Improving students ability to describe charts in english 11 through question system combined with games

“What can I do to help my students?” “In what way do my students describe them well?” “What should I do to make these writing tasks easier and more attractive?” The best way I did to ass

4 Chapter 1: Theoretical and practical background

4 1.1 Charts and describing a chart

5 1.2 The situation

9 Chapter 2: The solution

13 Chapter 3: Discussion

13 3.1 Effect

15 3.2 Comments from teachers and students

15 III Results of the research

CONTRACTED WORDS

ICT Information and Communication Technologies

IEPs Individualized Education Programs

I INTRODUCTION

1 The reason for choosing the subject:

Nowadays, in the integration period and with the globalization trend, foreign languages, especially English, play a very important role in society English becomes an international language It is used in many fields such as business, trade, communications, tourism and diplomatic activities, etc More than fifty countries in the world use English as their official language and it is used as the second language in nearly eighty nations Therefore, English is an ology which

is never saturated due to its newness and popularity in all fields Our Party and government showed their particular interest in teaching and learning foreign languages

English is considered as a main subject at upper secondary school

Teaching English with the communicative approach is our aim How to improve all skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) completely for our students is our duty All skills are important and it is necessary for us to develop them Curriculum and textbooks are issued with a view to carrying out this aim successfully However, writing skill seems to be one of the most difficult skills for students Most writing tasks, for example describing charts, are not interesting enough to attract them They do not even know how to deal with these tasks Their writings are only simple descriptions without comparisons

“What can I do to help my students?” “In what way do my students describe them well?” “What should I do to make these writing tasks easier and more attractive?” The best way I did to assist them is that I used the eliciting questions combined with games to guide them

I would like to share my teaching experience “Improving students’ ability to describe charts in Tieng Anh 11 through question systems combined with games” in the hope that my colleagues can apply in teaching and we can discuss

more to get the best result in teaching how to describe charts

2 The objective of the study:

As an English teacher at high school for many years, I am always concerned about the current situation of foreign language teaching and learning of students

in the province.Our students seem inferior to students in other provinces about foreign language capability So what is the cause of this situation? Is it because teachers are not qualified? Or those students do not have the ability to learn foreign language by local accent and direct communication skills are not flexible? May be due to improper care level of the school for this subject? All these questions have yet to be answered These obstacles not only are in our province Why other provincial students study foreign language bettwe than our

students ? The main responsibility belongs to teachers who teach in school In

addiction, the headmastr, the leaders of the education sector in the province Everyon must identify targets clearly and strive to achieve that goal My

objective in work is going on learning, finding out experience to improve the quality of teaching, make students trust in teachers and have more and more successful students More specifically, I want my work to achieve success in my own ability During the process of teaching a foreign language in high school,I alwways accumulate, find out experience, inovate teaching methods to suit each student object and generate excitement in learning so that they have more passion, more inthusiasm in studying And the goal of this project is to draw on experience in teaching describing charts in English for students 11th grade through question system combined with games and shere ideas with collegues

3 The object of the study:

In the framework of the subject and with limited ability, I will present a few teachniques taught to describe charts (through question system combined with games) as requred under the high school programs and textbook With the criteria of a good description, it includes: tigh layout, accurate grammar structure, pure prose, expressive and flexible wording, I think that this is not easy for many high school students In this theme I will refer to how to describe charts as required, how to use flexible words and how to compare the infotmation better to make a good description for students 11th grade

4 Study method:

The method of describing charts is the one of the topic that I am very interested

in the teaching process Through many years of working with students, I find that when students have to describe a chart, they often feel confused and do not know where to start The idea or no idea, or unclear ideas Hence, students are often afraid to describe a chart Understanding the difficulties and psychological concerns of the students, I alwways try to help my students to give the problem, solve the problem and end the problem to make describing a chart more effective, Descring techniques must be practiced every day to help students describe them skillfully Teacher must stimulate students to explore their own potential and help them learn how to present their ideas, their concerns things by foreign language that they are learning

II CONTENT:

1 The theoretical background

1.1 Charts and describing a chart

a Charts

A chart is a graphical representation of data, in which "the data is represented

by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart" A chart can represent tabular numeric data, functions or some kinds of qualitative structure and provides different info

The term "chart" as a graphical representation of data has multiple meanings:

 A data chart is a type of diagram or graph, that organizes and represents a set of numerical or qualitative data

 Maps that are adorned with extra information for some specific purpose are often known as charts, such as a nautical chart or aeronautical chart

 Other domain specific constructs are sometimes called charts, such as the chord chart in music notation or a record chart for album popularity

Charts are often used to ease understanding of large quantities of data and the relationships between parts of the data Charts can usually be read more quickly than the raw data that they are produced from They are used in a wide variety of fields, and can be created by hand (often on graph paper) or by computer using

a charting application Certain types of charts are more useful for presenting a given data set than others For example, data that presents percentages in different groups (such as "satisfied, not satisfied, unsure") are often displayed in

a pie chart, but may be more easily understood when presented in a horizontal bar chart On the other hand, data that represents numbers that change over a period of time (such as "annual revenue from 1990 to 2000") might be best shown as a line chart

b Describing a chart

In textbooks at upper secondary school, there are bar charts and pie charts so I only mention two these types These types of charts are usually used for comparison purposes (unlike line charts, which describe changes)

When you write about a bar chart it is important to look first at the Chart Title This tells you what information the chart displays and you can use this information in your description

Then look at the X and Y axes The titles of these axes sometimes give you information you can use in your description It is important also to look at the UNITS

Bar charts show similarities and differences When describing these charts you need to make comparisons You also need to group together any columns which have broad similarities

To write a short description of the chart ask yourself (and answer!) the following questions:

this question)

Answering these questions will help you to write a short description of this simple bar chart

Pie charts normally show proportion, which can be measured in percentages or fractions This type of charts shows the relative size of something So we can only make comparisons; we cannot say anything about change

2 The fact of the matter before applying the experience:

In the writing tasks in Tieng Anh 10 and Tieng Anh 12 textbooks there are eliciting questions so students can have some ideas for their writings to make comparisons but in the tasks in Tieng Anh 11 there is not any eliciting questions for them to write except for the chart, useful language and the requirements Students find it difficult to write

In writing section of Unit 7 – World population (Tieng Anh 11-Page 86), a pie

chart is given with the requirement “Study the chart carefully then write a

paragraph of 100-120 words, describing the information in the chart”

Students have to do the task with the following suggestions of useful language:

- It can be seen that

- distributed unevenly

- account for… per cent

- more than double the population of

- half as much as/ nearly half of

- rank first/ last

And the beginning “The chart shows the distribution of world population by

region …”

South Asia 32%

East Asia 26%

Europe 15%

Africa 11%

Latin America 8%

Northern

America 6%

Oceania 2%

With all these cues, Hoang Minh Quang - class 11A5 - wrote:

The chart shows the distribution of world

population by region It can be seen that

population distributed unevenly South Asia

account for 32 percent and more than double

the population of Europe Latin America more

than double the population of Europe.

Northern America nearly double the

population of Africa Oceania account for 2

percent Rank first South Asia, second East

Asia and seventh Oceania.

→ lack “the world” and verb

→ form of the verb → lack the verb and wrong information

→ form of the verb

→ spoken language

In Unit 11 – Sources of energy (Tieng Anh 11-Page 130), a bar chart is given for students to write the description of it

In Task 2, they are required to write the same writing as Task 1 However, they gave some mistakes in their writings

Dao Thi Lien - class 11A4 - wrote:

The chart shows the energy consumption in

Highland in 2005 As can be seen, the total

energy consumption was 170 million ton

Petroleum made up the largest amount of this

figure (50 million tons) This was followed by

the consumption of smallest (45 million tons).

Nuclear and hydroelectricity made up the

biggest amount of energy consumption (75

million tons)

→ spelling mistake

→ wrong information

→ wrong answer

→ wrong word

Chu Van Kien – class 11A5 – also wrote:

The chart shows the energy consumption in

Highland in 2005 As can be seen, the total

energy consumption was 170 million tons.

