Using fairy tales to motivate studenta interesrts and the effectiveness in learning writing

DEPARTMENT OF THANH HOA EDUCATION AND TRAININGDIVISION OF NGOC LAC EDUCATION AND TRAINING THE EXPERIENCED INITIATIVE USING FAIRY TALES TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS’INTERESTS AND THE EFFECTIVENES

DEPARTMENT OF THANH HOA EDUCATION AND TRAINING

DIVISION OF NGOC LAC EDUCATION AND TRAINING

THE EXPERIENCED INITIATIVE

USING FAIRY TALES TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS’INTERESTS AND THE EFFECTIVENESS IN

LEARNING WRITING

Performer: Đàm Thị Thúy Position: Teacher School unit: Kien Tho Secondary School Field: English

THANH HOA, 2016

Part I Introduction

1 Statements of the problem

Writing is one of the four skills in learning English It is a big obstacle

to not only teachers but students as well; especially students come frommountainous areas where the learning equipment and conditions is far tooinadequate Moreover, writing skills need lots of requirements such asgrammatical rules, vocabulary, creative, imagination, etc

It is true that many language teachers have difficulties to find good wayswhich are not only interesting but also challenging enough to encourage students

to learn writing Most of the learners consider that they usually meet troubles inmastering writing skills Normally, they feel writing lessons create a boring andmonotonous classroom atmosphere which can discourage language learnersfrom participating actively during the teaching-learning process Moreover,students of Kien Tho Secondary School mainly come from countryside, thus thelearning environment is not beneficial for them to practice their language skills.This has a great influence on students’ competence In order to actively engagelanguage learners in the learning process, teachers should provide a supportiveenvironment in which students can learn language skills in a meaningful context.Giving students real-life situations in which the language is used naturally willstimulate them to express their ideas and raise their motivation in learning Inother words, their critical thinking and participation will eventually increase Once, when teaching the fairy tales “The lost shoe” and “How the tiger got

his stripes” in the text book English 8, issued by Vietnam Education Publishing

House, I found that most of the students became much eager and interested inlearning As a result, the writing lesson was no longer stressful and my studentswere more than willing to do the writing tasks That is because fairy tales helpenhance the memory, stimulate the imagination and emotions and associateideas In addition, fairy tales are short enough and also rich in terms ofvocabulary, less grammatically and syntactically complex than many otherforms of text in order to keep students interested in writing not only simplesentences but the whole passage as well Furthermore, according to King (2001:2), “stories encourage students’ participation and student-centered learning;students may not only interact with each story through a series of right-brainactivities, but stories also have an exponential quality in that they stimulate thetelling of more stories” Finally, these stories are so closely familiar that theycan be adaptable to many types of students with different levels

Although fairy tales are not widely used in the English curriculum insecondary schools, they are very interesting, understandable and useful indeveloping students’ language skills in class The results of this initiative willbring practical benefits to teaching English, especially teaching writing Firstly,the initiative will bring insights into the writing skill development of students in

the 8th class at Kien Tho Secondary School in Ngoc Lac Secondly, the initiativewill help me suggest a better way to improve students’ writing skills in certaincontexts Thirdly, the initiative will prove that fairy tales as an aid increase theeffectiveness of teaching writing skill for students Finally, the initiative will be

a helpful suggestion to make students keen on learning and the writing lessonswill be more interesting and effective

In short, using of fairy tales in teaching writing is an effective way ofenhancing learner’s ability to develop practical and creative skills Not only willstudents be developing their writing while writing their own fairy tales, but theywill have comfortable and enjoyable moments as a useful motivation during thelesson as well That is why I have decided on choosing “Using fairy tales tomotivate students’ interests and effectiveness in learning writing ” as the topic of

my experienced initiative

2 Objectives of the study

Being a secondary school teacher, I realize that most of my students facemany problems in learning writing This is due to the fact that writing lessonsare so boring and difficult that students often feel tired and stressed Therefore,

it is essential for a teacher to find out effective teaching methods to make thelessons more interesting and understandable so that s/he can attract students’attention and help them improve their writing proficiency as well That is whythe objectives of my initiative are:

- To raise students’ interests and find out the effectiveness of using fairytales in learning writing

- To make suggestions to using fairy tales in teaching writing

3 The setting and subjects of the study

The study has been conducted on the 60 eighth-grade students at Kien ThoSecondary School in Thanh Hoa where I have been teaching They all comefrom rural area and have two-year experience in learning English, therefore, thedifference of their writing competence level is not considerable

