Acknowledgements Many of my teachers, friends as well as my parents have been of invaluable assistance and encouragement in the completion of this graduation thesis. First of all, my greatest debt and special thanks is to my supervisor: Mr. Phan V¨n TiÕn who graciously helped me so much in finishing this thesis. Also, I want to express my deep gratitude to Mr. Ng« §×nh Ph¬ng (MA) , the dean of FLD, and many other teachers in FLD for their useful and valuable advice for my work. I’m especially indebted to Ms. Jody Gilbert whose materials are so useful for my study. Besides I could not have finished this thesis without the breadth and depth of expertise from my friends, especially the great help of NguyÖt and Hoµ . They are always by my side during the process of doing my thesis. Thanks a lot, my friends! To my parents, their encouragement and care helped me a lot in perfecting my thesis. Thank you so much, Dad and Mum! To everyone, thanks indeed! Vinh, May 2003 NguyÔn thÞ H¶i L©m Table of contents Table of contents Page Acknowledgements……………………………………………………… …. Part I: introduction 1. The reasons for choosing the subject………………………………… . 2. The aims of the subject………………………………………………… 3. The scope of the subject……………………………………………… . 4. The methods of studying the subject…………………………………… 5. The design of the subject………………………………………………. 5 6 7 7 8 Part II: investigation Chapter I: Theoretical preliminaries 1. The communicative language teaching approach ( CLT) …………. 2. Success in language learning…………………………………………. 9 9 10 10 11 2.1. Motivation………………………………………………………… 2.1.1. Extrinsic motivation……………………………………………… 2.1.2. Intrinsic motivation………………………………………………. 2.2. Motivational differences…………………………………………… 2.2.1. Children………………………………………………………… 2.2.2. Adolescents…………………………………………………… … 3. The concept of activities……………………………………………… 3.1. What is an activity? ……………………………………………… 3.2. The classification of activities……………………………………. 3.3. What is a balanced activities approach in teaching and learning EFL……………………………………………………………… Chapter II: * 5 – minute activities * The procedures for applying them into warming up the language classroom 1. The 5 – minute activities……………………………………………… 1 1.1. What is a 5 – minute activity ? ………………………………… 1.2. The need for short activities ……………………………………. 12 13 13 13 14 14 15 16 18 18 19 19 19 20 22 22 23 24 25 2. Warm – up activities: one subsection in the rhythm of a lesson…… 2.1. Introduction …………………………………………………… 2.2. The role of warm – up activities………………………………. 2.3. Different teaching aims when using 5 – minute activities to warm up the language classroom ……………………………. 2.3.1. Warming up to get started………………………………… 2.3.2. Warming up to get pupils talking…………………………… 2.3.3. Warming up to lead pupils into the new lesson……………. 3. List of 5 – minute activities suggested and their procedures to apply…………………………………………………………………. Chapter III : Survey design Presentation the factual role of warm – up activities in the high school and the need for short activities Survey questionnaires………………………………………………… Result ………………………………………………………………… Findings………………………………………………………………… Suggestion of some typical 5 – minute activities using in teaching English for pupils of the 10th form What should be considered before applying an activity into the 40 40 41 42 42 43 44 46 47 48 49 50 52 53 54 classtime……………………………………………………… … The teaching style……………………………………………. Class composition and class learning level………………… Integrating activities into the syllabus……………………… Some typical samples …………………………………………… Lesson 25……………………………………………………. Lesson 23……………………………………………………. Lesson 26 …………………………………………………… Lesson 22 …………………………………………………… Lesson 26 …………………………………………………… Lesson 27 …………………………………………………… Lesson 32 …………………………………………………… 4.2.8. Lesson ……………………………………………………… Part III: conclusion ………………………………………………… 55 References …………………………………………………………… 57 Part I: Introduction 1. the reasons for choosi ng the subje ct English nowadays is increasingly being used as a tool for interaction among nonnative speakers. Well over one half of the one billion English speakers of the world learned English as a second or foreign language. English is not frequently learned as a tool for understanding and teaching the native English countries cultural values. Instead, English has become a tool for international communication in transportation, commerce, banking, tourism, technology, diplomacy and scientific research. And as Crystal, 1997 said: “ today, we are concerned with global ecology and global economy. And English has been described as a global language” (quoted from the Reference Book N 0 9). Facing with the increasing demand for learning English, EFL teaching is, of course, required to develop more and more than ever before in the lesson content, especially in the method of teaching, to meet that need. Methodology matter is always a prerequisite and difficult condition for all teachers. They toss in their sleep about how to teach children well and get them really actively involved in all the classtime. The present time left no room for an old teacher with his 10 – year - never - changed syllabus, especially nowadays when the communicative approach is being applied into EFL class, so teachers are necessary to wake their pupils up all the time by their teaching methods. Learning English needs a noisy atmosphere. Both teacher and pupils are required to be active. And the most successful English learners are those who are the most active in the classtime. So language learners need to be