Some suggestions on how to use language games in speaking lessons for 11th grade students

However, due to some objective and subjective reasons, teaching and learning English in general and teaching and learning speaking in particular does not come up to the study aims.. In s

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

A INTRODUCTION 2

I Rationale of the study 2

II Aims of study 2

III Scope of the study 3

IV Research questions 3

V Methods of the study 3

B DEVELOPMENT 4

I Literature review 4

1 Communicative language teaching 4

1.1 Definitions of CLT 4

1.2 Characteristics of CLT 5

2 Speaking 5

2.1 Definitions of speaking 5

2.2 The importance of speaking 6

2.3 Common speaking activities 6

3 Motivation 7

3.1 Definitions of motivation 7

3.2 Types of motivation 8

4 Overview of language games 9

4.1 What are language games? 9

4.2 Types of language games 10

4.3 Why use games in language teaching 11

4.4 When to use games 12

4.5 Language games as a motivator for students to speak 12

II Sample games used in speaking lessons 13

1 Warm-ups 13

2 Pre-speaking stage 15

3 While- speaking stage 15

4 Post- speaking stage 16

III Results 17

IV Recommendations 17

C CONCLUSION AND PROPOSALS 18

REFERENCES 19

A INTRODUCTION

I RATIONALE OF THE STUDY

Nowadays, English assumes as a more and more important part as a means of international communication than ever Therefore, in some recent years, the focus of teaching has been promoting oral skills in order to respond to the Students’ needs for effective communication

However, due to some objective and subjective reasons, teaching and learning English in general and teaching and learning speaking in particular does not come up to the study aims In spite of teachers’ efforts to provide students with opportunities to develop their communicative skills, how to teach and learn speaking effectively is still a challenging question to both teachers and students

at many high schools in Vietnam

At Nguyen Quan Nho high school, for most students they find speaking especially important yet most challenging one It has been proved that some students got into a habit of learning “mute English”, which is obviously harmful

to a language learner It also seems to me that the techniques exploited during a speaking activity such as: role plays, simulations, discussions… are not really effective Therefore, it is a necessity to find a supplementary technique used in teaching speaking Games can help teachers to create contexts in which the language is useful and meaningful It can be realized that the common tendency

of these methodology writers is that teachers should be more active in using classroom activities to help students recycle lexical items One of the most recommended activities is games

According to many teachers, games are highly motivating, competitive and fun Games also bring a relaxing atmosphere and create more opportunities for students to practice Through games, students will enjoy themselves, be stimulated and get involved in speaking As a result, they can learn new lexical items faster and remember better

With so many advantages, games seem to be an effective way in teaching and learning a foreign language in general and speaking

All the above mentioned reasons and factors have inspired me to conduct

a research titled "Some suggestions on how to use language games in speaking lessons for 11 th Grade students ”.

II AIMS OF THE STUDY

The study is aimed at:

- Investigating the situation of teaching and learning speaking to the 11th graders

in classroom

- Investigating the effectiveness of using games in teaching speaking to the 11th graders at Nguyen Quan Nho high school

- Providing some suggestions and implications for the improvement of speaking teaching at Nguyen Quan Nho high school by using games in addition to other techniques

III SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study focuses specifically on using games in teaching speaking to the

11th graders at Nguyen Quan Nho high school in Thieu Hoa, Thanh Hoa So the study limits itself to the teaching and learning speaking only, and the subjects of the study are students from two classes (11B3 and 11B4) studying “Tieng Anh 11” textbook at Nguyen Quan Nho high school

IV RESEARCH QUESTIONS

With the above objectives, the research questions are:

- How to motivate the students in English speaking lessons?

- How often are games used in teaching English speaking lessons at 11th graders

at Nguyen Quan Nho high school?

V METHODS OF THE STUDY

1 Observation method: The subjects performed self-exploration research project conducted classroom visits, attended colleagues’ lessons

2 Experimental Methods: Teachers teach test conducted on each specific purpose requires some speaking lessons

3 Investigation method: Teachers ask questions to check understanding content assessment of the students’ lessons

B DEVELOPMENT

I LITERATURE REVIEW

Theoretical background relative to the topic and surveys of articles, books and other resources relevant to a particular study topic will be presented This part will also provide description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work quoted

1 Communicative language teaching

The history of language teaching has shown a lot of changes in approaches and methods, which reflects the recognition of changes in the sort of proficiency learners need Teaching a second language used to be aimed at enabling learners to read and appreciate class of literature Therefore, any teacher who was able to reach this aim was thought to be a good teacher

