FINAL PAPER submitted as a fulfilment for the course INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Inglobal world the importance of English cannot be denied and ignored since English isthe most common language spoken everywhere.. Even outside of countries like the USE and the UK, many

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAMME

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-FINAL PAPER Submitted as a fulfilment for the courseINTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Student’s name:Tran Duy HauStudent’s code:2222202010257Class: D22NNAN08 Course: 2022-2026 Major:English Language 

Bình Dương province - November 2022

Chapter 1 THE IMPORTANCE OF ENGLISH

Chapter 2 ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDY AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITYChapter 3 ENGLISH SKILLS AND HOW TO DEAL WITH THESE SKILLSChapter 4 YOUR PLAN FOR THE COURSE

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY ENGLISH LANGUAGE FALCUTY

EN GLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAMME

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-FINAL PAPER Submitted as a fulfilment for the courseINTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Student’s name:Tran Duy Hau Student’s code:2222202010257 Class:D22NNAN08 

Course:2022-2026Major:English LanguageLecturer: Tran Thanh Du, Ph.D

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 page

1.2 Reflections on the tour to the learning resource center of TDMU 7

2.1.2 Personal strategies to develop listening skill 8

2.2.2 Personal strategies to develop speaking skill 10

2.3.2 Personal strategies to develop reading skill 14

2.4.2 Personal strategies to develop writing skill 16Chapter 3 PERSONAL OBJECTIVES AND DETAILED PLAN FOR 

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Student’s name: Tran Duy Hau Student code: 2222202010257

Chapter 1 THE IMPORTANCE OF ENGLISH

1.1 The importance of English

1.1.1 Introduction

Language is our primary source of communication It is the method throughwhich we share our ideas and thoughts with others There are thousands of language inthe world Every country has their own national language in addition to a variety of local languages spoken and understand by their people in different regions somelanguages are spoken by millions of people and others by only a few thousand Inglobal world the importance of English cannot be denied and ignored since English isthe most common language spoken everywhere English is one of the most usedlanguage in the world Even outside of countries like the USE and the UK, many people can speak and understand English If you include people who speak it as asecond language, an estimated 1 billion people worldwide speak English On top of this, 67 countries have English as their official language and there are 27 countries thathave English as their secondary official language Throughout the countries the BritishEmpire expanded and ruled over many different countries including most of the ones just mentioned and many more In many cases ,the British forced the people theyruled over to speak English and some of these countries still speak English ,even if it isnot their main language People often talk about english as a global language Withmore than 350 million people around the world speaking English as a first languageand more than 430 million speaking it as a second language , there are Englishspeakers in most countries around the world

English may not be the most spoken language in the world, but it is the officiallanguage og 53 countries and spoken by around 400 million people across the globe.English is not just about being able to communicate with native English speakers, it isthe most common second language in the world

Currently, English is the primary language of not only countries activelytouched by British imperialism, but also many business and cultural spheres dominated

 by those countries As such, It is a useful and even necessary language to know.Learning English is important and people all over the world decide to study it as asecond language Many counties include English as a second language in their schoolsyllabus and children start learning English at a young age English is the language of science, of aviation, computers, diplomacy and tourism Knowing English increasesyour chances of getting a good job in a multinational company

English is the dominant or official language in a number of countries, includingmany former British Empire territories The rise of the British Empire offers manyclues as to why the English language is so popular People often want to know the bestlanguage to learn to grt ahead in life Many think that learning English, theinternational language, is the best option English is of course an excellent choice It isnot enough to want to be fluent in English In order to actually learn English, you have

to like learning English

With the help of developing technology, English has been playing a major role

in many sectors including medicine, engineering and education, which, in my opinion,

is the most important arena where English is needed If we want a career in travel,English is absolutely essential As the international language of aviation, pilots andcabin crew all need to speak English Even if you are not up in the air, speakingEnglish accurately will ensure you are able to communicate with clients and suppliersall over the world Having a good understanding of communicating in English makes iteasier to travel around to globe Because it is the main international common languagefor foreigners, knowing English makes it easy to get assistance and in many parts of the world.

