Some techniques to teach the sound ʊ and u for gifted students at luong ngoai secondary school

THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONN AND TRAININGBA THUOC CHAMBER OF EDUCATION & TRAINING EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE u: / FOR GIFTED STUDENTS AT LUONG NGOAI SECONDARY SCHOOL Writer: Ha Thi Thao

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THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONN AND TRAINING

BA THUOC CHAMBER OF EDUCATION & TRAINING

EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE

u: / FOR GIFTED STUDENTS AT LUONG NGOAI

SECONDARY SCHOOL

Writer: Ha Thi Thao Position: Teacher Teaching school: Luong Ngoai secondary school The aspect of study: English

THANH HOA 2019

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research

subjects

1.4 Method of research Page 4

2.1 Rationale Page 4

2.2 Statement of the problem Page 5

2.3 Suggested Solutions and Implementation Page 6

2.3.1 Some techniques to teach the two sounds Page 7 2.3.2 Practice activities for both / u:/ and / ʊ / Page 13 2.3.3 Some helpful tips I got after applying the initiative Page 14

2.4 Results Page 14

2.4.1 For education activity Page 16 2.4.2 For subject’s quality Page 16

2.4.4 For my colleagues Page 17

3 CONCLUSION AND PROPOSAL Page 17

3.1 Conclusion Page 17

3.2 Proposal Page 18

CATEGORY INITIATIVES Page 19

1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

There are many things that English teachers need to fit into their limited class time-grammar, vocabulary, speaking, listening, reading, and writing Pronunciation often gets pushed to the bottom of the list Many teachers say there’s just not enough time to teach pronunciation Students often think it isn’t

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that important-after all, it won’t be tested on their high school entrance exams! But

if students need or want to speak English understandably, pronunciation is

important “The days when learners only needed reading and writing skills in

English are past Depending on where you teach, many or all of your students will need to speak and understand English in real life to communicate with both native speakers of English and speakers of other languages Even if students’ grammar and vocabulary are strong, if their pronunciation isn’t easy to understand, their communication will fail” [1] We owe it to our students to give them the tools

they’ll need to be able to communicate successfully in English

When teaching pronunciation, I see many students including gifted students

have difficulties in identifying the sounds / ʊ / and / u:/ These sounds are

available in the phonetic exercises so I decided to choose this subject as my research Many of my students confessed that they couldn’t recognize when to

pronounce / ʊ / or / u:/ I am their teacher of English, but my teaching remedies

didn’t help them much and this made me always make questions to myself such as

“How must I do to help the students recognize the two sounds correctly?” and “ How should the practice activities be to get their high attention to them?” It can’t

be denied that recognizing the sounds / ʊ / and / u:/ is not easy at all They

themselves are fairly different in different cases In addition the rules of generalization of them not fixed Thus they make us confused

Little understanding, lacking of practice led to the fact that many students couldn’t find out the two sounds correctly and read the word wrongly As a result, students make mistakes in speaking and pronunciation exercises

The repeated mistakes of / ʊ / or / u:/ forced us to ask ourselves once again:

+ Why can't they recognize the two sounds correctly?

+ How do we teach them?

+ What practice activities should we use for students to practice?

+ How do we test?

Train students to become independent and autonomous learners because our students won’t be with us forever Someday they’ll be facing pronunciation puzzles on their own If we can help them build up their own skills

in listening, imitating, and monitoring their own pronunciation, it will be a big help to them in their future learning After many years teaching English at Luong Ngoai secondary school, coping with a lot of difficulties that gifted students have

in pronouncing the sound / ʊ / and / u:/ I applied some new ways to change the learning skills and results of students In this study, I would like to clarify the way

I did through the topic “Some techniques to teach the sound / ʊ / and / u:/ for

gifted students at Luong Ngoai Secondary

School” 1.2 The purpose of the research

- To help students recognize and pronounce the sounds / ʊ / or / u:/ correctly 1.3 Research subjects

- To research the regulations so as to help the students at Luong Ngoai school

overcome difficulties in identifying the sounds / ʊ / and / u:/correctly.

