Some techniques to attract interests and involvement of the 9th graders in a speaking lesson at nghi xuan secondary school in nghe an

VINH UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - PHAN THI THANH XUAN MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION SOME TECHNIQUES TO ATTRACT INTERESTS AND INVOLVEMENT OF THE 9TH GRADERS IN A SPEAKING LESSON AT NGHI XUAN SECONDARY SCHOOL IN NGHE AN Class: MA23-TESOL Supervisor: Assoc Prof : NGO DINH PHUONG VINH,2017 VINH UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION SOME TECHNIQUES TO ATTRACT INTERESTS AND INVOLVEMENT OF THE 9TH GRADERS IN A SPEAKING LESSON AT NGHI XUAN SECONDARY SCHOOL IN NGHE AN By: Phan Thi Thanh Xuan Class: MA23TESOL Supervisor: Assoc.Prof: NGO DINH PHUONG VINH, 2017 Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the support of Mr Ngo Dinh Phuong, my supervisor, for her guidance, great suggestions and advice in each step of the study Who have been supportive of my career goals and who worked actively to provide me with the protected academic time to pursue those goals Without her precious comments, academic instructions and wholehearted help, my research would have never been accomplished Also,I am really grateful to all teachers in Foreign Language department, Vinh University for their useful lectures and suggestions Besides, I would especially like to thank all teachers and students in Nghi Xuan secondary school for their enthusiasm in finishing the survey questionnaires Last but not least, I am grateful to my family and friends who have given me much encouragement during the time I carried out this paper ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to investigate the students ‘attitudes toward a speaking lesson and suggest some effective techniques for teaching speaking skill The research was carried out at Nghi Xuan secondary school over 160 tenth grade students divided into two groups The experimental group was taught in the lessons using suggested techniques The control group was taught in the lessons used current techniques Data for the research was collected from reference, questionnaires, and interviews Finding from these instruments reveals that using interesting techniques can increase students ‘motivation in speaking lesson It is recommended that teachers should use many techniques to motivate students in learning Table of Contents Acknowledgements Abstract CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Reason of study Aims of the study Scope of the study Methods of the study Reseach questions Design of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 10 I Speaking skill: A general view 10 Definition of speaking skill 10 Types of speaking 11 2.1 Form-focused speaking 11 2.2 Meaning-focused speaking 11 2.3 Opportunities to improve fluency 12 Features of a successful speaking activity 12 3.1 Students talk a lot 12 3.2 Participation is even 12 3.3 Motivation is high 12 3.4 Language is of an acceptable level 13 II Teaching speaking 13 The importance of speaking skill 13 Why don’t students feel much interested in speaking skill? 14 2.1 Being compulsory 14 2.2 Getting so embarrassed trying to speak English in class 14 2.3 Being boring 14 2.4 Teachers’ pronunciation 14 Factors to attract students’ involvements in English speaking lessons 15 Activities to promote students’ speaking 15 4.1 Why teachers should give students a variety of speaking activities? 15 4.2 Simple tips for teachers to have a successful speaking activity 16 4.3 Activities to promote speaking 16 4.3.1 Discussion 17 4.3.2 Role Play and Simulation 17 4.3.3 Interviews 17 4.3.4 Reporting 17 4.3.5 Prepared Talks 18 4.3.6 Dialogue 18 CHAPTER III :METHODOLOGY 18 I Real situation 19 1.1 Students 19 1.2 Teaching speaking methods in Nghi Xuan secondary school currently 19 1.3 Teaching and learning condition 19 1.4 English teaching teachers 20 1.5 The English textbook 20 II Survey questionnaires 21 Participants 21 Aims of the survey questionnaires 21 Structure of the survey questionnaires 21 CHAPTER IV Findings and discussion 28 I Data and analysis 23 1.1 Students’ opinions on English skill in general and speaking lessons in particular 24 4.2.1 Student’ interests in learning English skills (Question 2) 24 4.2.2 Students’ opinions toward speaking lessons 24 4.3 Students’ opinions on current used techniques and their effectiveness in teaching speaking ( Question 4) 26 II: Some suggested techniques to attractinterests and involvement of the th graders in a speaking lesson at Nghi Xuan school in Nghe An 19 Making sentence 30 Face to face activity 31 Hot seat activity 33 Pictures description 34 Discussing 36 Teaching through songs 37 Comparing pictures 39 Explaining the words 41 Role play 42 10 Speaking in topic 44 11 Telling story 44 12 Debate 46 13 Talk show 46 CHAPTER 5: Conclusion 23 Attachment 61 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION Reason of study English has become