Using fairy tales to motivate students’interests and the effectiveness in learning writing

Using fairy tales to motivate students’interests and the effectiveness in learning writing 0 DEPARTMENT OF THANH HOA EDUCATION AND TRAINING DIVISION OF NGOC LAC EDUCATION AND TRAINING THE EXPERIENCED INITIATIVE USING FAIRY TALES TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS’INTERESTS AND THE EFFECTIVENESS IN LEARNING WRITING Performer Đàm Thị Thúy Position Teacher School unit Kien Tho Secondary School Field English THANH HOA, 2016 SangKienKinhNghiem net 1 Part I Introduction 1 Statements of the problem Writing is one of[.]

DEPARTMENT OF THANH HOA EDUCATION AND TRAINING

DIVISION OF NGOC LAC EDUCATION AND TRAINING

THE EXPERIENCED INITIATIVE

USING FAIRY TALES TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS’INTERESTS AND THE EFFECTIVENESS IN

LEARNING WRITING

Performer: Đàm Thị Thúy Position: Teacher School unit: Kien Tho Secondary School Field: English

THANH HOA, 2016

Part I Introduction

1 Statements of the problem

Writing is one of the four skills in learning English It is a big obstacle

to not only teachers but students as well; especially students come from mountainous areas where the learning equipment and conditions is far too inadequate Moreover, writing skills need lots of requirements such as grammatical rules, vocabulary, creative, imagination, etc

It is true that many language teachers have difficulties to find good ways which are not only interesting but also challenging enough to encourage students

to learn writing Most of the learners consider that they usually meet troubles in mastering writing skills Normally, they feel writing lessons create a boring and monotonous classroom atmosphere which can discourage language learners from participating actively during the teaching-learning process Moreover, students of Kien Tho Secondary School mainly come from countryside, thus the learning environment is not beneficial for them to practice their language skills This has a great influence on students’ competence In order to actively engage language learners in the learning process, teachers should provide a supportive environment in which students can learn language skills in a meaningful context Giving students real-life situations in which the language is used naturally will stimulate them to express their ideas and raise their motivation in learning In other words, their critical thinking and participation will eventually increase Once, when teaching the fairy tales “The lost shoe” and “How the tiger got

his stripes” in the text book English 8, issued by Vietnam Education Publishing

House, I found that most of the students became much eager and interested in learning As a result, the writing lesson was no longer stressful and my students were more than willing to do the writing tasks That is because fairy tales help enhance the memory, stimulate the imagination and emotions and associate ideas In addition, fairy tales are short enough and also rich in terms of vocabulary, less grammatically and syntactically complex than many other forms of text in order to keep students interested in writing not only simple sentences but the whole passage as well Furthermore, according to King (2001: 2), “stories encourage students’ participation and student-centered learning; students may not only interact with each story through a series of right-brain activities, but stories also have an exponential quality in that they stimulate the telling of more stories” Finally, these stories are so closely familiar that they can be adaptable to many types of students with different levels

Although fairy tales are not widely used in the English curriculum in secondary schools, they are very interesting, understandable and useful in developing students’ language skills in class The results of this initiative will bring practical benefits to teaching English, especially teaching writing Firstly,

the initiative will bring insights into the writing skill development of students in the 8th class at Kien Tho Secondary School in Ngoc Lac Secondly, the initiative will help me suggest a better way to improve students’ writing skills in certain contexts Thirdly, the initiative will prove that fairy tales as an aid increase the effectiveness of teaching writing skill for students Finally, the initiative will be

a helpful suggestion to make students keen on learning and the writing lessons will be more interesting and effective

In short, using of fairy tales in teaching writing is an effective way of enhancing learner’s ability to develop practical and creative skills Not only will students be developing their writing while writing their own fairy tales, but they will have comfortable and enjoyable moments as a useful motivation during the lesson as well That is why I have decided on choosing “Using fairy tales to motivate students’ interests and effectiveness in learning writing ” as the topic of

my experienced initiative

2 Objectives of the study

Being a secondary school teacher, I realize that most of my students face many problems in learning writing This is due to the fact that writing lessons are so boring and difficult that students often feel tired and stressed Therefore,

it is essential for a teacher to find out effective teaching methods to make the lessons more interesting and understandable so that s/he can attract students’ attention and help them improve their writing proficiency as well That is why the objectives of my initiative are:

- To raise students’ interests and find out the effectiveness of using fairy tales in learning writing

