(Skkn 2023) improving the effectiveness of teaching stress to students in grade 12 at nhu xuan secondary high school

This global need to learn English shows that English is extremely important and in learning content, stress is a very important part and a key for us to understand the sound of words.. F

THANH HOA EDUCATION AND TRAINING DEPARTMENT

NHU XUAN SECONDARY & HIGH SCHOOL

EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE

IMPROVING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHING STRESS TO STUDENTS IN GRADE 12 AT NHU XUAN

SECONDARY & HIGH SCHOOL

Performed by: Vu Thi Oanh Position: Teacher

Experience idea in the field: English

THANH HOA - 2023

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONTENTS Page PART I: ASKING THE PROBLEM

3 Actual situation of quality of English teaching and learning at

school

2

PART II TOPIC CONTENT

II STATUS OF PROBLEM

1 The first survey on accent marks (with accompanying results) 5

III MEASURES TO IMPLEMENTED

IV CONTROL RESULTS WITH COMPARISON

V DEVELOPING STUDENTS' INTERNAL POWER IN

LEARNING

11

PART I: ASKING THE PROBLEM

I REASON FOR CHOOSING THE THEME.

1 Theoretical basis.

As we all know English is the number one language in the world Millions

of people from different cultures have been working hard to learn English every day In Vietnam, English has occupied an extremely important position since the country started the policy of opening up and integrating into the region and the world It is the key to help us access the elites, advances in culture, science, technology and many other areas of humanity This global need to learn English shows that English is extremely important and in learning content, stress is a very important part and a key for us to understand the sound of words Native speakers use English accents so naturally that they don't even know they're using them English learners, including Vietnamese, if they don't pronounce the stress correctly, when communicating in English with native speakers often encounter some of the following problems Firstly, it is difficult to understand what people are saying, especially foreigners, they speak very quickly, and on the contrary, it

is very difficult for them to understand what they want, moreover we as Vietnamese use foreign languages Second, if the pronunciation is not correct, it leads to the listener not being able to recognize the word we are referring to, even making the listener feel belittled, amused and the conversation can be hindered

Nowadays, English is being taught in a communicative and learner-centered way To be able to communicate in English, students must be able to use good listening and speaking skills So what teachers and students must do to achieve this goal, especially for ethnic minority students in mountainous areas Thai as NHU XUAN SECONDARY & HIGH SCHOOL? This bothered me and decided to find a way to guide my students on how to best study and choose the right answer when faced with this question

2 Practical basis.

From the practice of teaching English for the past 15 years, I realized that the knowledge of English stress has not been focused, not deeply in the high school curriculum, on the 50-question exam, only 2 sentences are the stress of Words, although the number of questions is small, is extremely important to students When teaching in phonics, teachers need to emphasize the stress on the syllables that are read aloud, more clearly when pronouncing In particular,

a 1-syllable word will not have stress, you cannot read it up and compare it with other syllables In English, stress is indicated by a comma in front of the

stressed syllable (') Example: The word beauty has the transliteration /ˈbjuːti/ For students in mountainous areas, this is especially difficult for them, they do not have the same learning conditions as those in the lowlands or cities and learning from teachers and students, they are only mentioned in the Language focus section, students can only listen to the teacher read it a few times and then read it again, but in the high school exam these 2 sentences are very important for our students, it belongs to the sentence of knowing and understanding

Meanwhile, the current local English learning environment has not been able

to meet the needs of communication practice Most of the students' families do not have the right investment, have not given the right attention, and are also despised and also because the need for benefits is not practical at the time the students are studying On the other hand, students' limitations are that they don't know how to learn, how to record knowledge in the brain, but only memorize, rote, learn mechanically, memorize but cannot remember the knowledge of word stress After a lot of tests and test questions for students, I noticed that students still choose a lot wrong, especially the stress of 3, 4 syllable words, which reduces the student's score in the test

3 Actual situation of quality of English teaching and learning at school.

1 Advantages.

Although English is not a basic science like Math - Physics - Chemistry, it is very important for a country that wants to develop and integrate Therefore, teachers must instill in students passion and interest in this subject Once they understand the problem, they will be passionate and every time they go to class, they will actively and actively learn With the attention and support of the school's Board of Directors, along with previous colleagues, they have created all conditions for better English teaching and learning

2 Difficulties

100% of students are children of ethnic minorities, their education level is still low, and the conditions for attending school are still difficult

As a new school established for 6 years, the facilities and equipment for teaching and learning have not yet met the requirements

The team of teachers is still lacking, moreover, the teachers are working away from home, so there is no additional training for the children Although I know that learning English in general is difficult, it is even more difficult to teach children to remember the rules of pronunciation Therefore, they quickly forget and easily confuse one word with another, leading to many students getting bored and forgetting

II THE PURPOSE OF THE THEME

From the above theoretical and practical bases, I boldly carried out a topic called

“improving the effectiveness of teaching stress to students in grade 12 at Nhu Xuan secondary & high school”

The purpose of the topic is:

- Help students realize the importance of using correct word stress for nouns, adjectives, verbs , thereby improving their knowledge when choosing their answers

- Help students solve the question about knowledge in the sound of words and improve their communication

III OBJECT AND SCOPE OF THE STUDY.

