Using visual aids to motivate the 10th form students in practising new grammar structures

The effort of this study is to try to give somecontribution to improve the quality of teaching English at high schools by “Using visual aids to motivate the 10 th form students in practi

I INTRODUCTION

1 Reason for choosing the research

Nowadays, in Vietnam, English is used more and more widely Itbrings us chances to keep up with the development of the modern age.Therefore, teaching and learning English, especially at upper secondaryschools play a very important role

In any languages, grammar is considered one of the most essentialelements of language We can hardly comprehend the meaning exactly if we

do not use grammar appropriately So poor knowledge of English grammarcan effect both the learning and teaching of English Thus, it is necessary toapply new methods of teaching and learning to improve the situation

The English language is completely different from Vietnameselanguage system so students have a lot of difficulties in learning and usingEnglish in general and grammatical structures Meanwhile, grammaticalstructures are basic units to build up sentences, paragraphs and essays How

to make grammar lessons more interesting? How can we motivate students?

Visual aids are one of the most effective means of languageteaching It makes language class more interesting and communicative.Therefore, in this study, I would like to give some suggestions for usingvisual aids effectively The effort of this study is to try to give somecontribution to improve the quality of teaching English at high schools by

“Using visual aids to motivate the 10 th form students in practising new grammar structures”.

2 Aims and objectives of the study

- To study the current visual techniques in practising new grammar

structures

- To investigate the causes of difficulties that teachers are facing with

teaching grammar to the ten form students with the help of visual aids, sothat teachers can both improve the advantages and limit the drawbacks oflanguage visuals in teaching grammar lessons

- To introduce some common kinds of visual aids and their roles in

foreign language teaching and learning

- To increase the effectiveness in teaching English grammar.

The study is carried out to answer the following questions:

- What are visual aids?

- What are the roles of visual aids in teaching language and in

practising new grammar structures?

- How to use visual aids suitably in practising new grammar

structures?

3 Scope of the study

In teaching a new structure, visual aids may be used at three stages:the presentation stage, the practice stage and the production stage Withinthe scope of this study, I would like to focus on practising with visual aids

As time is limited, the survey is carried out on a small scale so theresults may not reflect the real situation of using visual aids in teachinggrammar to 10th form students: 10A7, 10A9 in the school year 2016 – 2017

4 Method of the study

In order to carry out this study, it is mainly based on the data andinformation collected from surveys, observation and direct interviews from

my colleagues It is also based on a number of reference books about the use

of visual aids in teaching English Furthermore, my actual teaching at DangThai Mai high school provides the great practical contribution to the study

II CONTENTS

1 Theoretical background

Visual aids are anything visible to learners, which teachers use fordifferent teaching purposes in the class They can be photographs, flashcardsmoved from hand to hand, group to group, real things in the classroom orbrought into the classroom or something can be seen through window or theteacher and the students themselves

In fact, students usually find it hard and boring to learn and memorizegrammatical structures Meanwhile, some teachers have to spend a lot oftime explaining a grammar rule but sometimes, the results are notsatisfactory Therefore, it is important for learners to have plenty ofexamples of the structure and to understand them Visual materials can alsocontribute to understand

The simplest way to practise a structure is often to show it directlyusing things the students can see: objects, the classroom, yourself, thestudent themselves, pictures

The practice of grammar will be much easier and more effectivethrough situations, contexts which visual aids provide Students canunderstand fully and practise more effectively Moreover, students cancommunicate successfully as they are exposed to the reality and practiseorally more often with the help of visual aids On the other hand, visual aidsmotivate learners when they are tired of long drill of written grammar As aresult, they will be interested and pay attention to grammar activities

2 The status of problem

The informants for the study consists of 82 students in the tenth form(age 16-17) from two classes 10A7 and 10A9, and 8 teachers of English atDang Thai Mai High School

The first reason for my selection is that my selected participants areaccessible All these students have learnt English for more than four years atsecondary schools as they started to learn English when they were in grade

6 Most of them have got familiar with teaching and learning methods atmiddle level

The second reason is our awareness of the completeness andreliability of the data collected We must be well-informed about the realsituation of teaching and adapting visual aids in teaching and learninggrammar at our school

In addition, the main method used was the Grammar TranslationMethod The students may be good at writing grammatically correctsentences but they can not communicate in that language During theprocess of learning, students are not often given chances to work in pairs,groups or to take part in such activities as discussion or playing games, etc

A number of students even find it difficult to learn what they studied atjunior secondary school Students have to learn in very large class without

favorable conditions for learning a foreign language such as teaching aids:video, tapes, cassette, etc The lack of these facilities reduces effectiveness

of the teaching and learning process

Most teachers in the survey are female aged from twenty- six to forty.They have been teaching English for at least three years They usually teachclasses with 39 to 45 students and each of them is in charge of three or fourclasses Meanwhile, teaching facilities are poor and backward Therefore,the main teaching material of the teachers is the textbook for students