Most learners of English nowadays desire to be able to communicate with others in the language they learn Parallel with this change in the aims of learning English, methods of teaching has to be changed For a long time, many language teaching methodologists have constantly looked for the most appropriate way to teach English efficiently As a result, many language teaching methods and approaches have come into being such as:

- Grammar-translation method

- The Direct method

- The Audio-lingual method

- The Audio-visual method

- Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

Mackey (1965) remarks that most of the methods which have ever been developed still continue to exist in one form or another as each method has its advantages and disadvantages For example, grammar-translation method is easy

to implement and cheap to administer, which makes it still be used in many classroom situations

In my study, I only focus on Communicative Language Teaching Approach (CLT) as it is considered the current methodology and one of the most effective approaches to teach learners to speak in a second language

1.1 Definitions of CLT

So far, CLT has been viewed differently by different authors such as Wilkins (1972), Nunan (1989), etc According to Nunan (1989: 194), “CLT views language as a system for the expressions of meaning Activities involve oral communication, carrying out meaning tasks and using language, which is meaningful to the learner Objectives reflect the needs of the learner including functional skills as well as linguistic objectives The learners’ role is as a negotiator and integrator The teacher’s role is as a facilitator of the communication process” It is thought that this definition contains aspects that are common to many other definitions

Margie S Berns (1984), an expert in the field of communicative language teaching, writes in explaining Firth’s view that "language is interaction, it is

interpersonal activity and has a clear relationship with society In this light, language study has to look at the use (function) of language in context, both its linguistic context (what is uttered before and after a given piece of discourse) and its social, or situational, context (who is speaking, what their social roles

are, why they have come together to speak)" (Ann Galloway “Communicative Language Teaching: An Introduction and Sample Activities” cal.org ).

1.2 Characteristics of CLT

The communicative approach can be said to be the product of language educators and linguists who became dissatisfied with the Audio-lingual and Grammar-translation, which could not enable learners to communicate in the culture of the target language David Nunan (1991) points out five features of CLT:

- An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language

- The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation

- The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the learning process itself

- An enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning

- An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the classroom

These five features are claimed by practitioners of CLT to show that they are very interested in the needs and desires of their learners as well as the connection between the language as it is taught in their class and as it is used outside the classroom Under this broad umbrella definition, any teaching practice that helps students develop their communicative competence in an authentic context is deemed an acceptable and beneficial form of instruction Thus, in the classroom CLT often takes the form of pair and group work requiring negotiation and cooperation between learners, fluency-based activities that encourage learners to develop their confidence, role-plays in which students practice and develop language functions, as well as judicious use of grammar and pronunciation focused activities

2 Speaking

2.1 Definitions of speaking

Speaking, as Bygate (1997) definites, involves not only the use of the right sounds in the patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also the choice of words and inflections in the right order to convey the right meaning

Speaking, a productive skill, is known to have two main types of conversation namely dialogue and monologue, which are rather different In monologue, you give uninterrupted oral presentation while in dialogue you interact with one or more other speakers for transactional and interaction purposes

It is noticeable from the two productive language skills that speaking is different from writing in both processing conditions and reciprocity conditions

“First, spoken language is affected by the time limitations, and the associated problems of planning, memory, and production under pressure Second, it is reciprocal activity, which has crucial effect on the kinds of decisions to be made” (Byagte, 1997: 11-12)

2.2 The importance of speaking

In social contexts, social roles are likely to be taken by those who learn and know how to speak, but not by those who do not have this skill In language learning, speaking plays an utmost important role among the four language skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) since it helps to identify who knows or does not know a language Pattison (1992) confirms that when people mention knowing or learning a language, they actually mean that they are able to speak the language It can not be denied that speaking deserves as much attention than written skill In order to carry out many of the most basic transactions, it is necessary for learners to speak with confidence

2.3 Common speaking activities

A variety of activities can be used to develop speaking skills Below are some common ones

* Role play

“Role-playing” is one method of getting the students to imagine they are someone else and play the part (Shi Zheng, 2006) Doing role-play activities is a way to practice, or rehearse, situations that may happen in real life The purpose

of this is to prepare the students for the real-life language use (Gu Yueguo, 1998: 89)

In addition, role-play will be the most commonly used method to ensure that the students can use effectively what they have learned in the real communication (Gu Yueguo, 1998: 239) Richards suggests that collaborative communication activities such as role-plays have the following characteristics:

They provide opportunities to practice strategies for opening, developing, and terminating conversational encounters

They require learners to develop meanings collaboratively They necessitate the use of turn-taking rules

They practice use of conversational routines and expressions

They involve learners in different kinds of roles, necessitating use of different styles of speaking

They require negotiate completion of tasks

They involve information sharing

They focus on comprehensible and meaningful input and output

They require a high degree of learners’ participation (Richards 1985: 83)

* Information gap activity

Teachers are often searching for activities to make their classroom more interactive; language teachers in particular are also looking for activities that promote target language use Info Gap activities are excellent activities as they force the students to ask each other questions; these activities help make the language classroom experience more meaningful and authentic This section will

explain in more detail what Info Gap activities are and why they are useful, it will also give some examples of Info Gap activities for any language classroom

What is an Info Gap activity?

