Some experience for grade 6 students at dien bien secondary school on how to learn listening well

The situation of teaching and learning listening at Dien Bien secondary schoolAt Dien Bien secondary school, there are 5 teachers of English, all 5 teachershave approached and used relat

I Introduction

1 Rationales

Nowadays, following the trend of national integration English contributes asignificant part in many areas, including Education English is not only acommunication tool but also a key to the cultural treasure of mankind On theother hand, with the rapid development of information technology, learningEnglish becomes more urgent and easy for all ages, especially for secondaryschool students English has long been one of the main subjects in theircurriculums

However, learning and using English requires both a diligent and creativetraining process for both students and teachers, not day by day, especially for thefirst-graders Like grade 1, grade 6 Most of them are still surprised, with bothteachers and friends Therefore, learning English becomes more difficult,especially Listening skills As an English teacher at Dien Bien Secondary Schoolfor nearly 10 years, I am very concerned about this issue In the 2018 - 2019school year, I was assigned to teach 2 classes 6 When I first received the class( September, 2018 ), I conducted a small survey of their English Listening skilland received the following results

10 ( 20.83 %)

15 ( 31.25% )

14 (29.16%)

2 (4.18%) 6H

(54 students)

10 (18.51%)

15 (26.31%)

14 (25.92%)

12 (22.22%)

3 (7.04%)

Looking at the survey results, we can realize that only the number of studentswho meet the required number of students in the class is very low (35.41% ingrade 6C and 46.29% in grade 6H

2 Objectives and tasks of the topic

In this situation, being an English teacher of grade 6 students, who have beenlearning English for many years, I personally want my students to hear better,can successfully master the information they have heard in daily

communication To do so, find the key to cause of the problem: "Why do youlisten badly?" In the process of teaching and learning to observe students, I findthat most of them do not know how to learn It is often difficult for students tolisten In the class, students often say that although there are many words in thelesson, they can’t hear Therefore, based on the knowledge gained at theUniversity and the experience accumulated for nearly 10 years, I created thisexperience initiative to answer the question that was asked, and help mystudents to learn Listening skill better.

3 Object and scope of the study

With the scope of this small initiative, I boldly dive into the issue "Someexperiences for students in grade 6 to learn good listening." I was assigned toteach classes 6C and 6H in the school year 2018 – 2019 at Dien Bien secondaryschool, so I applied this research method in my own classroom

4.Research Methods

Based on the practical experience of nearly 10 years working at Dien BienSecondary School, I realized that most of the students’parents have invested fortheir chidren to learn in some English centers but not fully know the informationabout the center, the course as well as the level of children, but just follow thegeneral trend Moreover, teachers at these centers are not entirely British.Therefore, learning efficiency is not high, or in other words is not effective Inaddition, some families hire tutors for their children at home These students areonly allowed to complete homework for all the subjects according to thetimetable, hardly learning new knowledge This is very dangerous, willgradually create a reliance on students, lazy thinking, reduced ability toremember With this research topic, I hope that I will solve a part of thatproblem that I have mentioned above, creating the best conditions for them totake the exam effectively, contributing to small secondary development of theeducation sector Students will be categorized before listening, each of thestudents will be new listeners with increasing difficulty levels

II The content of the initiative

1 The situation of teaching and learning listening at Dien Bien secondary school

At Dien Bien secondary school, there are 5 teachers of English, all 5 teachershave approached and used relatively the techniques of listening well, proactivelyteaching with a method of organizing a lesson to listen and coordinate quitewell, active teaching techniques In addition, the classrooms are well equippedwith multi-purpose projectors, loud - speakers and radios It’s good for thelistening process, helping teachers to use these devices more Therefore, thelessons taught become lively, charismatic and highly effective Students havebeen accustomed to each lesson Most of students can listen and recognize thevoice of native speakers, listen to the songs with simple, moderate content,understand the teachers' requirements and assignments In addition, Dien Biensecondary school is one of the schools in Thanh Hoa city, so it is veryconvenient for students to attend English listening classes in some Englishcenters to develop their listening skill However, there are still some studentswho have don’t want to study, lazy to write, limited listening ability Moreover,there are relatively difficult parts to listen to, a lot of knowledge, a little time tolisten, difficult words that students can hardly understand Students are alsounfamiliar with the speed of reading and speaking in English tapes, especiallyfor students in grade 6 So how to overcome these weaknesses, contribute toimproving the quality of listening skills, helping students be more confident incommunicating and using English as a second language?