a vital and mandatory communication language in Vietnam since the opening of its doors to the world in 1986 Many Englishspeaking foreigners from across Asia, Australia, America and Europe started coming to invest in Vietnam This has motivated the people of Vietnam to learn English to facilitate efficient and effective communication among their counterparts The importance of English was immediately acknowledged by the Vietnamese government and as a result the English language programs were made compulsory beginning with the secondary schools and subsequently the high schools and finally university The teaching of English in secondary and high schools strongly focus mainly on grammar, sentence structures and vocabulary In such a teaching format, conversational English was not taken into consideration In addition, English learning and teaching is purely examination-based Examinations were mainly grammar-focused As a result, the teachers and academicians teach only the bare necessity which is required to pass the examination and is not linked to the learning needs of individual students This has caused students to become de-motivated because English is just another subject at school, not part of their life Many students eventually fail to see the importance and pride in being able to speak fluent English Today, of the four English basic skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), it is thought that speaking seems to play the most important role: knowing-language-people are considered “speaker” of that language as if speaking included all four kinds of knowing Classroom activities that help to develop learners ability in expressing themselves would play an important part in a language course The goal of teaching speaking, surely, is to improve the oral production of the students Along with international integration trend, students should improve and promote their communication skill so that they can express themselves and learn to follow the social and cultural rules appropriating in each communicative circumstances In order to that, language-teaching activities in the classroom should aim at maximizing individual language use Teachers’ role is not only to create a warm and friendly classroom but also to provide students with effective and plentiful activities Only by such way can those activities encourage students to speak and attract them to speaking lessons These factors mentioned above have aroused my ambition to carry out the study of “some techniques to attract interests and involvements of 9th graders in a speaking lesson at Nghi Xuan secondary school in Nghe An province” Aims of the study The study is carried out to research: * Firstly, the study studies the different aspects of speaking skill that serves as overview, the features and characteristics of teaching speaking skill * Secondly, the study surveys the real situation of teaching Englishspeaking skill in 9th form in Nghi Xuan secondary school * The last also the most important aim is to suggest some effective techniques that can be applied in Nghi Xuan secondary school to attract students’ interest sand involvements in speaking lessons Scope of the study * Actually, attracting students’ interests and involvements needs to be done in teaching all four basic skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) However, it is impractical to overspread such a large scope I a graduation paper Thus, the study limits itself to: * Finding out the reality of teaching English speaking skill for th form students in Nghi Xuan secondary schools * Offering appropriate techniques to attract 9th graders in Nghi Xuan secondary school in speaking lessons Methods of the study First, a survey is conducted for three 9th classes in Nghi Xuan secondary school with a point of view to find out their difficulties they encounter and what are their favorite activities in learning speaking skill Second, reference books about speaking and methodology are reviewed to get background knowledge of what speaking is, successful and interesting techniques in teaching speaking Third, more information needed for the findings of the survey will be gathered from formal and informal interview with the surveyed teachers and students Research questions 5.1 What are students’ attitudes toward used current techniques in speaking lesson? 