skkn tiếng an h11 TEACHING GRADE 11 STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILLS BY USING COMMUNICATIVE TASKS

In order to communicate to foreigners, to find good jobs, many young people and students have to be good at speaking English.. In the first term of the school year 2015, all grade 10 stu

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INTRODUCTION

Vinh Cuu, which is one of the largest districts in Dong Nai Province, has attracted a lot of foreign companies and factories Many foreigners work in the companies and factories need to use English to interact with their customers, their workers and partners In order to communicate to foreigners, to find good jobs, many young people and students have to be good at speaking English Of course, more and more people want to use it as a means of communication at work, in business and tourism As a teacher, I am aware that English has been one of the compulsory subjects in secondary schools and high schools in Vietnam In the first term of the school year 2015, all grade 10 students in Dong Nai Province had to take communicative English tests with the four language skills: Listening, speaking, reading and writing Therefore, English teachers have the responsibility for training and helping their students to become good communicative English users In teaching the four language skills, we think that speaking is the most important skill, but the teaching of speaking in my school has not been effective in terms of communication

STUDENTS’ LEARNING PROBLEMS

Many students in Tri An School are not good at oral communication in English for a number of reasons: First, they have very few learning speaking strategies because they are usually provided with grammar and language structures which their teachers think that these structures are important for the first and second term examinations Second, they are very shy when they speak out in front of the class because they are not usually trained to use English communicatively Finally, many tasks in the textbooks : English 10, English 11 and English 12 are not suitable for students’ learning needs

As a teacher of English, I think that teaching English for “spoken communication” is essential However, my personal experience of its methods is

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still limited due to many following reasons: The students have very few chances for communication due to the large number of students, time limitations, grammar translation method Most of the teachers don’t get familiar with natural responses to communicative situations except for questions and answer activities between teacher and students Therefore, the students are not confident enough

to express themselves in English

As a teacher, I know that there are a lot of methods that can be applied in the class However, in this research I focus on grade 11 students’ speaking skill because speaking is a productive skill It involves using speech to express meanings to others Interaction is two-way communication that involves using language and body language to keep our listeners involving in what we are saying and to check that they understand our meanings

LITERATURE REVIEW

We all know the importance of speaking, teaching speaking to the ultimate goal

of our English language teaching Speaking is one of the crucial productive skills and people can evaluate our English competence by listening to our speaking first

Nunan (1991) wrote, "Success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the (target) language." Therefore, if students do not learn how to speak or do not get any opportunity to speak in the language classroom, they may then get frustrated and lose interest in learning the language Our responsibility is to improve students’ four language skills: Listening, speaking, reading and writing I think speaking is the most important skill for my students because the purpose of our English course is really to enable our students to communicate effectively In fact, if the appropriate communicative tasks or activities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a lot of fun The achievement in learning speaking will increase students’ motivation

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In recent research, it is true that in a language class, it is necessary for the teacher to create a positive classroom atmosphere so that he or she can encourage the students to communicate with each other By doing this, the students can express their ideas, feelings and opinions without feeling afraid of making mistakes Besides, the students can conduct communicative tasks in an effective way Many researchers emphasize the importance of teaching conversations or role play to English language teaching

Jack C Richards emphasizes that communicative practice refers to activities where practice in using language within a real communicative context is the focus, where real information is exchanged, and where the language used is not totally predictable

In agreement with Richards, Willis (1996) states that creating a low stress atmosphere and using the language for real purposes are ways to get meaningful communication and through interaction and students have the opportunity to acquire discourse skills Willis also points out that the essential conditions for effective language learning, such as exposure, use, and motivation In agreement with Willis, Nunan (1991) says that task-based learning views the learning process as a set of communicative tasks that are directly linked to the curricular goals they serve He also stresses the crucial role of communicative tasks in task-based teaching and learning He says that task-based teaching involves an approach where communicative tasks are particularly important because students need to be involved in interactions in the classrooms and real life As a result, this view changes the approach of designing tasks to be developed in the classroom

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TASK MODIFICATION

Roger Nunn suggests that teachers must take into account the following criteria when they design tasks and exercises for English learners or students Let’s consider the areas:

Simulating "Real" Conversation

Classroom tasks are simulations and can only approximate real-life communication, but real-life skills, such as adjusting to an interlocutor's contribution can be built in Tasks designed to practise interactive ability should

be an appropriate task for students They must be able to imagine themselves in the situation