There are many valuable reasons to learn the language Six reasons why English

is important

1 English is the language of international communication.

English may, in fact, not be the most spoken language in the world It is theofficial language of 53 countries and spoken by around 400 million people across theglobe With over a quarter of the world speaking the language, there’s always someone

to practice with, especially when you travel

According to the British government, the countries with a majority of nativeEnglish speakers are as follows: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas,Barbados, Belize, Canada, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Ireland, Jamaica, NewZealand, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,Trinidad and Tobago, United Kingdom, and United States of America

In fact, the list is actually much longer, including Botswana, Cameroon, theFederated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia,Malta, the Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua NewGuinea, the Philippines, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone,Singapore, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Sudan, South Africa, South Sudan,Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe

2 English gives you better opportunities for education.

If you learn English well enough to pass tests like the TOEFL (Test of English

as a Foreign Language) or IELTS (International English Language Testing System)you will have more opportunities to study in English-language universities across theglobe

3 English opens new career opportunities.Learning English can help you pursue and obtain more career opportunities Asthe job market is global, many companies need employees who can communicate with partners and clients all over the world This means that they are finding employeeswho can speak English

4 English is the language of business. 

English has become almost a necessity for people to speak English if they are toenter a global workforce Research from all over the world shows that cross-border  business communication is most often conducted in English and many internationalcompanies expect employees to be fluent in English.

5 English gives you access to a world of entertainment.

Many of the world’s top films, books and music are published and produced inEnglish If you speak English, you won't need to rely on translations and subtitlesanymore to enjoy your favorite books, songs, films and TV shows Watching moviesand television programmes in the English language is also a great and fun way to learn

it You will have access to a great wealth of entertainment and will be able to have agreater cultural understanding

6 English gives you an access to more of the Internet. 

English is the language of the internet An estimated 565 million people use theinternet every day, and an estimated 52 percent of the world’s most visited websitesare displayed in the English language

Learning English is important as it gives you access to over half the content onthe internet Knowing how to read English will allow you access to billions of pages of information which may not be otherwise available!

1.2 Reflections on the tour to the learning resource center of TDMU

One of the most memorable days that had such a strong impression on me is myfirst trip with my classmates when I was 18 years old After being announced that wewould go on a trip to Learning Resource Center, all of us got super excited as it wasthe first time we had a long journey together And that unforgettable day finally came.This was also the first time I had the chance to learn about sourcing by using the onlinelibrary and going to the physical library, which excited me greatly The teacher firstgave our class a tour of the school library before telling them to go to the learningresource center's online link They gave me advice on how to borrow and return books

as well as how to research documents using a variety of sources The practice of looking up documents online and finding books to check out from the library was mylast opportunity The book scanner at the library's entrance really impressed me; if you borrow a book without going through the check-in desk, the machine will sound analarm as you leave Thanks to that class and the school's resource center, I now knowhow to look up documents for later learning I believe this is a good first-year experience that we should all partake in

Chapter 2 LANGUAGE SKILLS 2.1 Listening skill

2.1.1 Definitions of listening Skill

There are a lot of different definitions of listening provided:

According to Littlewood (1981), listening demands active involvement from thehearer In order to construct the message that the speaker intends, the hearer mustactively contribute knowledge from both linguistic and nonlinguistic sources Only byapplying the knowledge of the language, can the hearer divide the continuous stream

of sound into meaningful units and only by comparing these units with the sharedknowledge between himself and speaker, can the hearer interpret their meaning

Mary Underwood (1989:1) gives that “listening is the activity of payingattention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear so that the listener mustrecognize and interpret the other factors which are used to convey the messages”.Field (1998:38), listening is “an invisible mental process, making it difficult todescribe Listeners must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary andgrammatical structures, interpret stress and intention, retain and interpret this withinthe intermediate as well as the lager socio-cultural context of the utterance

Rost (2002) defines listening as a process of receiving what the speaker actuallysays, constructing and representing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding, and creating meaning through involvement, imagination and empathy

In short, listening is a complex and active process of interpretation in whichlisteners match what they hear with what they already know to understand the spokenlanguage

2.1.2 Personal strategies to develop listening skill

1 Listening in general:

- Timetable regular practice: For example, 15 minutes at lunch, 15 minutes before breakfast – aim for a manageable amount of time which you can dedicateevery day to listening to something in English

- Expand your range: Everything helps, but you are more likely to be motivatedwhen you are listening to something that interests you, something you enjoy If you like watching films, then that’s fine, but remember in a test you won’t seethe person who is speaking so it’s also good practice to add noninteractivelistenings to your practice Podcasts, radio stations (online), and internationalnews websites often have short audio news items Pick out stories that interestyou!

- Practise in chunks: Targeted, focused practice can really help to stretch your ability to understand main contexts, and can help you to learn new works and

 become familiar with grammar structures and accents For example, listen to a 2minute chunk of a podcast - then check understanding and continue listening tothe next 2 minutes, and so on Try this two or three times and then relax andlisten to the rest of the text.