5.2 How may these techniques interest students’ in speaking activities? Design of the study The study consists of five chapters Chapter I: Introduction - Teacher can ask students some questions as below: What is the poem about? What is the name of this poem? When is the Christmas day? What people often at Christmas? Teacher can let students freely express their feeling about the poem •Example given 2:Unit 6: The environment - Teacher distributes the handout of the poem “ what can you do” - - Teacher raises some questions for students: a What is the poem about? b What problem of the environment is now? c What should we to protect environment? - Teacher asks student to learn by heart the song at home 16 Using films • Objectives: Creating a comfortable and funny learning environment forstudents Students can summarize the content of the film that they have just watching • Procedures: - Teacher finds a short film and show on the TV for student to watch - After watching film, teacher ask students some questions about that film - After watching the film, students have to summarize the content of the film and present before class for the next lesson • Example given:Unit 9: Natural disaster: - Teacher can let students watch a famous film about disaster “Titanic” - The content of this film: “After winning a trip on the RMS Titanic during a dockside card game, American Jack Dawson spots the society girl Rose DeWitt Bukater who is on her way to Philadelphia to marry her rich snob fiancé Caledon Hockley Rose feels helplessly trapped by her situation and makes her way to the aft deck and thinks of suicide until she is rescued by Jack Cal is therefore obliged to invite Jack to dine at their first-class table where he suffers through the slights of his snobbish hosts In return, he spirits Rose off to third-class for an evening of dancing, giving her the time of her life Deciding to forsake her intended future all together, Rose asks Jack, who has made his living making sketches on the streets of Paris, to draw her in the nude wearing the invaluable blue diamond Cal has given her Cal finds out and has Jack locked away Soon afterwards, the ship hits an iceberg and Rose must find Jack while both must run from Cal even as the ship sinks deeper into the freezing water Part III: Conclusion In conclusion, this graduation paper has been carried out with the aim to investigate the current English teaching and learning situation in Nghi Xuan secondary school so that effective and various techniques for attracting interests and involvements of 9th graders in speaking lessons should be pointed out in order to make lesson more interesting and make students more active and willing to speak Some related background knowledge as: what is speaking, types of speaking, characteristics of a successful speaking activity… were presented in Chapter I Especially, in order to research the opinion of teachers and students on the reality of teaching and learning English in general as well as speaking lesson in particular, the survey which were carried out with the wish to find out the most effective techniques to apply in each step of a speaking lesson have been clearly introduced in Chapter II In Chapter III, some suggested techniques to attract students, interests and involvements into speaking lessons were demonstrated However, beside the strong points, weak points are unavoidable Due to limitations of time and knowledge, the study cannot cover all stages and grades at secondary school Moreover, my graduation paper only concerns a very small part of teaching speaking with the main purpose is to improve students, speaking skill and their interests to speaking lessons Therefore, the author would like to receive both critical and lenient review from the readers Finally, I hope that in the near future, many other activities for attracting students, interests and involvements into writing/reading/listening lessons will be studied to help learners in studying English well 1 Attachment Appendix 1: The survey questionnaires (For students) Dear 9th grade students, This survey questionnaire aims at finding out your attitude and your expectations towards speaking lessons Your answers will be used for researching purposes of my graduation paper entitled “how to attract secondary students’ interests and involvements in speaking lessons?” Thank you for your cooperation in completing this survey questionnaire How long have you been learning English? □ 1-2 years □ 3-6 years □ More than years Which English lesson does you like most? □ Speaking □ Listening □ Reading □ Writing What you think about speaking lessons? □ Very interesting □ Interesting □ Not very interesting □ Not interesting What your teachers often in while-speaking? Its frequency and its effectiveness? Techniques Frequency Effectiveness Frequently Sometimes Never Effective Normal Not very effective Grid Word-cue Drill Picture description Role play Discussion Game Doing exercise What difficulties you have when speaking in class? □ I don’t have enough words to express what I want to say □ I am shy □ I am afraid of making mistakes □The lessons are too difficult for me □ My friends don’t cooperate with me □ I don’t understand what people say to me □ I am not interested in speaking Other difficulties: ………………………………………… Thank you very much for your assistance and wish you a happy summer holiday! Appendix 2: Model lesson Unit 2: Clothing (9th grade English textbook) UNIT: CLOTHING Lesson SECTION: - SPEAK I/Objectives:By the end of the lesson, students