- To make suggestions to using fairy tales in teaching writing

3 The setting and subjects of the study

The study has been conducted on the 60 eighth-grade students at Kien Tho Secondary School in Thanh Hoa where I have been teaching They all come from rural area and have two-year experience in learning English, therefore, the difference of their writing competence level is not considerable

Unlike the English instruction program for the 6th and 7th graders, the 8th ones have to study language skills separately Because of the difficulty and the complexity of a great amount of knowledge of vocabulary, grammar rules, syntax and so forth, writing skill is normally assigned in the end of each unit in the textbook

In the first term of the eighth grade, students have studied some familiar fairy tales like “The lost shoe” and “How the tiger got his stripes” which were translated into Vietnamese Therefore, it is helpful for them to understand and analyze and employ these stories into different tasks of writing such as completing the passage, giving the correct forms of verbs, writing up sentences, writing a summary or another ending for the story

4 Methods and data collection instruments

The initiative aims at exploring students’ opinions about using fairy tales and their effectiveness in teaching writing and measuring the writing activities for students through fairy tales, therefore I tend to use the interview, questionnaires and tests as useful tools for my study The combination of different instruments used in this initiative would help to gain reliable data and help me have a positive result in the subjects’ development

* Questionnaires

The questionnaire has been conducted to reach two aims First of all, it focuses on collecting the students’ viewpoints or attitudes toward fairy tales And the other emphasis is on surveying the effectiveness of using writing techniques with fairy tales that students can get in the classroom

* Interviews

Through the questionnaire, I have carried out some interviews to find out the reasons for students’ choices In order to obtain students’ opinion concerning the use of story, then students were interviewed later to express their ideas or reasons for their choices

*Tests

Test items are the main tools used for data collection as primary sources

to measure how students develop their writing skills The tools are used to elicit the data involve one pre-test and two post-tests

PART II DEVELOPMENT

1 Theoretical basis

1.1.Overviews of writing and teaching writing

1.1.1 Writing and teaching writing

Writing is a complex process with a lot of requirements of grammatical features, the sounds, syllables or words of language, capitalization, spelling and punctuation, word form and function, etc

Writing is often revised by writing sentences, paragraphs or longer compositions using recently learned grammar Thus, it takes writers much time and effort to practice writing skills

According to Nunan (1989: 36),

…[W]riting is an extremely complex cognitive activity in which the writer is

required to demonstrate control of variables simultaneously At the sentence

level, these include control of contents, formats, sentence structures,

vocabulary, spelling and letter formation Beyond the sentence, the writer must

be able to structure and integrate information into cohesive and coherent

paragraphs and texts.

Besides, writing requires writers to commit words or ideas and to convent ideas, think about how to express them, and organize them into statements and paragraphs The writers have to generate ideas, organize, draft, edit, read,

re-read to produce a product, a paragraph, an essay or a report and writers try to express their ideas, feelings to impress their readers in certain ways

1.1.2 The purposes for teaching writing

According to Foong (1999: 3-5), there are three purposes to teach writing

The first is “writing for language practice” Writing can be taught primarily for practicing language forms to develop accuracy and correctness Practicing can do via the imitation That is using models of content or form as a stimulus for writing This is applied to language learning in which accurate use

of the language was learned through reinforcement, constant practice and imitation In such language-based writing tasks, students will be given writing exercises that will reinforce language structures that they have learned through the manipulation of grammatical patterns

The second is “writing for communication” With the emphasis of communicative competence as a goal in language learning (Widdowson, 1978; Brumfit and Johnson, 1979), teaching of writing begins to shift its emphasis on accuracy and patterns to the ability to understand and convey information content Everything such as ideas, opinions, thoughts or anything else, what a writer need to express without being used through spoken form, can be shown in written texts to inform to readers Obviously, these written texts, at that time, should be considered as a means of communication between a writer and his/ her audiences The communicative writing tasks, which require greater awareness of writer's purpose, audience, and the context of writing, would stimulate real life situations where a writer would write to convey some information to a reader

The last is “writing as a discovery and cognitive process” Writing is viewed as an expressive mode through which writers use writing as a means to explore and discover meaning for themselves and develop their own voice

In order to enhance their imagination ability and creativity, students or writers should be encouraged to generate their own ideas by writing freely Free writing is able to develop fluency and the writer's creation The role of the teacher is a facilitator whose task is to promote a supportive learning environment This environment provides learners with opportunities to write about their own ideas and discover their voices rather than act as a judge whose task is to identify students' errors

