Using short activities to warm up and increase the 10th form students’ interest in the pre - Listeni...

Using short activities to warm up and increase the 10th form students’ interest in the pre Listening stage 1 THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING NGHI SON LOWER AND UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL IN[.]

THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

NGHI SON LOWER AND UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL

-INNOVATION

USING SHORT ACTIVITIES TO WARM UP AND

INCREASE THE 10TH FORM STUDENTS’ INTEREST IN

THE PRE-LISTENING STAGE

Written by: Mai Thi Thuy

Function: Teacher

Subject: English

THANH HOA YEAR 2019

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2.1.2.Teaching speaking in Communicate language teaching (CLT) 3

2.1.5.2 The role of short activities in language teaching and

learning process

4

2.1.5.3 Principles of using Short activities in listening class 4 2.1.5.4 Common types of short activities used for the pre-listening

stage

4

2.3.1 Some recommendations for using short activities in the

pre-listening stage

6

2.3.1.6 Giving instructions of short activities / rules of games 6

2.3.2 Some suggested short activities to warm up and increase the

10th form students’ interest in the pre-listening stage

7

3

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Reasons for choosing the study

In the field of education nowadays, English has become one of the most important and compulsory subjects at all levels of learning and teaching in Vietnam From elementary to university or even at higher level, all students find English an important subject In addition, in language learning, learners have to master four skills, among which listening is an essential skill for the aim of communication However, in many years of learning and teaching English, the author has realized the fact that, in high school, the teachers and the students seem to pay more attention to the grammar and reading skill than to listening skill Moreover, in listening lessons, the teacher often focuses more on the while- listening, and post- listening stage than on the pre- listening stage As a result, the students start the listening class with less interest The author herself is really fond of finding the attitude of the teachers and the students in high school towards listening lessons in general and in the pre-listening stage in particular

Additionally, motivation is perhaps the key that leads to consecutive success in the learning process, especially in second language acquisition

So, maintaining the students’ interest during the lesson is very important If the students do not have motivation, they cannot get the best result from learning As a foreign language teacher, the greatest desire is to help students absorb the content’s lesson through the appealing and effective communication In order to do this well, besides coordinating teaching methods, we must also know how to motivate students by warm–up activities before beginning a lesson with motto “Learning in playing, playing in learning” This will make a good impression on students and attract students during the lesson When we create warm–up activities, students will promote their creativity and self-learning

It raises a question for the teacher: “how to motivate students or how

to increase the students’ interest in the pre-listening stage?” Short activities are one of good choices for this problem For high school teachers, especially for the less experienced teachers, if they know how to make use

of 3-5 minutes to warm up a new lesson, their teaching result will be more beneficial But in fact, many teachers still do not highly appreciate the importance of short activities and games in the pre-listening In addition, they lack one effective way to motivate the language learners This study, however, does not aim at measuring students’ motivation of learning listening but helps increase their interests in listening lessons through short activities in the pre-listening stage

Last but not least, teaching not only requires the teacher to know how

to “teach” but also how to “educate” nurture the learners’ soul Hence, she

is keen on finding out the way to increase students’ interest in the pre-listening stage Through a full, if not profound, knowledge about short warm-up activities, she would like to know how to make the pre-listening

stage more interesting for the students, and be a good and understanding teacher to make her dream come true

All of the above reasons and factors have inspired the author to

choose the study entitled: “Using short activities to warm up and increase

the 10 th form students’ interest in the pre-listening stage.”With the hope of

providing teachers of English in general and teachers at Nghi Son lower and upper secondary school in particular a better understanding about using short activities and games in the pre-listening stage In addition, the study was implemented with the hope to make a little contribution to the quality

of teaching and learning listening at Nghi Son lower and upper secondary school

1.2 Aims of the Study

For the reasons mentioned above, the study has been done with the aims to:

 Provide an overview on the Communicative Language Teaching Approach and stages of a listening lesson

