Some experiences in teaching students to describe a chart in texbooks

In the four skills of writing skills, it seems that the most difficult skills students often lead to boredom in the process of learning to write.. There are many causes of boredom, such

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 The reason of selecting the topic

As we know English is the global language, it is widely used everywhere in the world Used in many different fields such as science, economic and trade, media, tourism The psychologist confirmed that the process of formation and development of man through and through active communication Teaching and learning a foreign language is a form of human activity, hence it is full of fundamental properties of activity in general, the language of the particular activity Wanting to use language as a tool of communication is not one way or the other is going through and by the communication activities such as listening, speaking reading and writing In the four skills of writing skills, it seems that the most difficult skills students often lead to boredom in the process of learning to write Especially describing a chart There are many causes of boredom, such as lack of method, vocabulary, tragedies…

So how to inspire students in a class to describe a chart well is not easy Actually, there are a few description chart in the textbook Students are afraid of this writing style So students are not confident, lack of knowledge to write this kind of lesson

Therefore, in my initiated experience, I want to share “Some experiences in teaching students to describe a chart in texbooks”.

1.2 The aims of reseach.

In the process I found teaching writing is one of the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing that students need to be trained carefully If teachers do not have good stragedies, the students feel bored with the lesson

Stemming from the fact, I have chosen the theme “Some experiences in teaching students to describe a chart in texbooks” with the aim of finding the most effective

teaching for myself and inspire students The results show significant changes in the formation and development of writing skills for students, and significantly improved learning atmosphere and attitude of students in writing lesson Here are some of the experiences that I have compiled during the research and experimental teaching, I would like to present the initiative as an experience Look forward to the comments of his colleagues to be more complete article

1.3 Object of research

The writing parts in textbook, English 10 , 11, 12 - Basic Edition

Students in grades 11B6, 11B5, at Trieu Son 4 high school - Thanh Hoa.

2 PROBLEM SOLVING

2.1 Rationale and reality

2.1.1 Rationale

In many subject areas you may need to refer to numbers, statistics and other data during the course of your studies This is likely to be data collected by other people which you will use to support your written work, but it may be data that you have collected yourself as part of your studies Data is generally presented in the form of tables, charts and graphs, which makes it easier for readers to understand However, it is often necessary to reproduce and refer to this type of information in words, as part of a report or written assignment If you include a graph, chart or table in your writing, you must explain very clearly what the data in it means, and why it is relevant to your report or assignment

That is to say, to have good writing skills is very important For every grades, it is more important because having good writing skills is one of the core elements to help them achieve high marks in the examinations

2.1.2 Reality

During learning process, students at Trieu Son 4 high school have complained that describing a chart in general is extremely difficult because this skill not only asks students to write but also describe it academically I have found that when doing this kind of tasks, most of them get bad result I wonder what the reasons are At the beginning of the first semester - school year 2017 - 2018, I conducted a small survey with 84 students in 2 classes 11B5 and 11B6 - to find out the ways they did the test and why a lot of them got bad result

From my research, I see that the majority of the students are not good at writing skill Most of them feel anxious, overwhelmed when facing with this problem because of their lack of words, structures, models Therefore, they are not only difficult for good students but also far more difficult for average and poor students who only take gifted examination

PART II: CONTENT

SOME BASIC KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE CHART

- Before describing the chart we must be sure that students learnt about the writing

on the symbol, icon name, content found in the chart What is the trend of the

chart? What is the relationship between the information in the chart? Specify the specified time description in the chart: the present, past tense or future

- Read the request of the chart description:

What is the aim of the chart description? What is the remarkable thing in the

description? From the specified the target entry index will determine the following ones for the writing No description to all details in the chart, pay attention to the trend, increase or decrease, the fluctuation

- The past tense is used to describe the chart

- Use formal writing, suitable words to describle the chart

- Give unprejudiced and describe which appear in the chart

- Don’t give personal points

- Don’t use pronouns: We, us, me, my, our, I, you, your…

 Example: Don’t write: “As we can see from the chart,……… ”