This topic is done with 5th graders in 12th grade that I directly teach in the school year 2022-2023

IV IMPLEMENTATION PLAN.

The time for students to work from the beginning to the end is 6 weeks Teach the rules of marking the stress of words 2, 3, 4, then give them practice exercises in class

PART II TOPIC CONTENT

I THEORETICAL CONTENT.

1 What is stress?

Stress is considered as the melody of English Like word stress, sentence stress can make it a lot easier to understand what other people are saying, especially fast speakers

Word stress is the force of pronunciation that is stressed on a certain syllable in

a word When we read this syllable, the pronunciation force will be stronger than when pronouncing other syllables

English is a multi-syllabic language Most words have 2 or more syllables Among the syllables that make up those words, there is always one syllable that

is pronounced differently from the rest The difference is shown in: length, magnitude and height Syllables are pronounced louder When pronouncing, it is necessary to use a higher voice and last longer than other sounds in the same word That syllable is the stress Or say otherwise, the stress falls on that syllable Word stress is indicated by a sign (‘) in front of the syllable

For example:

• The stress of happy falls on the first syllable happy /ˈhæpi/

• Stress falls on the 2nd syllable: arrange /əˈreɪndʒ/

• engineer /ˌendʒɪˈnɪr/ has two stresses: the main stress falls on the third

syllable /nir/ and the minor stress falls on the first syllable /en/

2 Why do we need to know stress?

- Word stress plays an important role in distinguishing one word from another when we hear and speak English Misplaced stress can lead to misunderstanding because a word that is written the same but has different stress has different meanings

Stress is a sign that distinguishes one word from another When communicating with native speakers, if we do not know how to stress, it will easily cause

misunderstandings or they will not be able to understand anything

- Native speakers when speaking they stress the accent very naturally If we do not sound familiar, this is a difficulty, a barrier for ourselves in communication

Illustrative example: the word “desert” “desert” has two ways of

stressing:

- Stress is on the first syllable: /ˈdezərt/ Desert is now a noun, meaning desert

- The stress falls on the second syllable: /dɪˈzɜrt/ Desert is now a verb, which means abandonment, desertion

3 So how should we learn stress ?

Learners need to know the stress that creates the intonation of the sentence,

so it will help you speak more naturally and fluently

Mastering the rules of accents will make it easier for you to understand native speakers

If you don't read the correct accent, it will make your listeners misunderstand you, make it difficult to communicate, and make the dialogue boring and unattractive To understand the stress of a word, we must first understand what a syllable is Every word is made up of syllables A syllable is a unit of pronunciation, consisting of a vowel sound (/ʌ/, /æ/, /a:/, /ɔɪ/, /ʊə/ ) and consonants (p, k, t) , m, n….) surrounded by or without consonants Words can have one, two, three or more than three syllables

Like knowledge about other subjects, stress also has its own rules With fixed rules, learners can memorize and practice many exercises and gradually get used

to them However, there are exceptions, students need to pay attention to teachers, listen to tapes a lot, buy additional reading materials or look up dictionaries And the way to bring the best results is regular practice that will help new learners to conquer their maximum points

It is very important for them to identify the correct number of syllables while pronouncing and stressing words Besides, it helps you to emphasize and convey important information to the audience effectively

II STATUS OF PROBLEM.

In English, there are many words that are the same but have different meanings Therefore, stress will help you distinguish those words and avoid confusion when communicating

Through studying the opinions of teachers at the same school and students, as well as the fact when teaching in class, I found that students are still very weak

in word stress

And before implementing the topic, I surveyed 3 out of 5 classes I actually taught at the school and the results were as follows

1 The first survey on accent marks (with accompanying results)

I have prepared answer sheets for you, each student will receive 1 sheet and

a sheet of 5 questions about the stress of 2, 3, 4 syllables and let them do it within 5 minutes

This form contains the following questions

Choose the word whose stress pattern is different from that of the rest

1 a generous b suspicious c constancy d sympathy

2 a acquaintance b unselfish c attraction d humorous

3 a loyalty b success c incapable d sincere

4 a carefully b correctly c seriously d personally

5 a excited b interested c confident d memorable

The obtained results are accompanied by the following percentages.