 Present some general knowledge about motivation, listening activities and short activities

 Help teachers and students be aware of some advantages of using short activities in the pre-listening stage

 Investigate the reality of teaching listening at secondary schools, especially the reality of using short activities in the pre-listening stage

 Indicate the effects of using short activities in the pre-listening stage

 Giving some suggestions and implications for the improvement

of listening teaching at Nghi Son lower and upper secondary school by using short activities in the pre-listening stage

1.3 Scope of the Study

This paper deals with a small part in using short activities to warm up and increase the students’ interest in the pre-listening stage Additionally, it

is too broad to carry out the thesis discussing all levels of students Thus, the study only focuses on students of the 10th form at high school All provided activities and techniques are based on the target listening contents

in the 10th form text book

1.4 Methods of the study

To carry out the study, the following methods and procedures were employed:

 Investigating methods

 Analytic and synthetic methods

 Descriptive methods

 Comparative and contrastive methods

Firstly, the author reviewed the theories related to the matter in concern in order to shade up a framework for the analysis and then collected information associated with the pre-listening stage and short activities from different sources: references, books, and internet Secondly,

a survey was conducted on the real situation at high school by using questionnaires for students there Thirdly, the selected information and data were analyzed, and then the results were arranged into categories for comparison Finally, the information and data obtained were dealt with and analyzed so as to come to conclusion, and accordingly, to provide some recommendations to improve the situation

2 CONTENT

2.1 Theoretical background

2.1.1 The nature of listening skill.

According to Byrne (1976), listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process Listening is key to all effective communication Without the ability to listening effectively, messages are easily misunderstood As a result, communication breaks down and the sender of the message can easily

2.1.2 Teaching speaking in Communicate language teaching (CLT)

CLT is an approach that aims at making communicative competence the goal of language teaching and developing procedures for the teaching of the four language skills CLT emphasizes on the process of communication rather than master of language forms

2.1.3 Stages of a speaking lesson

2.1.3.1 Pre- listening stage

This stage is aimed at preparing students with everything necessary for listening At this stage, the teacher will use up activities to

warm-up and increase the student’s interest

2.1.3.2 While- listening stage

At this stage, the students will practice the new language in a controlled way base on structures given in pre- listening stage

2.1.3.3 Post- listening stage

The aim of this stage is to help students summarize what they have learned or remember new vocabularies, or simple as making animated atmosphere in class after the whole listening lesson

2.1.4 Motivation

2.1.4.1 Definition

According to Pintrich and Schunk (2002), a general definition of the

term motivation refers to “the process whereby goal-directed activity is

instigated and sustained”.

2.1.4.2 Motivation in classroom setting

Motivation is very important factor affecting the success in second language learning So it is important to make interesting, non- threatening classrooms where relevant to students’ age and level of ability

2.1.5 Short activities

2.1.5.1 What is an activity?

Jeremy Harmer (1999) said that: “Activity” is a loose term used to give a general description of what will happen in class It is important to realize that here we are not talking about what, general and physically, the students are going to do

Short activity is a kind of activities which is short, simple and interesting enough to motivate students to learn a foreign language better It happens in very short time, may be from four to seven minutes

2.1.5.2 The role of short activities in language teaching and learning process

Using short activities brings many benefits in the teaching and learning process such as: changing the atmosphere in the class, making lesson predictable, stimulating students’ interest, providing intense and meaningful practice of language

2.1.5.3 Principles of using Short activities in listening class

There some main principles: good preparation, short and simple activity and game, presentation about the rules, variety, good organization

of class

2.1.5.4 Common types of short activities used for the pre-listening stage

- Using pictures

- Asking and answering

- Jumbled words

- Guess the missing letters

- Open prediction or Brainstorming

- True – false statement prediction

- Matching

- Eliciting

2.2 Reality:

2.2.1 To the teachers:

Through the result of survey, the author realizes that the teachers’ attitudes are different among four skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing skill