- Repeated practice:The more you listen, the more you will hear Go back to atext you have listened to before and practise listening for more ideas If you areusing a book to study then these can be a great source for listening texts Keep arecord of new words and phrases you pick out – this will help your reading,listening, speaking and writing

2 Listening in exam:

BEFORE LISTEN

- Read and listen to instructions - this will give you information such as howmany questions you need to answer in this section

- Underline key words in the questions – usually nouns and verbs

- Understanding each context will help you better understand the answer options.Always read the question and think about the person talking and if they aregiving an opinion or expressing an attitude or a feeling, for example

- Read and listen carefully to the example given at the start of each part, this willshow you how to answer the questions

- Can you predict any answers? Name? Noun? Number? Place? Actual answer?WHILE LISTEN

- Don’t worry if you don’t understand everything; understanding the main idea isusually enough

- You hear the recordings twice, so don’t worry if you miss the answer the firsttime

- Try to listen to the whole recording the first time to help you with the context,then check your answers the second time

- When you move to the next question, forget the previous ones

AFTER LISTEN

- Don’t leave empty spaces on your answer sheet

- Check everything on your answer sheet

2.2 Speaking skill

2.2.1 Definition of Speaking Skill

Tarigan (1990:3-4) defines that speaking is a language skill that is developed inchild life, which is produced by listening skill, and at that period speaking skill islearned

Based on Competence Based Curriculum speaking is one of the four basiccompetences that the students should gain well It has an important role incommunication Speaking can find in spoken cycle especially in Joint Construction of Text stage (Departmen Pendidikan Nasional, 2004) In carrying out speaking, students

face some difficulties one of them is about language its self In fact, most of studentsget difficulties to speak even though they have a lot of vocabularies and have writtenthem well The problems are afraid for students to make mistakes.

Speaking is the productive skill It could not be separated from listening When

we speak we produce the text and it should be meaningful In the nature of communication, we can find the speaker, the listener, the message and the feedback.Speaking could not be separated from pronunciation as it encourages learners to learnthe English sounds

Harmer, (in Tarigan, 1990: 12) writes that when teaching speaking or producingskill, we can apply three major stages, those are:

1) Introducing new language2) Practice

3) Communicative activity

Speaking has been regarded as merely implementation and variation, outside thedomain of language and linguistic proper Linguistic theory has mostly developed inabstraction from context of use and source of diversity Therefore, Clark and Clark said that speaking is fundamentally an instrument act Speakers talk in order to havesome effect on their listener It is the result of teaching learning process Students’ skill

in conversation is core aspect in teaching speaking, it becomes vitally aspect inlanguage teaching learning success if language function as a system for expressionmeaning and the successful in speaking is measured through someone ability to carryout a conversation in the language We confess that there are many proponent factorsthat influence teaching speaking success and there are many obstacle factors why it isnot running well

According to Ladouse (1991) speaking is described as the activity as the ability

to express oneself in the situation, or the activity to report acts, or situation in precisewords or the ability to converse or to express a sequence of ideas fluently.Furthermore, Tarigan (1990: 8) said that“Berbicara adalah cara untuk  berkomunikasi yang berpengaruh hidup kita sehari-hari” It means that speaking asthe way of communication influences our individual life strongly

From the explanation above, the researcher concludes that speaking is what wesay to what we see, feel and think When we feel something, we want someone canhear us So, in this process we can call it is an interaction between two sides

When someone speak to other person, there will be a relationship Therelationship itself is communication Furthermore, Wilson (1983:5) defines speaking

as development of the relationship between speaker and listener In addition speakingdetermining which logical linguistic, psychological a physical rules should be applied

in a given communicate situation” It means that the main objective of speaking is for communication In order to express effectively, the speaker should know exactly what

he/she wants to speak or to communicate, he/she has to be able to evaluate the effects

of his/her communication to his/her listener, he/she has to understand any principlethat based his speaking either in general or in individual

Based on the statements above the researcher infers that if someone speaks,he/she should understand what is he/she about In this section, the writer shoulddevelop ideas or build some topics to be talked and to make other responds to whatspeakers says

Stern (in Risnadedi, 2001: 56-57) said watch a small child’s speechdevelopment First he listens, then he speaks, understanding always producesspeaking Therefore this must be the right order of presenting the skills in a foreignlanguage In this learning of language included speaking, there is an activity of speaker 

or learner and it has to have an effect to build speaker’s or learner’s desires andexpress how his/her feeling and acting out his/her attitudes through speaking Thus thelearning of speaking can not be separated from language

On the other hand, speaking can be called as oral communication and speaking

is one of skills in English learning This become one important subject that teacher should given That is why the teachers have big challenge to enable their students tomaster English well, especially speaking English in class or out of the class

Wallace (1978:98) stated that oral practice (speaking) becomes meaningful tostudents when they have to pay attention what they are saying Thus, the students canlearn better on how to require the ability to converse or to express their ideas fluentlywith precise vocabularies and good or acceptable pronunciation