1.1.3 Approach in teaching English writing

Normally, a writing process is taught in three stages with different activities which are classified as follows:

Stages Activities

Pre-writing

Reading (extensively) a passage Skimming or scanning a passage Brainstorming

1.2 Overviews of fairy tales

1.2.1 Definition of fairy tales

There are a lot of different definitions of fairy tales

Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “a fairy tale as a story (as for children) involving fantastic forces and beings (as fairies, wizards, and goblins) – called also fairy story; a story in which improbable events lead to a happy ending”

According to Kinsella,

…[A] fairy tale is one type of story under the heading of "folk

tales." There are many types of folktales: a tall tale, a cumulative

tale, an animal story Sometimes, people use the term folktale and

fairy tale to mean the same thing A fairy tale is a folktale, but a

folktale is not always a fairytale Fairy tales often have some sort of

Discussing a topic or questions

While- writing

 Controlled writing:

Gap-filling sentences/paragraphs Sequencing jumbled words Transformation writing Completing sentences Parallel sentences

 Guided writing:

Questions & answers Writing based on cued words Writing based on provided information

 Free writing:

Writing about pictures Writing in response to a situation Writing with background knowledge Post-writing

Feedback & correction Revising

Editing Evaluating

royalty involved in the story (including the fairy realm); the main

character (s) goes on a journey where he/she is tested; they have

some sort of magical help along the way; good triumphs over evil;

there is a transformation or reward at the end They usually start

with "a long time ago, in a place far away" and end "happily ever

after."

1.2.2 The elements of fairy tales

To understand a fairy tale, students need to analyze or clear these elements:

1) Plot: The plot is a writer’s arrangement of events that will express his

attitude toward the human condition

2) Setting: The time, place and the origin of main characters of a fairy tale are

very clear Without them the story would be vagueness

3) Characterization: How the writer reveals what will relate to the characters to

the reader

4) Theme: It contains an idea of the story The theme is something that can be

derived from the story, like moral

5) Point of View: The narrative technique that the writer uses to tell the story In

other words, who is telling the story?

1.2.3 The advantages of fairy tales

Fairy tales are stories related to children’s childhood memories These stories captivate the imagination of young minds and enhance their creativity and reasoning skills Thus they are not only useful in the classroom but also in real life Students might not explicitly comprehend the issues involved, but will absorb the lesson deep in the subconscious and find the joys while learning with fairy tales due to these following benefits:

“Fairy tales are enjoyable but meaningful” (Hanlon, 1999) They signify human experience, values, and history; hence they can provide both entertainment and opportunities for further discussion They set as an excellent example of the multifaceted mixture of history and fantasy Moreover, they can

be analyzed in short essays as well as in some more complicated research Because of their universal values, similar plots and values, most people find it easy to remember fairy tales

Fairy tales are short enough This advantage has added more opportunities

to use fairy tales in language classroom since teachers do not have to be afraid

of adjusting most of their lesson plans when using fairy tales Alternatively, teachers can assign their students to read them at home before further discussion

in the next meeting

Fairy tales are rich in terms of language yet less grammatically complex and syntactically speaking than many other forms of literature Their simplicity has made fairy tales consistent in style and form

1.2.4 The role of fairy tales in teaching and learning English

Fairy tales usually consist of a great source of vocabulary, grammar structures and syntax And in addition to that fairy tales contain interesting topics to keep students interested long enough to the lessons

Fairy tales help children notice language areas such as past tenses, adjectives, comparatives and etc Teachers could use passages from the fairy tale

to point out grammatical features For example, to ask students to find irregular verbs, to write down all adjectives or to locate the words and phrases that indicates position in place or time Texts with continuous meanings are more authentic than the connected sentences which are often used as examples in grammar books Story books often contain extended examples of dialogue that use a wide variety of punctuation marks, in more natural context than is possible

in grammar exercise books Word-order can be taught through reading fairy tales as well

1.2.5 The role of fairy tales to writing process

Writing is not the only important thing that comes out of teaching fairy tales Fairy tales teach students analytical skills Stories often have familiar structure and plot can create a supportive context for learning about the writing process, building students' background knowledge In the lessons, students will explore the concepts of beginning, middle, and ending by reading a variety of stories and charting the events on storyboards As they retell the stories, students are encouraged to make use of sequencing words (first, so, then, next, after that, finally) Starting with prewriting questions and a storyboard, students construct original stories, progressing from shared writing to guided writing; independent writing is also encouraged