50

speaking listening Reading Writing

0

10

20

30

40

50

The most important

Important

Quite important

the least important

Figure 1 : The teachers ’ attitudes towards four skills

As can be clearly seen from the chart, a half of the teachers (50%) think that reading skill is the most important skill among four language skills Listening skill is considered the least important skill (37.5%) This shows the fact that the teachers in high school often pay more attention to reading and writing skill than to listening skill Due to less consideration on the listening skill, the teachers do not really spend much time and preparation on listening lesson As a result, the students will feel bored and uninterested in listening lesson

2.2.1 To the students:

Similarly, the survey results from students’ questionnaire No1 show that the students also have different attitudes towards the listening skill

12

59

37 30

39

Speaking Listening Reading Writing

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

The most important

Important

Quite important

the least important

Figure 2: The students’ attitudes towards four skills

The chart shows that a large number of the students (59%) consider reading skill the most important Only 12% think that listening skill is the most important This causes a lot of difficulties for the teacher in teaching listening Obviously, the students are not well aware of the importance of listening skill

Due to the less awareness about the importance of listening skill, the students’ interest in listening lesson is not high The number of the students who really like listening lesson is very low (19%) Most of them (43%) are not interested in the listening lesson It means that they lack motivation in learning listening As a result, they are not willing or eager to make efforts

in listening activities That is the current situation of learning listening skill

at high school in general and at Nghi Son lower and upper secondary school

in particular

19%

28%

43%

10%

very much much not very much

Figure 3: The students’ attitudes towards listening lesson

2.3 Solution to the problems.

2.3.1 Some recommendations for using short activities in the pre-listening stage.

2.3.1.1 Deciding which activity to use

The teacher should consider the level of the short activity to fit their students' language level, students' characteristics The most important factor

is that short activities and games should be used when they can give students both fun and educational meaning

2.3.1.2 Time

The pre-listening stage often takes up from 5 to 7 minutes So the short activities and games should be carried out only from 4 to 7 minutes 2.3.1.3 Preparation

The teacher has to consider how to choose the most appropriate short activity or game for their class, prepare some equipment or materials needed for the short activities and games

2.3.1.4 Physical arrangement

Up to each kind of games, the teacher can conduct in individual, pairs, groups, teams or the whole class Individual teacher should decide herself what arrangement will best suit her students in given situation

2.3.1.5 Management

The teacher tries to make the class not to become chaos and make sure that students get what we want them to get They should move around to check if the students really join the activities or just take advantage for chatting The teacher encourages and praises the students to motivate them and makes them feel more confident and more interested in the activities as well as in the lesson

2.3.1.6 Giving instructions of short activities / rules of games

The teacher must give clear, simple, explicit instructions or rules of the games The teacher must ensure that clear instructions are given before the short activities or games are done to avoid making the students confused

2.3.1.7 Correction

Due to the aims of using short activities and games in this stage is to increase the students’ interest; sometimes the teacher can ignore unimportant errors

2.3.1.8 Some notes for some short activities

Each type of short activities or games has its own characteristics, so it

is important for teacher to choose suitable students with the activity or game

2.3.2 Some suggested short activities to warm up and increase the 10 th

form students’ interest in the pre-listening stage

Some of the following activities were applied in the author’s experimental lessons and they really worked

2.3.2.1 Using pictures

Type: class work

Material: pictures

Time: 4-5 minutes

Preparation: print colorful pictures

Procedure:

 Teacher sticks the pictures on the board

 Ask student some questions about these pictures

 Students look at the pictures and answer the question

 Teacher introduces a new lesson

Advantage of this activity:

- This activity will make the lesson more vivid and increase students’ interest at the beginning of the lesson

* Example for Unit 4: Special education -part C (page 48)( “tienganh 10”)

- Teacher sticks some pictures on the board and ask a question:

“Who are they?”