motivated right from the beginning of the lesson. In the success of language learning, the motivation plays a very important role. H. Douglas Brown (Teaching by principles, page: 72) said that: “ Motivation is the difference between success and failure. If they’re motivated they’ll learn, and if not, they won’t””. Especially, the language learners in the high school are still children, so they’ll be more motivated to learn with various kinds of games or short activities. Almost in the 5 minutes at the beginning of each lesson, teachers feel embarrassed and confused in organizing the class and getting pupils into the mood for speaking English. Those 5 minutes seem wasteful because they do not either contribute anything to the new lesson or motivate the language learners. And as a result, pupils still don’t want to participate in learning language because of lacking motivation. The high school teachers, especially the less experienced teachers, if they know how to make use of the 5 minutes at the beginning of the lesson, their teaching result would be more beneficial. But in fact teachers still do not highly appreciate the importance of warm- up activities, in addition, they are lacking one effective way to motivate the language classroom. Taking that fact into account, I decided to choose this matter for my thesis with the hope that I can make teachers more aware of the value of warm- up activities to make use of the first 5 minutes in their lesson time. After that, I desire to show out a little bit of my knowledge to suggest some short activities as teaching materials for language teachers to help them motivate pupils so that the learners can get success in mastering English as the foreign language. All of these above are the reasons why I chose this thesis to deal with. 2. The aims of the subjec t The thesis has been done with a wish that it can contribute a little to the improvement of teaching English in the high school, especially to the that can motivate pupils in learning English from the first 5 minutes in each lesson. Therefore, when deciding to do this thesis, I aim at: _ Helping all teachers and pupils more aware of the great learning value of warming up the class to motivate pupils and make use of the short minutes at the start of the lesson. _ Presenting the factual role of the warming up activities in the high school and the attitude from teachers towards this problem, and also, it gives the need for short activities in the lesson time. _ Providing a list of 5 - minute activities and procedures to help teachers, especially young teachers make it useful the first 5 minutes in each lesson in order to achieve a totally successful teaching and learning result. _ Helping pupils become more active and motivated with various kinds of short activities then they’ll be involved in solving language learning problems to get success. And finally the thesis that I carried out has a great role in widening my knowledge and the others’ as well about English language, especially English teaching methodology. 3.Th e scope of the subject The thesis is written about the using of short activities which only takes 5 minutes to warm up the language classroom in order to achieve a more effective result in teaching and learning EFL for the pupils of the 10th form in the high school. The topic is about the language classroom but in this thesis we only mention the language classroom of the 10 th form in the high school And it’s also about a small survey to find out the factual role of warm- up activities and the real need for short activities of the teachers in motivating their pupils in learning English. 4 . The metho ds of studyi ng the subjec t Developing and improving the teaching methods can always draw much attention from many teachers. Therefore, this thesis shows out one way of teaching, that is using 5- minute activities to warm up the language class before teaching the new lesson. In order to complete this thesis I have used different methods as follow: • Collecting information and useful materials for the thesis. • Going to the high school to get opinions from the teachers about the necessity of warm- up activities in teaching and learning English and presenting the need for short games. • Observing some classes to know the factual learning of the pupils and their motivation for learning foreign languages. • Selecting and classifying the results of the survey and other materials to make them logical and suitable for the thesis. the desi gn of the subje ct The thesis consists of 3 main parts: Part I is the introduction of the thesis. Part II is the investigation with 3 main chapters: Chapter I : Theoretical preliminaries Chapter II : * 5 – minute activities * The procedures for applying them into warming up the language classroom Chapter III : Survey design Part III is the conclusion of the thesis. Besides the 3 main parts, the thesis also includes the acknowledgements, the table of content and the references. Some abbreviations: EFL : English as a Foreign Language. LAD : Language Acquisition Device L1 & L2 : The 1st language & the 2nd language TLC : Target Language Community ELT : English Language Teaching . …………………………………………………… 2.2. The role of warm – up activities ……………………………. 2.3. Different teaching aims when using 5 – minute activities to warm up the language classroom. ……………………………. 2.3.1. Warming up to get started………………………………… 2.3.2. Warming up to get pupils talking…………………………… 2.3.3. Warming up to lead pupils into the new lesson…………….