Unlike the English instruction program for the 6th and 7th graders, the 8th oneshave to study language skills separately Because of the difficulty and thecomplexity of a great amount of knowledge of vocabulary, grammar rules,syntax and so forth, writing skill is normally assigned in the end of each unit inthe textbook

In the first term of the eighth grade, students have studied some familiar fairytales like “The lost shoe” and “How the tiger got his stripes” which weretranslated into Vietnamese Therefore, it is helpful for them to understand andanalyze and employ these stories into different tasks of writing such ascompleting the passage, giving the correct forms of verbs, writing up sentences,writing a summary or another ending for the story

4 Methods and data collection instruments

The initiative aims at exploring students’ opinions about using fairy talesand their effectiveness in teaching writing and measuring the writing activities

for students through fairy tales, therefore I tend to use the interview,questionnaires and tests as useful tools for my study The combination ofdifferent instruments used in this initiative would help to gain reliable data andhelp me have a positive result in the subjects’ development

* Questionnaires

The questionnaire has been conducted to reach two aims First of all, itfocuses on collecting the students’ viewpoints or attitudes toward fairy tales.And the other emphasis is on surveying the effectiveness of using writingtechniques with fairy tales that students can get in the classroom

* Interviews

Through the questionnaire, I have carried out some interviews to find outthe reasons for students’ choices In order to obtain students’ opinionconcerning the use of story, then students were interviewed later to expresstheir ideas or reasons for their choices

*Tests

Test items are the main tools used for data collection as primary sources

to measure how students develop their writing skills The tools are used to elicitthe data involve one pre-test and two post-tests

PART II DEVELOPMENT

1 Theoretical basis

1.1.Overviews of writing and teaching writing

1.1.1 Writing and teaching writing

Writing is a complex process with a lot of requirements of grammaticalfeatures, the sounds, syllables or words of language, capitalization, spelling andpunctuation, word form and function, etc

Writing is often revised by writing sentences, paragraphs or longercompositions using recently learned grammar Thus, it takes writers much timeand effort to practice writing skills

According to Nunan (1989: 36),

…[W]riting is an extremely complex cognitive activity in which the writer is

required to demonstrate control of variables simultaneously At the sentence

level, these include control of contents, formats, sentence structures,

vocabulary, spelling and letter formation Beyond the sentence, the writer must

be able to structure and integrate information into cohesive and coherent

paragraphs and texts.

Besides, writing requires writers to commit words or ideas and to conventideas, think about how to express them, and organize them into statements andparagraphs The writers have to generate ideas, organize, draft, edit, read, re-read to produce a product, a paragraph, an essay or a report and writers try toexpress their ideas, feelings to impress their readers in certain ways

1.1.2 The purposes for teaching writing

According to Foong (1999: 3-5), there are three purposes to teachwriting

The first is “writing for language practice” Writing can be taughtprimarily for practicing language forms to develop accuracy and correctness.Practicing can do via the imitation That is using models of content or form as astimulus for writing This is applied to language learning in which accurate use

of the language was learned through reinforcement, constant practice andimitation In such language-based writing tasks, students will be given writingexercises that will reinforce language structures that they have learned throughthe manipulation of grammatical patterns

The second is “writing for communication” With the emphasis ofcommunicative competence as a goal in language learning (Widdowson, 1978;Brumfit and Johnson, 1979), teaching of writing begins to shift its emphasis onaccuracy and patterns to the ability to understand and convey informationcontent Everything such as ideas, opinions, thoughts or anything else, what awriter need to express without being used through spoken form, can be shown inwritten texts to inform to readers Obviously, these written texts, at that time,should be considered as a means of communication between a writer and his/her audiences The communicative writing tasks, which require greaterawareness of writer's purpose, audience, and the context of writing, wouldstimulate real life situations where a writer would write to convey someinformation to a reader

The last is “writing as a discovery and cognitive process” Writing isviewed as an expressive mode through which writers use writing as a means toexplore and discover meaning for themselves and develop their own voice

In order to enhance their imagination ability and creativity, students orwriters should be encouraged to generate their own ideas by writing freely Freewriting is able to develop fluency and the writer's creation The role of theteacher is a facilitator whose task is to promote a supportive learningenvironment This environment provides learners with opportunities to writeabout their own ideas and discover their voices rather than act as a judge whosetask is to identify students' errors

1.1.3 Approach in teaching English writing

Normally, a writing process is taught in three stages with differentactivities which are classified as follows:

1.2.