It can be found that the teachers have to work hard but the resultsseem not to be satisfactory This is a great problem

3 Analysis of the data

There is a quick questionnaire designed for students from two classes10A7 and 10A9 to gather necessary information about using visual aids topractise new grammar structures in classes Students are encouraged toexpress their own opinions about their ability to apply new grammarstructures in practising and doing grammar exercises

This data is collected from students:

Students

total

Know how to use new grammar structures to practise

Have difficulties in practising new grammar structures

Impossible to practise new grammar structures

The following data is the result of the school year 2015 – 2016 beforeapplying the research:

students

good (%)

Excellent-Average (%) Weak (bad)

(%)

Table 2: Analysis of the data collected from the result of the school year

2015 – 2016 before applying the research

These figures show that it is really necessary to change the way toteach new grammar structures so that students are able to practiseeffectively

4 Teaching application

It is necessary to give them enough practice after the presentationstage At the practice stage, to work with new language items, the teacher’smain function is to provide them with the maximum amount of practice,which must be both meaningful and memorable so that they can understandand produce examples of it Followings are some suggested practiceactivities using visual aids

4.1 Using the board

In the practice stage, it can be used for substitution, completion,rearrangement, making sentences, etc In other words, the board providesvarious activities for grammar practice

4.1.1 Sentence pattern table

To provide cues for students to practice, the teacher should draw asentence table on the board Substitution can be cued by words added to thecolumns or by holding up pictures, pointing to parts of a big picture or bysticking small pictures into the columns

Example: to practise the simple future tense in Unit 14 (part E

language focus, page 150) the teacher may draw a table like this:

Comment: This kind of practice is more mechanical than meaningful

so the teacher should spend only some minutes to help students be familiarwith the structure To put a creative element into this, the students should beencouraged to propose any words that they like providing the sentencesremains grammatically correct In seeing that a suggestion is ridiculous thestudents experience the meaning of the language used

4.1.2 Questionnaires

The teacher draws a grid on the board and elicits information fromstudents

Example: practising conditional sentence type 1 in Unit 8 (part E

language focus, page 90)

Name footballPlaying televisionWatching Fishing Goingpicnic ReadingbookLy

Dung

Lien

Thao

To fill the grid, the teacher uses the question “what will you do if youdon’t have to go to school tomorrow?” By doing so, controlled language cantake place because the above question must be asked and answered by eachmember of the class.

Comment: The information and completion in this grid has ameaningful purpose It might be interesting to find out the hobbies ofstudents in the class so they can understand each other better

4.1.3 Table using information from the students

To do this activity, the teacher asks students to note down answers tothe following questions:

1 What time do you get up?

2 What do you do to help your parents?

3 How do you get to school?

Then he draws the outline table on the board and selects students tocome up to fill their answer:

2 Clean the house Cook dinner Do the gardening

Using this table, controlled practice can take place For example, “Lienhas to get up at 5 o’clock”, “Dung has to go to school by bicycle”, “Thao has to

do the gardening to help his parents” Then, they can practice a lot of structuressuch as “Lien gets up earlier than Dung” “Lien usually goes to school on foot”

“It takes Lien more time to get to school than Dung” and so on

In addition to these uses of the board in grammar practice, it can bealso used for sentence matching, rearrangement

For example:

*Matching a phrase in column 1 with a suitable phrase in column 2

1 He always does his homework a a beautiful house

2 There used to be b carefully

Key: 1b, 2c, 3a

* Learners are given some groups of words in disorder to rearrange into correct sentence:

a will, a, I, win, buy, I, if, match, sport, the, car

b built, house, ago, was, this, years, five

Key:

a If I win the sport match, I will buy a car

b This house was built five years ago

4.2 Using real objects

Real objects are useful for substitution By giving out objects,students can both practice vocabulary and grammar structures From theseobjects, a lot of sentences can be created

Example 1: The teacher wants his student to practise comparison in Unit 16

(part E Language focus, page 176) he shows them a watch, a pen and a

ruler

Teacher: What is this?

Students: It is a watch / a pen / a ruler

After saying such sentences, the students compare them as follows:

- The pen is more expensive than the ruler is

- The watch is the most expensive

- The ruler is not as useful as the pen

- The ruler is made of wood

- The watch was produced in Switzerland

Comment: A lot of real objects can be shown to give students morepractice This type of exercises helps students use the new words in phrases

or sentences It is also a communicative exercise because it encouragesstudents to give comment on objects, to give ideas using their own words

Example 2: In Unit 6 (part E Language focus, page 70)

Grammar point: the present progressive (with a near future meaning)and be going to

To practise to be going to + V, the teacher follows the coming - up

steps:

Step 1: prepare a collection of small object such as a cup, a stone, a plate, aknife, a piece of string, a nail, a piece of wood, a sheet of paper or a box ofmatches

Step 2: display one object to all class except for one student, who has toguess what it is The guesser asks:

-What are you going to do with it?