will be able to ask and respond to questions personal references II/ Language contents: -Vocabulary: - baggy pants, casual clothes, school uniform, favorite clothes, sleeveless sweater, faded jeans, plaid skirt, plain suit - Grammar structure: - The present perfect - The passive form ( review) III/Teaching methods and techniques: - Matching, Gap fill, Predict dialogue, answer the question - Jumbled words; open predictions Hangman, interview IV/Teaching aids: text-book, , picture cards, V/Time: VI/Procedures: Check up: Answer the questions: - What you usually wear on the weekend? - Who used to wear Ao Dai by tradition? Warm up Word square: Divide class into two groups Ss from each team go to the board and circle the words they have found the write them down in the column of their team Answer: A T P L A I C R G H T Z L P W O P I O I K O Y A M X Blouse, … L H U E U J R N V L Suit, … A S H S W E A T E R Plaid, short, pants, I A E H I N G S J S shirt D H M O B A G G Y L Ss finds nouns and T S T R I P E D J O adjectives about clothing in F I W T J E A N S T the word square U K B K I E Sweater, jeans, skirt, striped, baggy, plain S N B D R T B The team which has more T: Stick The Poster on the board: words will win the game F NEW LESSON: Instruction SECTION – SPEAK Content Activity 1:  Answer key: Ask Ss to look at a) a colorful T- shirt ['sli:vlis] the b) a sleeveless sweater: ['swetə] pictures and match them with c) a striped shirt the phrases: d) a plain suit Pair work e) a faded jeans f) a short – sleeved blouse g) a baggy pants h) a plaid skirt - Ask Ss remember to the i) blue shorts  Check the Kim’s game: phrases on page 14, - Divide the class into four group 15 in 30 seconds - Ss from each group take turn to go to the Then let their books closed board write as many words as they can The form of the survey many look like this - Group with the Questions Name Items most words wins of the game clothes Activity 2: 1) what you Ask Ss to work in usually wear on the groups of or 10 Ss weekend? each to read and 2) why you write more wear these clothes? for the 3) What is your two questions Note last section of the favorite survey clothing? Why? about Student’s wear type of 4) Is it comfortable to wear uniform? 5) What color is it ? 6) What type of clothing you usually wear on the Tet holiday? 7) What would you wear to a party ? Activity 3: - After Ss have finished their task ask them to report the result of their survey in their group The survey should begin as follow: Activity 3: Three people said that they liked their Ask Ss to interview uniform their friends Two people said that they usually wore colorful T-shirt on the weekend Chi said she loved baggy pants - Ask Ss to make a list of types of clothing that most of students in the class like wearing on different special cases HOMEWORK: Exercise in the workbook Write about your clothes Prepare for the next lesson 1 List of references I.Books Brumfit, C.J (1983) Communicative Methodology in languageteaching Cambridge University Press Burns, A & Joyce, H (1997) Focus on speaking Sydney; National Center for English Language Research Bygate, Martin CN Candlind & HG Widdouson (1987) Speaking Hong Kong: Oxford University Press Doff, Adrian (1988) Teach English A training course for teachers Teachers’ workbook Great Britain: Cambridge University Press Forseth, Ron., Forseth, Carol., Hung, Ta Tien., Do Nguyen Van., (1994) Methodology handbook for English Teachers in Viet Nam-Viet NamEnglish Language Institude/America Mcdonough, Jo & Shaw, Christopher Materials and Methods in ELT Ateachers’ guide Oxford UK &Cambridge USA Nunan, Cavid Language Teaching Methodology Textbook forteachers Sydney: National Center for English Language Teaching andResearch Play games with English Riddell, David (2001) Teaching English as a foreign/second language Great Britain: Hodder &Stoughton Ltd 10 Rivers, W.M (1981) Teaching foreign language skills (2nd ed.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press 11 Ur Penny (1996) A course in language teaching Practice andTheory Great Britain: Cambridge University Press II Websites http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk http://www.nclrc.org http://www.iteslj.org http://www.englishcfl.edu.vn http://www.teachingenglishgames.com http://songsforteaching.com http://www.sing365.com ... out the study of ? ?some techniques to attract interests and involvements of 9th graders in a speaking lesson at Nghi Xuan secondary school in Nghe An province” Aims of the study The study is carried... teaching and learning in general and a speaking lesson in particular To get more information about the situation of teaching speaking skill in 9th form classes in Nghi Xuan secondary school To get to. .. general and teaching speaking in particular In the Chapter 2, we will investigate how speaking lessons are dealt with by teachers and students in Nghi Xuan secondary school in Nghe An province thanks