan Đạt Đức Hân Hiệp Hòa Linh Lượng Ly Mùi Mùi Na Nam Ngọc Ngọc Quang Quân Quý Quỳnh Sắc Sơn Sương Sương Tài Thu Thương Tuấn Tuấn Tuyết Tuyết Pre-test 4.0 7.0 3.5 7.0 7.0 3.0 5.0 4.0 3.5 5.0 6.0 5.5 3.0 4.5 8.0 3.5 4.0 4.0 3.5 6.5 5.0 5.0 6.0 4.0 6.0 3.0 3.0 5.5 5.0 5.0 3.5 8.0 4.0 Post-test 5.0 9.0 4.0 9.0 9.0 5.0 7.0 5.5 4.0 7.0 8.0 7.0 4.5 5.5 9.0 4.0 7.0 7.0 4.5 9.0 7.0 7.0 7.5 7.0 9.0 4.0 5.0 7.0 9.0 7.0 7.0 9.0 5.0 49 Mean score 4.86 Increase (+)/ Decrease (-) : + 1,82 6.68 Results of the pre-test and post-test obtained at Thanh Chuong high school No 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 Full name Lê Văn Quý Nguyễn Thị Lan Trần Minh Lê Văn Nguyễn Xuân Lê Đình Nguyễn Phi Võ Đình Dương Đình Đinh Thị Thúy Hồng Đình Nguyễn Thị Nguyễn Xn Nguyễn Thị Nguyễn Hoàng Nguyễn Trọng Cao Thị Lê Huy Nguyễn Thị Lê Nguyễn Thị Trần Thị Thúy Nguyễn Thị Lê Thị Hồng Phạm Huy Đàm Thị Thiều Quang Nguyễn Thị Nguyễn Thị Phạm Thị Phương Trang Ngọc Nguyễn Đình Nguyễn Sỹ Lê Thị Quỳnh Bùi Thị Anh Anh Chiến Công Đạo Đạt Đạt Đạt Đức Hằng Hiếu Hoài Hoàng Huyền Khuyên Lâm Linh Mạnh Na Nga Nga Nhi Nhung Phi Phương Quân Quỳnh Quỳnh Thảo Thăng Thi Tiến Trang Trâm Mean score Pre-test 5.0 4.0 5.0 3.5 4.0 7.0 5.0 4.0 8.0 3.5 3.5 5.0 3.5 7.0 5.0 4.5 7.5 3.5 5.5 4.0 3.5 5.0 3.5 5.0 4.0 5.5 3.0 3.5 5.0 5.5 4.0 7.0 5.5 5.0 4.79 Post-test 7.5 5.5 7.0 4.5 5.5 9.0 7.0 5.5 9.0 4.0 4.3 7.5 5.0 9.0 7.0 5.0 9.0 5.5 6.5 4.5 4.5 6.0 6.0 6.0 6.0 7.0 4.0 4.5 8.0 8.0 6.0 9.0 8.0 8.0 6.39 Increase (+)/ Decrease (-): + 1, 60 50 51 PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE PARTICIPANTS Students are discussing in their Expert groups 52 53 Students are reporting in their Home Groups 54 Students are preparing for their Home group’s presentation 55 56 Students are presenting their Home groups’ work 57 HOME GROUPS’ WORK Unit 2: Cultural diversity Unit 5: Higher education 58 Unit 6: Future jobs Unit 8: Life in the future 59 Unit 10: Endangered species Unit 11: Books 60 ... to speak by applying jigsaw technique, and therefore would like to a research entitled: ? ?ApplyingJigsaw technique to teach speaking skill for 12th graders? ?? II AIMS OF THE STUDY The study will focus... QUESTIONNAIRE FOR TEACHERS This survey is aimed to investigate the effects of Jigsaw techniques on teaching speaking skill for the 12th graders This questionnaire will be used for academic research,... POST-QUESTIONAIRE FOR STUDENTS This survey is aimed to investigate the effects of Jigsaw techniques in teaching speaking skill for the 12th graders This questionnaire will be used for academic research,