2 Some measures to teach and teach English listening skills to students 2.1 What is listening teaching

Listening is a complex language activity, which is one of the main purposes ofteaching and learning foreign languages When speaking, the ideas are often notarranged in a strict sequence like when writing, there are many redundant words,from buffering, or not grammatical It can be said, spoken off, hesitant Whenreading can read and reread many times, while listening to others, we can onlylisten once So, when teaching listening, in addition to general tricks that can be

applied to listening skills, teachers also need specific tricks for listeningactivities of students.

Listening consists of two levels:

* Level 1: (Identify or distinguish)

The recognition of sounds, words, and words is related to each other When thisability becomes automatic, the listener can reproduce, behave and respond towhat they hear

* Level 2: (Option)

The listener understands the words that are useful to understand the speaker Atfirst, I understood the sentences, the words were short, simple, and laterunderstood the longer sentences

2.2 Study listening activity

* Listening in daily life There are two main ways to listen

- Entertaining listening: through listening to radio, watching television but canstill conduct another job simultaneously

- Listen with focus: is the intentional listening activities, want to capture someinformation For example, listening to news on the radio or television, listening

to instructions, explanations, listening to lectures In this case, the listenermainly focuses on the important points because they know what they want tolisten This helps listeners only pay attention to the right content, which makelistening more effectively

* Listening in language learning environment

Mainly focused on listening and developing listening skills There are somefollowing main types of listening in learning a foreign language

- Listen to the main idea

- Listen to find the necessary information

- Listen to confirm the previous guess

- Listening to perform communication tasks are in place

- Listen to details (both content and language structure)

2.3 Conduct listening techniques

- Confidence building - Sentence stress reception

- Topic interpretation - Listening to the main idea

- Recognising details - Dictations

- Listening to capture necessary information - Sequence diagram

- Spelling grammar - Listening-recording

2.4 Organize different listening activities

* Helping students listening effectively

In fact, in the two classes I teach, listening is still a difficult skill for the majority

of students To overcome these difficulties, teachers can use the measures that Ihave tried to apply in 2 classes as follows:

- Introduce the topic, the content related to the listening , explain concepts ifnecessary

- Raising questions to help students predict what content to listen to

- Introducing new words (if necessary )

- Giving guidance questions when listening

- Divide the listening process into steps For example:

+ The first time: listen to the main idea, answer the general questions

+ The second time: listen to more details

- If the lesson is long, divide the lesson into short paragraphs for students tolisten to, have different specific listening requirements

* Predict what is coming (prediction)

It is really necessary to predict the content related to the listening part Throughthese predictions, they can visualize a number of vocabulary related to thelistening in a certain context This activity can be carried out with storylines or aconversation For example, when listening to a conversation about asking fordirections, the teacher can stop after a character's question line in theconversation and ask students how the other character will respond What wordswill be used When listening to a story, the teacher can stop at the appropriatesections and ask questions such as: What just happened? Where did it happen?What will happen next? before listening to the whole story

Example : English 6 – Unit 4 ( My neighbourhood – page 45 )

Listen to the conversation between a stranger and Duy’s dad Fill in the Blankswith the word you hear

A : Excuse me Where is the supermarket?

B : Go to (1) the end of the street It’s on your (2) _

A : And where is the (3) ?

B : It’s in ( 4) _ Take the ( 5) , and it’s on your left

Tape script:

A : Excuse me Where is the supermarket?

B : Go to the end of this street It’s on your right

A : And where is the lower secondary school?

B : It’s in Le Duan street Take the second right and it’s on your left

A : Great ?Where can I have some coffee ?

B : Quynh Cafe in Tran Quang Dieu street is a good one

A : How can I get there?