An Info Gap activity takes place between students, not between a student and a teacher, though a teacher can certainly demonstrate the activity The two students will be asking each other questions to which they don’t know the answer; these questions are called referential questions The goal of the activity

is for the students to discover certain information, whether about the other person or related to a specific activity

What are referential and display questions?

A referential question is a question to which the person asking does not know the answer For example, you might ask a new student: “Where are you from?” or “What is your name?” The teacher does not know the answer to these questions; the purpose of asking these questions is to discover information, similar to the Info Gap activities

A display question is a question to which the person asking doesn’t know the answer For example, you might ask a student: “What colour is my sweater?” or “Do I have long or short hair?” The teacher clearly knows the answer to these questions; the purpose of asking is to promote student speaking,

or to prompt students to remember certain information (whether it be vocabulary, grammar, etc.)

Why are Info Gap activities useful?

Info Gap activities are useful because they are very meaningful All students are involved in the process equally and they are all moving towards a specific purpose Each student has the task of finding out certain information, and therefore must find a way in which to ask for this information Motivation is usually quite high in these activities These activities help move the students from working in a more structured environment into a more communicative environment They are hopefully using lots of the target language, and in the process discovering where they have gaps Knowing where these gaps are gives them a direction in which to improve

3 Motivation

3.1 Definitions of motivation

There have been so far many researchers on the theory of motivation Each author has his/her own way of explaining what motivation is since they look at motivation from different angles However, motivation is generally defined as an abstract concept used to describe the willingness of a person to expand effort to reach a particular goal For language learners, mastery of a language may be a goal In linguistics, sociolinguistics and second language acquisition, a number of language learner motivation models have been postulated

Motivation is an important affective variable in SLA, and it has a positive correlation with second language achievement and proficiency, that is to say, motivation of high levels often leads to high L2 achievement and proficiency

The motivated learners are usually more active in learning, while unmotivated learners are more likely to cause classroom disturbances However, motivation

is extremely difficult to define and measure Atkinson (cited in Arnold, 2000: 13) defined motivation as “a cluster of factors that “energize” the behavior and give it “direction”

Thus, in Atkinson’s point of view, motivation is a term used to describe what energizes a person and what directs his activity, energy and direction While Dornyei and Otto regarded motivation as a function of a person’s thought and defined it as “the dynamically changing cumulative aroused in a person that initiates, directs, coordinates, amplifies, terminates and evaluates the cognitive and the motor processes whereby initial wishes and desires are selected, prioritized, operationalised and acted out” (cited in Dornyei, 2001: 9) In his word, Ellis stated that “motivation involves the attitudes and effective states that influence the degree of effort that learners make to learn an L2” (Ellis, 1997: 75) Woolfolk (2001: 366) also defined motivation as “an internal state that arouses, directs and maintains behavior” Similarly, Brown (2000: 160) indicated that “motivation is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone

to do things in order to achieve something”

It can be seen that different researchers approach motivation definition in different ways However, they all share the same point of view that motivation combines effort and desire plus favorable and occurs as a result of a combination of internal and external influences This research, therefore, will follow the definition of motivation proposed by Gardner (1982: 132-147) that motivation is perceived to be composed of three elements These include effort, desire and affect Effort refers to the time spent studying the language and the drive of the learner Desire indicates how much the learner wants to become proficient in the language, and affect illustrates the learner’s emotional reactions with regard to language study

3.2 Types of motivation

Gardner and Lambert (1972) introduced the notions of instrumental and

integrative motivation Instrumental motivation refers to the learner’s desire to

learn a language for utilitarian purposes (such as employment or travel or exam purposes) in the context of language learning On the other hand, integrative motivation refers to the desire to learn a language to integrate successfully into the target language community

A learner with integrative motivation has a genuine interest in the second hand language community He wants to learn their language in order to communicate with them more satisfactory and to gain closer contact with them and their culture

A learner with instrumental motivation is more interested in how the second language can be a useful instrument towards furthering other goals such

as gaining a necessary qualification or improving employment prospects (Gardner and Lambert in William T Littlewood, 1984: 57)