We rewrite: “As it can be seen from the chart………”

- There are 3 parts in description: Introduction, body, overview

- Use the specific figures to make the writing more persuadable

II WORDS AND STRUCTURES ARE USUALLY USED:

To help students to describe well the chart, the teacher must know the structures, the phrases as well as basic vocabulary used in the description To describe the new chart to execute the following steps:

1. Introduce the genaral chart:

We can use some structures:

-The table illustrates /describes /reveals / shows / indicates the information / propotion / rate …

-As can be seen from the chart/table that the data on………

- It can be seen from the chart/table that the data on………

-As can be seen the bar chart/ table /pie chart is well described/ illustrated the number of/the data on

- It is clear from the chart/table that ………

-From the chart/ table it is clear……

- As the chart/table shows….

- As is shown in the chart/table that ………

-As is illustrated by the table/ the chart……

2 Describe the detail chart:

2.1 About time:

- from (year)… to (year)………

- During the period of ….years…

- Since

-Between and

- In/during/over the first/last/next years, months

2 2 Giving the fingures:

To account for /to make up/to constitute

Example:

- Friench visitors account for 20,5%

- American visitors account for 79,5%

2.3 Describe the changes in the chart:

The number of the Chart represented by 4 trends:

- The number or figures grow upward movement: 

- The index or numbers has shrinking (downward movement: )

- stable number (not movement: not grow, not reduced)

- The boosting or extracting number

* Some popular adjectives and adverbs:

gradual gradually

significant/ considerable Significantly/ considerablely/

dramatic/ rapid/ quick dramatically/ rapidly/ quickly

Looking to description with the image We can see adjectives as well as adverbs to express the level and the speed of figures

Beside adjectives and adverbs, we can use some verbs and nouns to describe the increasing and decreasing trends

*Increasing trend:

(to) jump, (to) skyrocket (increasing sharply) (a) jump

(to) reach a peak, (to) peak (increasing

sharply)

(a) peak

Example: The French visitors in Viet nam rose steadily from 2001 to 2002.

V adv There was an slight increase in the number visitor arrivals in Vet nam

Adj N from 2001 to 2002

 Express the falling trend:

(to) collapse (decrease sharply) (a) collapse (dramatic fall)

(to) slump (decrease sharply) (a) slump

Example:

- Married men without children a gradual decrease in the number of domestic chores

Adj N

- The rate went down sharply between married men without children and with

V Adv

three or more chilren

 Express the stable fingures:

(to) remain stable

(to) stay constant

(to) remain steady

 Express the inverse falling or rising:

(to) stop falling and start rising

(to) stop rising and start falling

 We can use some model sentences:

There

(be) a quick/slow/sharp/rapid/considerable/steady

increase/ grow/ reduction/ rise/ fall/ drop

There (be) an upward trend +in

There (be) a downward trend +in

-There (be) a fluctuation

Due to time for each period is limited and the students’abilities So the teacher can not teach all knowledge Teacher must find the most important and useful data to teach students.Of all important, teacher should spend time finding the effective ways to provide students with knowledge

Here are some notes and vocabulary considered “hardware data”help us easily to

develop writing lesson However, to reach to the finally target is to have students’

“writing product” Teacher should give the following prompts, design more tasks

for students to approach the lesson There are some ways I applied in teaching description the chart

PART III: SOME PROCEDURES IN TEACHING PERIOD.