Exchanging

An interactive task should require students to exchange information, opinions, attitudes, but not for its own sake There should be a real purpose; each participant should need to find something out from the others in order to complete the task

Comprehensible Input

The task should require the participants to make sure they fully understand what the others tell them and to make themselves fully understood to the others In this way, students will need to adjust to each other's contributions

Improvising

The task should require both predictable and unpredictable communication Real conversation always involves unpredictability so an ability

to improvise needs to be practised For example, an attempt to come to an agreement is unpredictable There is no requirement to actually reach an agreement, so the participants may develop the conversation freely On the other hand, they must exchange the information for an agreement to be possible and cannot easily avoid asking questions

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Mixed- Ability

For mixed-ability courses, tasks should favour the production of contributions of all kinds They should allow both weak and strong participants

to extend themselves to their full ability For strong participants, making themselves understood to students with less linguistic ability is a useful skill Opportunity and time must be available for candidates

(Roger Nunn - Kochi University, Japan)

In order to make the tasks more effective and relevant and appropriate for our students, I often redesign the tasks to meet the students’ learning goals Let’s have a look at the following task design

Part one: English 11- Unit 1: Friendship (Page 16)

Task 3 (Task from the textbook)

Role - play: Talk about a famous friend

Before you start, agree upon the basic profile of the friend Use the following suggestions to ask and answer questions:

• his/ her name

• date of birth

• his/ her physiccal characteristics

• his/ her hobbies

You are interviewing the interviewee

about a friend of his or hers who has

just won the first international prize

in Mathematics

You have a friend whom you admire greatly She/ He has just won the first international prize in Mathematics You are being interviewed by a journalist about him

or her

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• his/ her personalities

• why he/ she is interested in Math

• how much time he/ she spends on Maths every day

• what makes him/ her a good friend

• what made him/ her successful

• what he/ she does in his/ her free time

Useful language:

His or her personalities:

Friendly, humorous, quick-witted, good-natured, helpful, honest, pleasant, caring

How he or she won the prize:

Studious, intelligent, keenly interested in Mathematics, eager to learn, patient, calm

Newly- designed Task

1 Role- playing:

Instruction:

Work in pairs to play roles in the dialogue Change the roles when you have finished

Journalist: Hello Our guest today is Phuong, a student who has won a gold medal in Physics We can see you’re very excellent So Phuong, do you admire anybody?

Phuong: Yes, of course That is my best friend I so much admire him because he is very intelligent and he has just won the first international prize in Maths

Journalist: What’s his name?

Phuong: His name is Long

Journalist: What is his date of birth?

Phuong: Uh, it’s on 23rd September 1998

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Journalist: I want to know details of himself What are his physical characteristics?

Phuong: Well, he’s tall and thin Sometimes I see him as a scientist

in his short-sighted glasses

Journalist: Oh, maybe he is very handsome How about his personalities?

Phuong: You know? I admire Long because of not only his excellence but also his good personality In spite of being a good student,

he is very modest and he always helps friends in learning He also has sense of humour that makes people laugh a lot

Journalist: Long is such a perfect student Why is he interested in Maths?

Phuong: Well, he said he loved Maths when he was a little boy He likes counting, figures

Journalist: Does he spend all his time studying Maths?

Phuong: He spends much time studying it but not all of it He always has a suitable schedule between studying and playing

Journalist: What does he do in his free time?

Phuong: He plays sports with his friends Sometimes he plays rubikcube

Journalist: After your share, I know how he has such a great success That’s all interesting Thanks for your share I hope to see you and Long someday Goodbye

Phuong: Bye See you soon

Rationale: After the weaker students have already practised playing roles in the dialogue, they can make questions with cues based on the dialogue The students work in pairs to make their own dialogue, using their own ideas This task is considered “a communicative task” because the students can exchange real information They use their own ideas to interact with each other We should help students practice playing roles with a model first, then they can make their own dialogue They are provided with opportunities to decide on things in the dialogue and this is considered as simulation

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2 Making questions:

Instruction: Work in pairs to make correct questions, using the word provided Then, ask your partner to answer the questions to make your own dialogue.

Physical characteristics What

Time he/ she spends on Maths Does he………?

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