(1)

Correct (2)

Correct (3)

Correct (4)

Correct (5)

Wrong (5)

%)

9%

8(18,1%) 5(11,4

%)

7(15,9

%)

5(11,4%) 4(9,1

%)

%)

6(16,2%) 4(10,8

%)

5(13,5

%)

2(5,4%) 1(2,7

%)

Key:1b, 2d, 3a, 4b, 5a

From the results obtained above, it can be said that students at our school still do very weakly in the stress part, the above results also show that many children are circling results with luck, not necessarily knowing how to circle right sentence

III MEASURES TO IMPLEMENTED.

1 Teach how to mark stress.

* The stress falls on the first syllable

Two-syllable nouns and adjectives in English, verbs containing a short vowel sound on the second syllable and ending in a consonant, the stress falls on the first syllable

For example:  center /ˈsentər/

object /ˈɑːbdʒɪkt/ 

clever /ˈklevər/

sporty /ˈspɔːrti/

enter/ ˈentər/

travel/ ˈtrævl/

open /ˈoʊpən/ …

- Verbs ending in "ow" have stress on the first syllable

For example:   borrow / ˈbɔːroʊ/, follow /ˈfɑːloʊ/…

** Stress falls on the second syllable

- Two-syllable verbs and prepositions have the stress on the second syllable For example:

Verbs: relax /rɪˈlæks/, receive /rɪˈsiːv/…

- Prepositions: among /əˈmʌŋ/, aside /əˈsaɪd/ , between /bɪˈtwiːn/…

Nouns or adjectives containing:

• Long vowel diphthong on the second syllable

• Or ending in more than one consonant

=> The stress will fall on that syllable

For example: belief /bɪˈliːf/

  correct /kəˈrekt/

police /pəˈliːs/ …

- Two-syllable words where the first syllable is a prefix, the stress falls

on the second syllable

For example:

 unwise /ˌʌnˈwaɪz/, dislike /dɪsˈlaɪk/,…

***Three syllables and more than three syllables

*The stress falls on the first syllable

For three-syllable nouns: The second syllable contains the sound /ə/ or /i/, the stress will fall on the first syllable

For: controversy /ˈkɑːntrəvɜːrsi/

  holiday /ˈhɑːlədeɪ /

resident /ˈrezɪdənt/…

**The stress falls on the second syllable

If the last syllable contains /ə/ or /i/, and the first syllable contains /i/

or /ə/, the stress will fall on the second syllable

For example:

 consider /kənˈsɪdər/

 inhabit /ɪnˈhæbɪt/

examine /ɪɡˈzæmɪn/

familiar /fəˈmɪliər/

considerate /kənˈsɪdərət/…

If the first-syllable nouns contain short sounds (/ə/ or /i/) Or the second syllable contains a long vowel / diphthong, the stress falls on the second syllable

For example:

potato /pəˈteɪtoʊ/

banana /bəˈnænə/…

****Words containing the suffix

- Words ending in –ic, -tion, -sion , -ious, -ian, -ial have the stress on the

second syllable from the end

For example: economic /ˌiːkəˈnɑːmɪk/

geologic /ˌdʒiːəˈlɑːdʒɪk/…

- Words that end in -cy, -ty, -phy , -gy, -ible, -ant, -ical, -ive, -ual, -ance/

ence, -ify, -al/ ar, –-uous, - ual, the stress falls on the third syllable from

the end

For example: photography /fəˈtɑːɡrəfi /

practical /ˈpræktɪkl /…

- Words that end in: -ain, -eer, -ese, esque The stress falls on the suffixes themselves

For example: mountaineer /ˌmaʊntnˈɪr/

picturesque /pɪktʃəˈresk/…

The affixes do not affect the sentence stress: –able, -age, -al, -en, -ful, –ing, -ish, -less, -ment, -ous

For example: amazing /əˈmeɪzɪŋ /

continuous /kənˈtɪnjuəs /…

*****Compound word

The stress falls on the first syllable with compound nouns.

Example: doorman /ˈdɔːrmən/, greenhouse /ˈɡriːnhaʊs/…

The stress falls on the second syllable in compound adjectives and compound verbs

For example: self-confident, hard-working, easy-going, understand /ʌndərˈstænd

/, overflow /ˌoʊvərˈfloʊ/…

PRACTICE EXERCISE

Choose the word that has main stress placed differently from the others:

1 a generous        b suspicious      c constancy      d sympathy

2 a acquaintance      b unselfish      c attraction        d humorous

3 a loyalty         b success        c incapable        d sincere

4 a carefully       b correctly        c seriously       d personally

5 a excited         b interested       c confident        d memorable

6 a organise         b decorate       c divorce        d promise

7 a refreshment       b horrible        c exciting         d intention

8 a knowledge         b maximum        c athletics         d marathon