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1.4 Researching method:

During the study, I used the following methods:

- Survey and investigation are applied to investigate the quality of students

when they pronouce the sound / ʊ / and / u:/ through class activities and tasks in the textbook

- Observation is applied to observe the activities of students during the time

they are included in the phonetic drills

- Practice is applied when the teachers organize activities for students to

reconigzie the sound/ ʊ / and / u:/

- Analysis, statistics, synthesis, comparation and assessment are applied to

assess the progress of students when they approach with new methods

2 CONTENT 2.1 Theoretical Base

English has 24 consonant sounds and 20 vowel sounds, represented by just

21 consonant letters and five vowel letters Also, unlike some other languages, English does not have a one-to-one correspondence between letter and sound For

example, the spelling group “ough” is pronounced differently in the words ought, rough, though and through Or take the letter sequence “gh”, which has different pronunciations in rough, ghost and through In fact, in through, “gh” is not

pronounced at all There are many other such words in English where some letters remain silent-calm, pneumonia, doubt It must be said that pronunciation is one of the most important points not only in English but also in any foreign language Pronouncing correctly helps learners understand better and it also helps you listen better That requires a systematic knowledge of vocabulary and the practice of pronunciation, stress of words and sentences The same word you say wrong, when you hear a native speaker say that you cannot understand it because you may find the word very strange, do not realize what the word is and as a result you

do not understand a whole sentence Besides, if you say wrong then native speakers do not understand what you are saying or cause misunderstanding

Pronunciation is main basic part of learning a new language – it’s

especially important when it comes to your speaking and listening skills!

“English's role as a lingua franca has implications for teaching pronunciation The goal is not to sound like a native speaker, but rather to communicate effectively in a global context” [2]. When students learn English, Teachers will

definitely talk about ‘vowel sounds’, but let’s take a quick look at long and short vowels right here

What’s a long vowel?

A long vowel sound is one that is pronounced the same way as its name, like

the A in the word ‘make’ - /meɪk/ In the phonetic alphabet, it’s written as /eɪ/.

What’s a short vowel?

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A short vowel sound does not sound like the letter’s name, like in the word ‘mad’ In the phonetic alphabet, this sound is written /a/ This can be tricky when saying words like ‘beach’ or ‘sheet’, which can sound a lot like some rude words!

Short vowel sound (/u/): e.g Cut

This sound is pronounced (/ʌ/), like in bus, until, and ugly.

Long vowel sound (/uː/): e.g Cute

The /uː/ sound can be heard in the words use, argue, and student.

2.2 Statement of the problem

2.2.1 Problem:

Many researchers have also proven that students are much more ready to interact with each other with more complex responses than with their teacher [4]

‘students feel comfortable working, interacting and making mistakes with their partners rather than with their teachers and corrective feedback from peers are found to be less daunting than the correction by teachers I was a new teacher at Luong Ngoai Secondary School Many of my students could barely pronunciation any English and were reluctant to even try Most of the time, they were found speaking Muong, their mother tongue language After a short time teaching in here, myself identifies factors causing pronunciation difficulties as: Students are worried about making mistakes fearful of criticism, or simply shy Students have

no motivation to express themselves… only one participant can talk at a time because of large classes and the tendency of some students to dominate while others speak very little or not at all… students who share the same mother tongue tend to use it because it is easier and because they feel less exposed if they speak their mother tongue

- / ʊ / và /u:/ are the popular sounds in English However, most students in Luong Ngoai often mistake the sound / ʊ / for /u:/ The main reason of the mistake is that

in Vietnamese all the syllables are read alike, and there is no concept of "long syllable" so Luong Ngoai students find it difficult to pronounce short and long vowels, which leads to misunderstanding for the listeners

2.2.2 Effect.

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In fact, when I taught gifted student in the school year 2017-2018, 2018-2019

at Luong Ngoai Secondary School To have accurate basis for determining innovative solutions, find out the way to solve the problem, from the beginning of school year 2017 – 2018, 2018-2019 I conducted a survey for gifted students in grade 8 and obtained the following results:

Table 1 Result English 8 marks (general lesson), school year

2017-2018 and 2017-2018-2019:

8 15 0 0 0 0 7 46,6 7 46,6 1 6.8

8 15 0 0 2 13,3 8 53,4 4 26,6 1 6,7

Table 2 Survey result emotional index of gifted students for English

pronunciation:

Like so Like Nomal Dislike School year Total much

2017-2018 15 0 0 3 20 5 33,3 7 46,7

2018-2019 15 0 0 5 33,3 7 46,7 3 20

By the statistical results showed that the percentage of weak & poor students are still quite high This indicates their pronunciation skills are limited, so the essential problem is how to train pronunciation skills for students to be effective, I have proposed solutions and used following methods to perform

2.3 Suggested solutions and implementation

How do you know if a word in English is pronounced with the long vowel

sound or the short vowel sound? For example, cut and cute are pronounced

differently, but which one has the long u sound? It may seem obvious with a short, familiar word, but what if you encounter a new word that you have never seen before? There is a quick an easy trick I have found that will give you the right answer most of the time

2.3.1) Some techniques to teach the two sounds:

The sound /u:/

A LESSON ONE: The sound /u:/

In this unit we will study

sound / u: / for example,/u:/ in blue, too, who and chewthe various letters which represent or include the

A.1)Teaching /u:/ sound.