Overviews of fairy tales

1.2.1 Definition of fairy tales

There are a lot of different definitions of fairy tales

Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “a fairy tale as a story (as forchildren) involving fantastic forces and beings (as fairies, wizards, and goblins)– called also fairy story; a story in which improbable events lead to a happyending”

According to Kinsella,

…[A] fairy tale is one type of story under the heading of "folk tales."

There are many types of folktales: a tall tale, a cumulative tale, an

animal story Sometimes, people use the term folktale and fairy tale

to mean the same thing A fairy tale is a folktale, but a folktale is

not always a fairytale Fairy tales often have some sort of royalty

involved in the story (including the fairy realm); the main

character (s) goes on a journey where he/she is tested; they have

some sort of magical help along the way; good triumphs over evil;

there is a transformation or reward at the end They usually start

with "a long time ago, in a place far away" and end "happily ever

after."

1.2.2 The elements of fairy tales

To understand a fairy tale, students need to analyze or clear these elements:

1) Plot: The plot is a writer’s arrangement of events that will express his

attitude toward the human condition

Stages Activities

Pre-writing

Reading (extensively) a passage Skimming or scanning a passage Brainstorming

Discussing a topic or questions

While- writing

 Controlled writing:

Gap-filling sentences/paragraphs Sequencing jumbled words Transformation writing Completing sentences Parallel sentences

 Guided writing:

Questions & answers Writing based on cued words Writing based on provided information

 Free writing:

Writing about pictures Writing in response to a situation Writing with background knowledge Post-writing

Feedback & correction Revising

Editing Evaluating

2) Setting: The time, place and the origin of main characters of a fairy tale are

very clear Without them the story would be vagueness

3) Characterization: How the writer reveals what will relate to the characters to

the reader

4) Theme: It contains an idea of the story The theme is something that can be

derived from the story, like moral

5) Point of View: The narrative technique that the writer uses to tell the story In

other words, who is telling the story?

1.2.3 The advantages of fairy tales

Fairy tales are stories related to children’s childhood memories Thesestories captivate the imagination of young minds and enhance their creativityand reasoning skills Thus they are not only useful in the classroom but also inreal life Students might not explicitly comprehend the issues involved, but willabsorb the lesson deep in the subconscious and find the joys while learning withfairy tales due to these following benefits:

“Fairy tales are enjoyable but meaningful” (Hanlon, 1999) They signifyhuman experience, values, and history; hence they can provide bothentertainment and opportunities for further discussion They set as an excellentexample of the multifaceted mixture of history and fantasy Moreover, they can

be analyzed in short essays as well as in some more complicated research.Because of their universal values, similar plots and values, most people find iteasy to remember fairy tales

Fairy tales are short enough This advantage has added more opportunities

to use fairy tales in language classroom since teachers do not have to be afraid

of adjusting most of their lesson plans when using fairy tales Alternatively,teachers can assign their students to read them at home before further discussion

in the next meeting

Fairy tales are rich in terms of language yet less grammatically complexand syntactically speaking than many other forms of literature Their simplicityhas made fairy tales consistent in style and form

1.2.4 The role of fairy tales in teaching and learning English

Fairy tales usually consist of a great source of vocabulary, grammarstructures and syntax And in addition to that fairy tales contain interestingtopics to keep students interested long enough to the lessons

Fairy tales help children notice language areas such as past tenses,adjectives, comparatives and etc Teachers could use passages from the fairy tale

to point out grammatical features For example, to ask students to find irregularverbs, to write down all adjectives or to locate the words and phrases thatindicates position in place or time Texts with continuous meanings are moreauthentic than the connected sentences which are often used as examples ingrammar books Story books often contain extended examples of dialogue thatuse a wide variety of punctuation marks, in more natural context than is possible

in grammar exercise books Word-order can be taught through reading fairytales as well

1.2.5 The role of fairy tales to writing process

Writing is not the only important thing that comes out of teaching fairytales Fairy tales teach students analytical skills Stories often have familiarstructure and plot can create a supportive context for learning about the writingprocess, building students' background knowledge In the lessons, students willexplore the concepts of beginning, middle, and ending by reading a variety ofstories and charting the events on storyboards As they retell the stories, studentsare encouraged to make use of sequencing words (first, so, then, next, afterthat, finally) Starting with prewriting questions and a storyboard, studentsconstruct original stories, progressing from shared writing to guided writing;independent writing is also encouraged