B : Firt turn left, then turn right Go straight It’s on your left

A : How about an art gallery?

B : First take the third left Then go to the end of Le Loi Street, and it’s on yourright

* Listen to assert your guesses about the listening’s content: Before listening,

the mining teacher suggests what students already know about the content of theproblem to listen, what is not clear, what is not know Then, listen to and relateyour knowledge to the content you need to listen to

Example: English 6 - Review 1 ( units 1, 2, 3 - page 37 )

An and Mi are talking on the phone Listen and circle the part of the house youhear

Kitchen garden garage

Bathroom bedroom living room

In this part, after listening to the request, the students can know that they willhear about the house, but do not know what it is Would that be the names of the

rooms or the names of the appliances in the room? But when they read thesuggestions given, they would be limited to listening only about the rooms.

Tape script :

An : Are you at home alone?

Mi : No, every one is at home

An : Where is your mum? Is she cooking in the kitchen?

Mi : No, she is watering the flowers in the garden

An : And where is your dad ?

Mi : He’s in the living room

An : What is he doing ?

Mi : He’s listening to the radio

An : What about your younger brother? Is he with your mum?

Mi : No, he’s sleeping in my bedroom My cousin, Vi is here, too

An : What is she doing?

Mi : She’s watching TV

* Listen for the necessary information

When listening, the teacher has to create the listening requirements, focusing onthe important contents so that listening has a specific purpose The forms ofrequirements are very diverse, which can be a form of answering questions orfilling out forms

Example : English 6 – Unit 3 (My friends – page 31 )

What do you see in the photos? Choose the word in the box to fill in the table.Then, listen and check

riding a bike hiking skiing

taking part in a cooking competition playing beach volleyballtaking part in an art workshop visiting a milk farm

playing traditional game taking a public speaking class

D I

E

* Listen to grasp the main idea (Listen for gist / for main ideas)

In many cases, students need to be trained to understand the main ideas andgeneralizations of the lesson without caring about the details

Example : English 6 – Unit 7 ( Television – page 22 )

Music: Green Green summer

Cartoon : The Red Spotted

Squirell

Film : The Lonly Giraffe

Home and Garden: How to

make a Dog house

Our World : The Old Town of

Inca

* Listen to perform the next communication activities

There are listening activities, often in the form of filling out tables, to serve as afollow-up activity

Example: English 6 – Unit 3: My friends ( page 31)

Listen to Mr Lee, the camp leader, talking on the phone with Nick’s parents.What are they doing on Day Two and Day Three at the camp?

Day Two Doing a treasure hunt Visiting a milk farm

and Day Three

2.5 Understand some basic principles when conducting listening activities

Normally, the process of a listening lesson goes through three stages: Pre Listening, While - Listening, and Post - Listening This teaching process not

-only helps students understand the lesson but also helps them use listening skills

in real communication This way, teachers need to clearly define the purpose ofeach specific lesson, so that they can guide students to perform well in the nextstages

* Pre - Listening

This step will help students navigate, think about the topic or situation beforelistening The teacher asks by asking about the topic of the listening, asking thestudents to observe the picture, etc Maybe they say incorrectly to what they arelistening, but the problem is that they are interested before listening After that,the teacher instructs the task request when listening (choose right, wrong,answer questions ) and tell the students how many times they will listen

* Some tricks teaching during this period:

- True / False statements prediction - Open - prediction

- Ordering - Pre-question

Example 1: English 6- Unit 5: Natural wonders of the world ( page 58)

Nick’s family are in the travel agent’s They want to go on holiday They arechoosing a place from the brochure Listen and answer the questions

*Pre - listening :

- Step 1: Teaching vocabulary

+ mention ( v ) : translation + travel agent ( n ) : imagination+ interesting ( a ) : translation + book ( v ) : translation

- Step 2: Open prediction

Ask students to read through the questions Predict the information and thencompare it with their partners Finally, listen to he key words to answer thequestions

1.What other places does the travel agent talk about ?

2.What questions does Nick’s mum ask?

3.What advice does the travel agent give?

4.Is Nick happy about the choice?

- Feed back students' prediction