It can be seen that the two kinds of motivation do not exclude each other Most learners are motivated by a mixture of integrative and instrumental

reasons In later research studies, Crook’s and Schmidt (1991), and Gardner and Tremblay (1994) explored four other motivational orientations: (a) reason for learning, (b) desire to attain the learning goal, (c) positive attitude toward the learning situation, and (d) effortful behavior Motivation can also be divided into

“intrinsic” and “extrinsic” ones in general learning theory (Arnold, 2000: 14)

Intrinsic motivation is what learners bring to the learning environment

that is their internal attributes: attitudes, values, needs, and personality factors

Extrinsic motivation involves performing a behavior as a means to an

end, that is, it originates outside the individual and is concerned with external environmental factors that help shape students’ behavior (Dornyei, 2001: 27)

Extrinsic motivation comes from the learners’ desire to get external reward or the cognition of the peers and parents, or the avoidance of punishment While intrinsic motivation comes from the learners’ internal factors because the learner regards second language learning as a means to acquire knowledge and satisfy his curiosity and interest Studies show that - learning, especially long-term learning, is mostly influenced by intrinsic motivation, though extrinsic motivation is also beneficial to learning

4 Overview of language games

4.1 What are language games?

Language games can be used in language classes So what are games and what are language games?

First of all, what are games? Games are forms of entertainment derived from a set of artificial rules, typically with a known goal to be reached Games can be in the form of physical activities, mental, or a mixture of the two Also, games can be classified as cooperative, solitaire or competitive Hadfield (1987) defines “a game is an activity with rules, a goal and an element of fun” Similarly, according to Rixon (1981), “a game consists of governed by rules” This is summed up very well in Gibb’s definition (1978) of a game as “an activity carried out by cooperating or competing decision markers, seeking to achieve, within a set of rules, their objectives”

Different the definitions are, they share the same opinion that a game has three main characteristics They are: a goal or objective, a set of rules which govern a game and games involve a contest either between players or between players and the goal

So, what are the language games? Language games mean games related to language If games help to improve different aspects such as intellectual ability, patience, then language games help to develop language skills When playing these language games, students not only have fun but can also practice English enjoyably, which helps to motivate students Greenal (1984) defines as one kind

of “activity which is used to consolidate language already taught or acquired and occurs during the free stage of lesson or during occasions such as English club meeting…”

4.2 Types of language games

Classifying language games into categories can be very difficult because categories often overlap Therefore, different linguists use different ways to classify language games According to Hadfield (1987), “language games can be divided into two further categories: Linguistic games and communicative games Linguistic games focus on accuracy, such as applying the correct antonym On the other hand, communicative games focus on successful exchange of information and ideas, such as two people identifying the differences between their two pictures which are similar to one another but not exactly alike Hadfield (1987) also classifies language games into many more categories as follows:

a Sorting, ordering, or arranging games For example, students have a set of

cards with different products on them, and they sort the cards into products found at a grocery store and products found at a department store

b Information gap games In such games, one or more people have information

that other people need to complete a task For instance, one person might have a drawing and their partner needs to create a similar drawing by listening to the information given by the person with the drawing Information gap games can involve a one-way information gap, such as the drawing game just described, or

a two-way information gap, in which each person has unique information, such

as in a Spot-The-Difference task, where each person has a slightly different picture, and the task is to identify the differences

c Guessing games These are a variation on information gap games One of the

best known examples of a guessing game is “20 Questions”, in which one person thinks of a famous person, place, or thing The other participants can ask

20 Yes/No questions to find clues in order to guess who or what the person is thinking of

d Search games These games are yet another variant on two-way information

gap games, with everyone giving and seeking information Find Someone Who

is a well known example Students are given a grid The task is to fill in all the cells in the grid with the name of a classmate who fits that cell, e.g, someone who is a vegetarian Students circulate, asking and answering questions to complete their own grid and help classmates complete theirs

e Matching games As the name implies, participants need to find a match for a

word, picture, or card For example, students place 30 word cards, composed of

15 pairs, face down in random order Each person turns over two cards at a time, with the goal of turning over a matching pair, by using their memory This is also known as the Pelmanism principle, after Christopher Louis Pelman, a British psychologist of the first half of the 20th century

f Labeling games These are a form of matching, in that participants match

labels and pictures

g Exchanging games In these games, students barter cards, other objects, or

ideas Similar are exchanging and collecting games Many card games fall into this category, such as the children’s card game Go Fish: http://www.pagat.com/ quartet/gofish.html