-Describe the way of pronouncing /u:/ INCLUDEPICTURE

"http://noidung.tienganh123.com/file/baihoc/pronunciation/coban/bai10/

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/uː/ is a long vowel sound Make a lip into a circle Put your tongue up and back It's pronounced /uː/ /uː/

- Write some words that includes /u:/ on the board and read them out

Blue, Chew, Route, Two, Cruise, Boot, Hoop, Goose, bamboo

Ask students to compare the words They recognize that the letters pronounced /u:/ are different After that we teach them how to identify the vowels pronounced /u:/

* WRITE ON THE BOARD:

+ “o” is pronounced /u:/ in some common words that end by “o” or “o” with some certain consonants

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Example: Do, To, Lose, Tomb.

+) “u” is pronounced as /u:/ in words having “ue”, “u-e”, “uit”, “ui-e” , as in glue,

June, fruit, cruise.

+) “oo” is pronounced as /u:/ when standing at the end of a word or a sound or

being followed by some consonants: l, d, t, n, th (e) as in school, tooth, noon, soot, food, sooth except for “oo” followed by k as in book, look, and some words

such as “foot”, “floor”

+) “ou” is pronounced as /u:/ in some words when it is followed by “p”, “pe”,

“ch-”, “nd”, “ff” as in loup, troupe, douche, wound, boudoir, bouffant Words

similar to (because they are derived from) French words tend to have /u/, e.g

"soup", "route" [for UK speakers], "group" etc;

+) “ew” is also pronounced /u:/.For example: crew, grew, bedew, jewel…

A.2) Practice activity:

- For beginners:

a) Reorder:

- Students can reorder the letters given to make a fully worked-out word

- Teacher writes some jumble letters on the board or hang on a sub-board or deliver worksheets to students for them to reorder the letters

For example:

1 w t o ………

2 o d ………

3 g o r u p ………

4 ch s e o ………

5 b r i u s e ………

6 s m th o o ………

7 b e h s r e w ………

8 f u t l e ………

9 g o g o l e ………

10 t b e u ………

The answer: 1 two 6 smooth 2 do 7 bestrew 3 group 8 flute 4 chose 9 google 5 bruise 10 tube b) Fill in the missing word. Students can be given partially written words and then fill in the missing letters To make it easier, pictures [4] are included. 1.s

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2.j

3.t

4.hm

5.sa

-6 W - - ( Capital letters)

7 re

-8.w - -

-The answer:

1.soup 6.remove 2.juice 7.remwove 3.tooth 8.wound 4.humour

5.salute

c) Categories:

Students can work in pairs or in groups to write words containing /u:/ through an activity like the following one: Teacher prepares many words in

different categories A student goes to the board and picks one word up then the others try to guess the word by asking him/ her questions For instance, he picks a word relating to appliance of family Through questions are made, students can

find the word “broom”.

Suggestions for categories:

+Appliance of family: broom, duvet, bathroom scales, stool, spoon, cruise

+Animals: baboon, gnu, goose, rooster, moose, raccoon, bluebird

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+Vegetables and fruits: mushroom, ugli fruit, jackfruit, star fruit, blueberry

+Clothes: uniform, suit, hood, swimsuit, tunic, bloomers, pantsuit

+Jobs-occupation-professions: supervisor, musician, student, computer

programmer

-For intermediate:

Limit time for students to write as many words including long vowel u relating to

a certain category as possible They can work individually, in pairs or in groups

The categories can be

Sports

Foods

Verbs

personality

Tools

Examples: judo, canoeing, rude, bestrew…

- For advanced:

Ask students to work in groups of 5 Each group is given one of these tasks following:

Write as many words as you can that contain “oo”

Write as many words as you can that contain “u-e”, “ue”

Write as many words as you can that contain “ui”

Write as many words as you can that contain “ou”

Write as many words as you can that contain “ew”

Allow students to use dictionary during the activity When the time is over, students hang their posters on the board All groups can check and add more words for each other with teacher’s controlling

* Suggested answers:

- oo: cartoon, moon, monsoon, good Friday, food, noon, spoon, doomsday… -u-e, ue: flute, June, cue, cube, cute, huge, plume, true…

-ui: accruing, bruin, ruin, bruise…

-ou: through, croup, troupe, douche…

-ew: chew, grew, crew, blew, yew, …

B LESSON TWO: The sound /ʊ/

In this lesson we get to know the letters pronounced /ʊ/.

B.1) Teaching / ʊ / sound.

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