Stories give students insights and help them write in second language in amore imaginative way Students become more creative by comparing theirown point of view with that/ those of the main character(s) of the story.Whenever students read, they interact with the text By interacting with the text,they interpret what they read By interpreting what they read, they can worktoward writing English more creatively

2 The existing state of problems before using fairy tales in teaching writing skills

2.1 Students’ condition and factors cause difficulties in teaching and learning writing

2.1.1.Students’ condition

Most of the Kien Tho Secondary School students, who are the subjects in this study are in grade 8, come from mountainous area They do not have good conditions in order to join extra lessons Especially, they almost do not care much about study English In addition, students hardly have much time to

practice writing in class The biggest difficulty most of the students meet is poorly combining the knowledge of grammar, word forms, etc, to write up sentences or a passage, a paragraph Above all, most of them are not interested

in learning writing because of lots of synthetic requirements of vocabulary, grammar, imagination, etc in writing skills

2.1.2 Factors

There are so many factors cause difficulties for learners in writing such

as the inadequacy of vocabulary, grammar rules, the weakness in generatingideas, etc Besides, students’ first language affects learning the target language

as one of the other important factors This is why students make certain mistakesand repeat them In general, there some factors cause difficulties in writing asfollows:

a The teaching method and the environment are the main causes ofstudents’ weaknesses in English In fact, teachers’ weak qualification in Englishhas a great influence in students’ results An inappropriate method will loselearners’ motivation and interest in the lesson

b The limitation of vocabulary Vocabulary plays an important role ingenerating writers’ ideas Without words, writers hardly express their thoughts

in mind, but they normally repeat the same words This hinders their creativityand makes monotonous writings Apparently, students couldn’t give voice totheir thoughts because of the inadequate stock of vocabulary

c English language learners don’t use invented spelling and their writtentexts are restricted to words which they know

d The inflexibility in using tenses Most of the learners, especially, thosewho have elementary level, tend to use the present tense in their writing

e The illness of grammar rules Writing skills obviously require aqualified knowledge of grammar such as spelling, punctuation, the combination

of tenses, cohesion, cohesive, etc

f Students do not realize their own mistakes because of not gettingsuitable feedback from their partners or teachers

2.2 The result of a survey before teaching writing skills with fairy tales

To measure students’ proficiency in learning writing, I carried out testing on

60 eighth-grade students by a test Thanks to the result of this test, I can identifywhat the most weakness is that students meet in writing

Pre- test - Time allotment: 45 minutes

Part 1 Write a short passage about your idol Use the following questions as

prompts.

- Who is your idol?

- What does he/ she look like?

- What is he/ she like?

- Why do you love him/ her?

Part 2 Read the passage about Ba’s friendship in the textbook at page 13, then

write another end for the story.

Students’ result in writing before learning with fairy tales

The data in the pre-test shows that most of the students (account for 56%)were at medium proficiency level with the scores from 5 to 6.5 Only 10students (account for 17%) reached the points from 7 to 8.5 Whereas, no onecould gain 9 or 10 point, 8 among 60 subjects who were quite bad at writingscore below 5 An investigation and interview later with these students hasproved that there are many factors influenced on their low scores in writing Themain factor is student’s motivation Moreover, the topics for writing beforeconducting with fairy tales in the pre-test are not interesting enough to appealthem to activities Other elements that decide to students’ scores are thepoorness of vocabulary, grammar rules and ideas for writing Especially, in thetopics in the pre-test, students’ creativity was limited.

3 Procedure and solutions

I conducted this study on three steps

` Step 1: I have designed a close questionnaire to investigate about

a, Students’ background information,

Question 1: How was students’ ability of writing skills with 4 options for students choose (good/ rather good/ medium/ bad)

b, Students’ attitudes toward fairy tales

Question 2: What do you think of writing skills? (Difficult/ rather difficult/ easy)

Question 3: How do you prefer to use fairy tales into writing lessons? (like very much/ like/ dislike)

Question 4: What are aspects cause difficulties for you during the writing process? (unable to find ideas/ limited vocabulary/ the influence of writing style

in the first language/ poor grammar structure)

Question 5: What are beneficial elements of fairy tales you may get? (familiar plot of story/ interesting topics/ understandable language/ simple grammar structure/ colorful images, others)

c, The effectiveness of stories on writing learning process of 60 students from two classes.