Speaking ability is the students’ ability in expressing their ideas orally which isrepresented by the scores of speaking Speaking is only an oral trail of abilities that itgot from structure and vocabulary, Freeman (in Risnadedi, 2001: 56-57) stated thatspeaking ability more complex and difficult than people assume, and speaking studylike study other cases in study of language, naturalize many case to language teachers.2.2.2 Personal strategies to develop speaking skills

Do you feel like the odd one out in a conversation full of English speakers? Thelanguage barrier can lower self-esteem and confidence across a variety of settings-from social and educational to professional Very often, the knowledge of knowing toread and write English doesn’t translate to knowing how to actually speak the languagewell

However, with the few tips mentioned below, you can polish your speaking skills to befluent and confident

1 LEARN A NEW WORD OR PHRASE DAILY

You have to expand your vocabulary every day to get used to new words, phrases, or sentences It is essential that you write down these words and understandtheir spelling and usage in a statement You can also grasp new words from TV shows,dictionaries, movies, songs, and other sources Always try to focus on learning phrasesinstead of only individual words as it will give you an understanding of the word incontext.

2 THINK AND TALK IN ENGLISHWhile thinking, consciously think in English and try framing sentences in your mind Think out loud in English and pay attention to your words It will help you useyour native language less and improve your thought process in English making iteasier to switch between languages Practice talking or reading out loud in front of amirror, if you wish and observe your expressions, body language, and word formationwhile talking

3 TRY NEW ACTIVITIESRegister yourself for book-reading sessions, debates, or a library where you get

an opportunity to converse with people in English When you speak to native Englishspeakers in English, you help boost your confidence while also correcting any errors if you make any Enjoy the sessions and learn from your mistakes

4 LISTEN, REPEAT, LEARNWhile watching movies, TV shows, or listening to songs, pay attention to thesentence structure or new words Repeat what they say and notice the way it soundswhen you speak Understand the meaning of the statement or lyrics and learn Themovies use lots of word expressions, idioms, and vocabulary that you can use in your daily conversations

5 TRY TONGUE TWISTERSTongue twisters are a fun way to learn words They are a series of words in astatement that are difficult to say quickly Practicing tongue twisters can help you toclearly pronounce the words and get better at it Try saying, “If Woodchuck couldchuck wood” fast and notice the way you pronounce it

6 SPEAK DAILY

If you want to improve your speaking, make sure you have Englishconversations daily with your friends or family Try talking to your teachers andmentors and ask them for feedback Learn the most common sayings used in day-to-day conversations That way, you will be able to have simple conversationsconfidently as practice makes perfect

7 ENROLL IN CLASSES

If you want help from professionals, enroll in English-speaking classesonline Prime Education Center (PEC) offers English Speaking courses for beginners

to advanced levels The subject expert mentors will guide you and help you throughoutyour training process till you are fluent in speaking

English is popular amongst world-class educational institutes and companies.English fluency will help you broaden your career opportunities and socialise better atgatherings Today, most schools and colleges teach English as one of the mainlanguages to prepare children and youth for a better future Speaking fluent in Englishwill not only help you interact freely and confidently in meetings, interviews, partiesand traveling, but also help you express yourself perfectly to others

2.3 Reading skill

2.3.1 Definition of reading skill

Reading is the most important skill that the students must be mastered Reading

is also very possible to acquire to be success in the school and the future life Because

of reading can increase the student critical thinking, creative and spiritual Moreover,reading very emphasized skill in the English foreign learner context Reading can beregarded as a process that involves, decoding interpreting and comprehending writtenmaterial

Many experts define the meaning of reading in some ways because reading is acomplex process This is the variety of definition According to Harmer “Reading isuseful for language acquisition.‟‟1 Whereas according to Penny Mckay said that,

“Reading is both process and product It means that the process or reading involves theinteraction between the reader and the text The product of reading is readingcomprehension or internal construction of meaning; there has been understanding.‟‟2Then, according to William grabe stated that, “Reading is a strategic process in that anumber of the skills and processes used in reading call for effort on the part of thereader to anticipate text information, select key information, organize and mentallysummarize information, monitor comprehension, repair comprehension breakdownsant match comprehension output to reader goals.‟‟3

Futher Jack C Richard, effective reading involves complex processes withspecific context including proficiency level, age, motivation, and reading process such

as content mastery, general language development or the improvement of specificreading skill 4 Based on the definition of some expert above it can be concluded thatreading is actually and activity dealing with words in a text The reader plan is focused

on how the arrest the meaning or the word in the text Definition of ReadingComprehension According to Joanne Schudt Caldwell said that, “Readingcomprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaningthrough interaction and involvement with written language.‟‟5 It means that readingcomprehension is a achieved the readers‟ successfully extracts the useful knowledge