And others will describe their (imaginary) plans for the object:

- I’m going to cut bread with it

- I’m going to drink tea from it

- I’m going to write on it

- I’m going to make a fire with it

To make students pay attention to the activity, after some objects havebeen guessed, the teacher asks a student: “What will be done with the knife /the cup?”

This activity is also helpful for the practice of the future passive

4.3 Using word cards

4.3.1 Telling about diary

This type of activity is suitable for pair or group work rather than for

the whole class In order to practise the simple past tense in Unit 1 (part E

Language focus, page 21), the teacher gives out word cards filled with notes

of different planned activities

07.30 - 08.00 get

breakfast

07.30 - 09.30 getbreakfast

10.30 - 11.30 meetTom for coffee

08.00 - 09.00 water

flowers Housework

09.00 - 11.00 meetwith Mike

11.30 - 12.30 watchend of footballTake kids home

Each group should be given different word cards Then, they areasked to expand the notes into full sentences They may use the first or thethird person For example, such sentences may be made:

- I was getting breakfast at 7.45 Monday morning

- I went to the office at 9 o’clock yesterday morning

- I was watching the end of the football at 12 o’clock

These cards, then, are used to ask and answer questions This may bedone orally first then in writing The content of word cards can be shoppinglist, activities of a festival or TV programmes Students are expected to use

“then”, “next”, “after”, “before”… to tell about diary If this activity is doneorally, the teacher may check other groups’ attention by asking them torecall the plan of a certain person

4.3.2 Giving instruction

This type of activity is suitable for practicing the imperative form of

the verbs in Unit 5 (part D writing, page 58)

Word cards are also used to practise giving instruction:

4.3.3 Jumbled texts

In other activities, word cards are also helpful For instance, wordcards are used for jumbled texts Each word card contains a word Then, theteacher asks students to make the longest sentence possible with these wordsand to build as many sentences as possible in five minutes

To make a call

- Have money ready 2 minutes or 10 minutes lift receiver

- Listen for continuous purring

- Dial number or code and number

- When you hear rapid pips, insert in a coin

Early about Five o’clock An old thin andBent man Walked slowly Under the yellow trees

Example: An old thin man slowly walked under the yellow bent trees aboutearly five o’clock

4.3.4 Bingo card

Bingo card is often considered to be a useful technique for revising orchecking vocabulary However, in grammar practice, bingo card is alsoeffective It can be used in controlled and guided practice stages Forexample, to practise the present perfect tense and the structure “have you

ever done…?” in Unit 5(part E language focus, page 60), the teacher can

give each student a piece of paper consisting of several squares and in each

of square, there is a word or phrase

Hai Phong had an accident broken a bone

The teacher has a pile of separate cue - cards, and offers each one atrandom, using the questions:

- Who has ever been to Hai Phong?

- Who has seen a ghost?

- Who has gone abroad?

The student who possesses the item answers:

- I have been to Hai Phong

- I have seen a ghost

And receives the card with which he or she covers the item on the sheet.The winner is the first to cover all his or her sheet

4.4 Using pictures

Various types of pictures provide a great deal of activities forgrammar practice

4.4.1 True / false game

This kind of game is suitable for controlled practice It is introduced

to make students think about meaning and they want to communicate Inorder to carry out this game, the teacher hangs a picture and makes anumber of statements, some of which are true, some of which are false Ifthe statement is true, the students repeat it, if it is false, the students correctit

Example: practise “the present perfect tense” in unit 5(part E

Language focus, page 60)

Teacher: They are in restaurant.

Students: Yes, they are in a café

Teacher: The girl has long hair

Students: No, she has short hair

Teacher: She has already eaten!

Students: No, She is eating

Teacher: The boy is eating with her

Students: No, he is talking with her

Teacher: The boy has drunk a grass of beer

Students: No, he hasn’t

Teacher: The girl’s friend has had lunch with her

Students: Yes, he has left here

If this game is done orally, then the students can correct the teacherwhen he or she makes a false statement If it is done in writing, then theteacher might write a number of sentences on the board and ask the students

to copy the correct ones and correct the incorrect ones This game can beused to practise any structure the teacher wishes

4.4.2 Say what you see

To practise the past tense (Unit 1, part E language focus, page19), the

teacher prepares some picture flashcards on which reference for students toanswer and to ask questions provided:

Teacher: (Holding up a picture of some apples) I have been to the shop.What did I buy?

Students: You bought some apples

To make the activity more interesting and the language used moremeaningful, the teacher should not show the picture to the students so thatthey must guess what he bought or saw

Comment: the students may be attracted to the activity and they reallycommunicate by trying to guess what the teacher did Their vocabulary isalso improved

4.4.3 Describing picture

Example: Describing changes

In order to practise passive form in Unit 10 (part E Language focus,

page 111), the teacher prepares a pair of pictures showing a situation or

place before and after a set of changes Ask the students to imagine thesecond picture is the present and to describe what have been done