Question 6: Which activities did you usually do in writing lessons with fairy tales? (guessing vocabulary in the context/ discussing the plot of story/ answering comprehension questions/ writing with provided information/ creating the end of the story, others)

Question 7: What were your reactions after using fairy tales into writing lessons? (my writing is unchangeable/ I feel more enjoyable and comfortable/

my grammar structure is consolidated/ my vocabulary is enriched/ my writing is better and more creative, others)

Step 2: Base on the results from the survey, I would like to introduce

some suggestions to select suitable stories and how to apply these stories intoteaching a writing lesson

Solutions- Suggestions to using fairy tales in teaching writing

Suggestion 1 Selection of stories

Selecting of stories suitably plays an important role to the effectiveness ofteaching and learning process In order to please both teachers and students,stories must be attractive enough, adaptable to students’ proficiency and feasible

in the context of instruction program To cover these conditions, these noticesfor selection of stories are essential

- Topic/ theme: It should be interesting, familiar to appeal students’attention for long

- Plot: It should be fun and relevant to students’ life experience andinterests This helps to raise their motivation so as to approach the writing lessoneasily Especially, the plot needs an open end to develop the imagination abilityand arouse the curiosity and creativity of the students

- Language level: Because of different language competence, stories given

in the lesson need to satisfy with all of the students Therefore, containing greatnumbers of plain words and simple grammar structure is crucial to engage allstudent in given activities

- Length: It must be short well enough to handle within the teaching hoursand help students to complete given tasks and give them a feeling ofachievement and self- confident

- Images: The more colorful pictures the story contains, the more studentsare attracted

Suggestion 2 How fairy tales are used in teaching writing

As mentioned in the premise above, most of the students meet difficulties inwriting The reasons are the limitation of vocabulary (students do not use inventedspelling, this makes their written texts restricted to words which they know andhinders their creativity), the lack of grammar knowledge (students usually use thepresent tense in their writing or poor writing due to ill-structured sentences…), andinadequate understanding of the format of writing a passage or a story, etc.Meanwhile, fairy tales contain a variety of words or vocabulary and the richgrammatical mix and have clearly format of text Through stories, students canreinforce their grammar knowledge and vocabulary and then involve writingactivities easily and effectively That is why I have realized that in order to developstudents’ writing ability, fairy tales should be used because of their benefits asfollows:

2.1 Enriching a great source of vocabulary

Obviously, passages from fairy tales include a rich term of adjectives,adverbs, common nouns, etc Students can enrich their words in order to developideas and expressions in their writing

For example: Students learn familiar vocabulary in the story “Snow

White and the seven Dwarfs” as follows:

 Adjectives: beautiful, lovely, jealous, happy, asleep, dreadful…

 Noun: Well, dwarf, stepmother, cottage, mirror, castle, forest….

 Adverbs of manner: Hopefully, fitfully, joyfully, gratefully, suspiciously…

* Irregular verbs: laid, said, slept, sang, grew……….

2.2 Improving grammatical features

From passages of stories, teachers can also clarify language areas such aspast tenses, comparatives, reported speech, etc These language scopes willenable students to reinforce their grammar rules and make less grammaticalmistakes in writing

For example: Most of the fairy tales use past forms as prominent tenses.

 Past simple and perfect tense:

+ There upon she closed her eyes and departed Every day the maiden went out

to her mother’s grave, and wept, and she remained pious and good When winter came and the snow spread a white sheet over the grave.

(Cited in the story “Cinderella”) + When the merchant had finished his business, he set off for home However, a sudden storm blew up, and his horse could hardly make headway in the howling gale Cold and weary, the merchant had lost all hope of reaching an inn when he suddenly noticed a bright light shinning in the middle of a wood.

(Cited in the story “Beauty and the Beast”)

 Reported speech:

+ “I wonder who lives here?” she said to herself.

+ The dwarfs said to Snow White: “You can live here and tend to the house while we’re down the mime”

(Cited in the story “Snow White and the seven Dwarfs”) + The goldfish swam up and demanded: “What is it, old man, you are wanting?”

+ He bowed to her feet and said humbly: “Greetings, oh mighty Tsaritsa!

Now I hope that your soul is contented!”

(Cited in the story “Fisherman and the Golden Fish”)

 Comparatives:

+ The water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal.