Petroleum made up the largest amount of this

figure (75 million tons) This was followed by

the consumption of nuclear and

hydroelectricity (50 million tons) Coal made

up the smallest amount of energy consumption

(45 million tons)

→ wrong information

→ wrong information

And many students did like these

After doing Task 1 and Task 2 with the requirements in textbook, students did Task 3 by combining two these tasks in turn

3 The solution:

In order to improve writing skill in describing charts for students, I carried out a few techniques at classes 11A4,11A5 and 11A6 in this school-year (2016-2017)

I gave out posters and handouts with the eliciting questions for these writing tasks In order to make them more interesting and help students concentrate to the lessons, I used these eliciting questions in games such as “lucky number” or

“typhoon”

Lucky number

- Divide the class into two teams.

- Representatives of each team choose the numbers in turn

- If they get a “lucky number”, they will have 2 points without any questions

- If they have a correct answer, they will get 2 points

- If they don’t answer the question, the chance will be for the other team

Typhoon

- Divide the class into two teams.

- Representatives of each team choose the numbers in turn

- They will get 5 points with a correct answer

- If they get a “star”, they will get 5 points without a question

- If they get a “plus…”, the point given will be added for them when they have

a correct answer

- If they get a “minus…”, they will lose the point which the number gave

- Unluckily, they will lose all the point they got when they get the word

“typhoon”

3.1 Unit 7: World population (Page 86)

- Aim: help students have comparisons among the regions about the

distribution of world population

- Time: 15 minutes

- Preparation: + a poster and handouts with eliciting questions

+ a poster presenting game “Typhoon”

- Procedure:

Pre-writing

Activity 1: Discussion (5’)

- Deliver handouts (Appendix 1)

Eliciting questions (Tieng Anh 11 – Unit 7 – Page 86)

1 How great is the percentage in total?

2 Which region contributes the largest

in world population? What is the proportion

of it?

3 Which region makes up the smallest in world population? What is the percentage?

4 Which region ranks second? What percentage is it?

5 How is Northern America in comparison with Oceania?

6 Which region has nearly double the population of Northern America?

7 Which region has the contribution to the world population more than that of Africa?

8 Which region makes up nearly half of Europe?

- Discuss to find out the information

which the questions ask (Appendix 2) Suggested answers:

1 100%

2 South Asia contributes the largest in world population It accounts for 32%.

3 Oceania makes up the smallest in world population with 2%.

4 East Asia ranks second, accounting for 26 %

5 Northern America has three times of the population of Oceania

6 Africa has nearly double the population of Northern America

7 Europe has the contribution to the world population more than that of Africa

8 Latin America makes up nearly half of Europe

Activity 2: Game “Typhoon” (10’)

T

Pairs

T

Teams T-Ss

Stage Procedure Interaction

- Hang the poster with eliciting

questions out (Appendix 1)

- Stick the poster presenting game

“Typhoon” on the board

- Divide the class into 2 teams

- Ask Ss to play the game

- Feedback

3.2.Unit 11: Energy sources (page 130)

- Aim: help students have comparisons about the energy consumption between

two certain points of time

-Time: 15 minutes

- Preparation: + a poster and handouts with eliciting questions

+ a poster presenting game “Lucky number”

-Procedure:

Pre-writing

Activity 1: Asking and answering (3’)

- Ask Ss some questions to recognize

the chart (Appendix 3)

1 What exactly does this chart show?

2 How many colors are there?

3 What color stands for coal, nuclear and hydroelectricity and petroleum in turn?

4 How many points of time are given?

What are they?

- Observe the chart and give the ideas

Expected answers:

1 It shows the energy consumption in Highland in 2000 and 2005.

2 Three

3. Green stands for coal, red for nuclear and hydroelectricity and purple for petroleum

4 Two They are 2000 and 2005

Activity 1: Discussion (4’)

- Deliver handouts (Appendix 4)

1 How was the trend in energy consumption between 2000 and 2005?

2 Which energy made up the largest amount of energy consumption in 2000?

How was it in 2005?

3 Which energy had the smallest amount

of this figure in 2000? Did it increase or

T-Ss T

Ss

T

Pairs