Stories give students insights and help them write in second language in a more imaginative way Students become more creative by comparing their own point of view with that/ those of the main character(s) of the story Whenever students read, they interact with the text By interacting with the text, they interpret what they read By interpreting what they read, they can work toward writing English more creatively

2 The existing state of problems before using fairy tales in teaching writing skills

2.1 Students’ condition and factors cause difficulties in teaching and learning writing

2.1.1.Students’ condition

Most of the Kien Tho Secondary School students, who are the subjects in this study are in grade 8, come from mountainous area They do not have good conditions in order to join extra lessons Especially, they almost do not care much about study English In addition, students hardly have much time to

practice writing in class The biggest difficulty most of the students meet is

poorly combining the knowledge of grammar, word forms, etc, to write up

sentences or a passage, a paragraph Above all, most of them are not interested

in learning writing because of lots of synthetic requirements of vocabulary,

grammar, imagination, etc in writing skills

2.1.2 Factors

There are so many factors cause difficulties for learners in writing such

as the inadequacy of vocabulary, grammar rules, the weakness in generating ideas, etc Besides, students’ first language affects learning the target language

as one of the other important factors This is why students make certain mistakes and repeat them In general, there some factors cause difficulties in writing as follows:

a The teaching method and the environment are the main causes of students’ weaknesses in English In fact, teachers’ weak qualification in English has a great influence in students’ results An inappropriate method will lose learners’ motivation and interest in the lesson

b The limitation of vocabulary Vocabulary plays an important role in generating writers’ ideas Without words, writers hardly express their thoughts

in mind, but they normally repeat the same words This hinders their creativity and makes monotonous writings Apparently, students couldn’t give voice to their thoughts because of the inadequate stock of vocabulary

c English language learners don’t use invented spelling and their written texts are restricted to words which they know

d The inflexibility in using tenses Most of the learners, especially, those who have elementary level, tend to use the present tense in their writing

e The illness of grammar rules Writing skills obviously require a qualified knowledge of grammar such as spelling, punctuation, the combination

of tenses, cohesion, cohesive, etc

f Students do not realize their own mistakes because of not getting suitable feedback from their partners or teachers

2.2 The result of a survey before teaching writing skills with fairy tales

To measure students’ proficiency in learning writing, I carried out testing on

60 eighth-grade students by a test Thanks to the result of this test, I can identify what the most weakness is that students meet in writing

Pre- test - Time allotment: 45 minutes

Part 1 Write a short passage about your idol Use the following questions as

prompts.

- Who is your idol?

- What does he/ she look like?

- What is he/ she like?

- Why do you love him/ her?

Part 2 Read the passage about Ba’s friendship in the textbook at page 13, then

write another end for the story.

Students’ result in writing before learning with fairy tales

The data in the pre-test shows that most of the students (account for 56%) were at medium proficiency level with the scores from 5 to 6.5 Only 10 students (account for 17%) reached the points from 7 to 8.5 Whereas, no one could gain 9 or 10 point, 8 among 60 subjects who were quite bad at writing score below 5 An investigation and interview later with these students has proved that there are many factors influenced on their low scores in writing The main factor is student’s motivation Moreover, the topics for writing before conducting with fairy tales in the pre-test are not interesting enough to appeal them to activities Other elements that decide to students’ scores are the poorness of vocabulary, grammar rules and ideas for writing Especially, in the topics in the pre-test, students’ creativity was limited

3 Procedure and solutions

I conducted this study on three steps

` Step 1: I have designed a close questionnaire to investigate about

a, Students’ background information,

Question 1: How was students’ ability of writing skills with 4 options for students choose (good/ rather good/ medium/ bad)

b, Students’ attitudes toward fairy tales

Question 2: What do you think of writing skills? (Difficult/ rather difficult/ easy) Question 3: How do you prefer to use fairy tales into writing lessons? (like very much/ like/ dislike)

Question 4: What are aspects cause difficulties for you during the writing

process? (unable to find ideas/ limited vocabulary/ the influence of writing style

in the first language/ poor grammar structure)

Question 5: What are beneficial elements of fairy tales you may get? (familiar plot of story/ interesting topics/ understandable language/ simple grammar structure/ colorful images, others)

c, The effectiveness of stories on writing learning process of 60 students from two classes.

Question 6: Which activities did you usually do in writing lessons with fairy

tales? (guessing vocabulary in the context/ discussing the plot of story/