+ Blossoms like flames of fire; the fruit glittered like gold

+ The fourth sister was more timid,

+ But she said it was quite as beautiful there as nearer the land.

(Cited in the story “Little Mermaid”) + The wood became thicker and thicker.

(Cited in the story “Little Red Riding Hood”)

2.3 Writing up simple sentences or a whole passage

As stated about the notions of fairy tales above, fairy tales usually have:

- a special beginning and ending They begin with: once upon a time, orthere once was, or there once lived And end with: and they lived happily everafter

- a format with a beginning, middle, end, as well as conflict and morespecifically a “good” and “bad” character and a magical component an obstaclemust be overcome

- a typical structure namely a castle or forest, monster or witch, prince orprincess

- sequencing words such as first, so, then, next, after that, finally to writethe story in chronological order

- Here is a new typical version of the story “Snow White and the SevenDwarfs” which consists of necessary elements of a story

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS

Once upon a time, there lives a little girl named Snow white She livedwith her aunt and uncle because her parents were died

One day, she heard her uncle and aunt talking about leaving Snow White inthe castle because they both wanted to go to America and they didn’t enoughmoney to take Snow White

Snow White did not want her uncle and aunt to do this So, she decided itwould be best if she ran away The next morning she ran away from home whenher aunt and her uncle were having breakfast She ran away into the woods Shewas very tired and hungry

Then she saw this little cottage She knocked the door but no oneanswered

So, she went inside and fell asleep

Meanwhile, the seven dwarfs were coming home from work They wentinside There, they found that Snow White was sleeping Then Snow Whitewoke up She saw the dwarfs The dwarfs said, “what is your name?” SnowWhite said, “My name is Snow white.”

Dwarfs said, “if you wish, you may live here with us “ Snow White said,

“oh , could I? Thank you.” Then Snow White told the dwarfs the whole story.And Snow White and the seven dwarfs lived happily ever after

(Adapted from http://najmimaulana.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/snow-white/)

Suggestion 3 Suggested activities for a writing process

The study focuses on a three-stage model of writing process Thus, Iwould like to introduce some suggested activities (which go from controlled tofree writing activities) for each stage as follows:

Stage 1:Pre-writing

This stage aims at helping students to make acquainted with stories andhave an anticipatory look to the issue of the lesson The teacher may performthese activities to introduce the story

* Put some open questions to elicit the lesson For example:

+ Do you like fairy tales?

+ Do you know how a fairy tales begin or end?

+ Name some other fairy tales you know.

* Show pictures related to story so that students (Ss) can predict the theme

or the content of story

* Brainstorm:

+ list out some characters of the story

+ name some good or evil characters in the story.

+ write any words related to each character

Stage 2: While-writing

-Teacher (T) asks Ss to read the story aloud in front of the class

-T gives out some exercises to practice controlled to free writingactivities

* Controlled writing activities: controlled writing focuses on establishing

grammatical patterns, sentence structure, punctuation and word order.Controlled writing exercises provide students more challenges but still limittheir creation

-T may tell Ss to do these exercises as follows:

+ Controlled composition

+ Sentence combining

+ Jumbled word sequencing

+ Listing information

For example for listing information activity: to enrich vocabulary and

consolidate grammar knowledge for students in story “The lost shoe”, T mayask them to read the story again then list out some common nouns or descriptiveadjectives or irregular verbs

- Common nouns: mother, father, wife, daughter, famer, village, fairy, clothes, prince, festival, etc.

- Descriptive adjectives: poor, cruel, upset, beautiful, new, excited, etc.

- Irregular verbs: was, found, held, had, fell, made, went, etc.

+ Gap-filling sentences/ stories

For example: T has Ss complete the story with available words:

Was grazing, was, left, said, appeared

One day, as a farmer was in his field and his buffalo _nearby, a tiger The tiger wanted to know why the strong buffalo was the servant and the small man _ the master The famer _ he had something called wisdom, but he it at home that day.

(Adapted from English 8)

 Guided writing activities: Guided writing is an instructional writing

context

chiefly teaching the writing process through modeling, support, and practice(Tyner, 2004) Guided writing activities are used to develop students’ skills thanwriting These activities may be:

+ Questions and Answers

- After asking Ss to read the story, T should put some questions to checktheir comprehension

For example:

1 What was Little Pea’s new mother like?

2 How did she feel when her father died?

3 What happened as Little pea ran to the festival?