After a lot of teaching periods to describe the chart I myself find some suitable methods such as: providing the model writing, setting questions, completing the

sentences or short paragraph, reodering the sentences, building the senteces based

on the hint

I PROVIDING THE MODEL WRITING METHOD:

Target of this method is the settings of the architecture about a description form as building for some the phrase from or pattern structure I usually apply this method

for students in grade 10 because these students is new occurrence with the chart When teaching UNIT 16: HISTORICAL PLACES Period 98: Writing (Textbook

10) I provide student a model description and a chart Then asks students to scan the description then analysis

The bar chart illustrates the amount of money spent on five consumer goods (car, computers, books, perfume and cameras) in France and the UK in 2010 Units are measured in pounds sterling

Overall, the UK spent more money on consumer goods than France in the period given Both the British and the French spent most of their money on cars whereas the least amount of money was spent on perfume in the UK compared to cameras in France Futhermore, the most significant difference in expenditure between the two countries was on cameras

In terms of car, people in the UK spent about £450,000 on this as apposed to the French who spent £400,000 Similarly, the British spent more money on books than the French (around £400,000 and £300,000 respectively In the UK, expenditure on cameras (just over £350,000) was double that of France, which was only 150,000.

On the other hand, the amount spent on the remaining goods was higher in France Above £350,000 was spent by the French on computers which was slightly more than the British who spent exactly £350,000 Neither of the countries spent much

on perfume which accounted for £200,000 of expenditure in France but under

£150,000 in the UK.

From this post template, student students will have the basic architecture about the text to be post the description of a chart:

- This chart shows…………

- It is clear that…………

- According to the chart……….

- To have the largest………

- whereas the smallest………….

- To have the smallest …… in……….

- nearly … greater than ……

- On the other hand

- overall

- In term of

Known deeply about the text structure and the use of the language students will be automatical than when progress the steps in your description

II.BUILDING SENTENCES METHOD:

When teaching UNIT 15: SOCIAL IN SOCIETY (Textbook 12)

This textbook has provided full questions However, use this data is only applied for the gilfted students It is difficult fot the rest In this case I apply the providing data method like:

Task: Study the chart and write complete sentences with the given prompts:

- Married men/ have/ do/ housework/ they/ have/ more children

- Women/ spend/ 30 hours per week/ do/ housework/ this number/ be/ 20 hours for men when they have no children

- The chart/ suggest/ married men should spend/ time/ share/ housework/ their wives

- Married women/ have/ do/ housework/ they/ have/ more children

- The numbers of weekly housework hours / men and women with three or more children/ do/ be / 10 and 55 hours respectively

- In general/ married women/ do/ housework/ men/ do

- It/ take/ men and women with one or two children/ 15/ 50 hours/ respectively/ do/ housewwork/ every week

Remind students to use suitable tenses to complete the above sentences After finishing this Task student can answer thee questions in Task 1

III USING HINT WORDS METHOD:

The target of this process is students understand information in the chart to fill in the words or phrases

When teaching UNIT 7: WORLD POPULATION (Texbook 11) Teacher must

guide students to describe the pie We can see the distribution of world population

by region The hintary data is only some phrases, if we request students to write a description based on this data number, the students is not able to write In this details after when extracted one dynamic from the word and provided from the

“Useful language” section that will be added the following tasks:

Task 1: Study the chart about the distribution of world population by region and fill in the gaps with given words or phrases:

Ranks first ranks last distributed unevenly greatest

accounts for approximately more than double

1 It can be seen that the world population is ………

2 The South Asian which ….………accounts for nearly half of the world

population with 32%

3 The region with the smallest population is Oceania,

which………… only 2% of world population

4 Compared with the Oceania which…… in the chart, Latin has … 8%

of the world population while Northern American has lower rate with only 6%

5 East Asia has…… the population of Africa with 26% for the former and

15% for the later

6 As can be seen, the …… concentration of the world population is in

Asia, with Europe far behind

Keys : 1 distributed unevenly 4 ranks last - approximately

2 ranks first 5 more than double

3 accounts for 6 greatest

IV DETERMINED AND ARRANGED INFORMATION METHOD :

For some hard problems that usually apply this method in this process Target item for verify the learning information in the map and the sort of a logical information EXAMPLE: UNIT 7 (Textbook 12) Or we can design any lessons as this form