Strategic communicative activities in teaching reading skill

In real teaching in high school, not many teachers use communicative activities in English classes, especially in reading lessons.. Thus, the author caries out a study on the useful comm

I INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Language is the most important means for people to communicate to each other Nowadays, with the non-stop development of society and the tendency of integration among the countries over the world, English becomes an official and effective international communicative language English is widely used in many fields of life such as science, technology, education As a result, more and more people are studying English with the hope that they can meet the requirements

of society in general and of their jobs in particular

In education, especially, for High school grade, English now is a compulsory subject not only in teaching and learning but also in many important examinations It is, therefore, comprehensible why nowadays students learning English with a great concern They not only study English because it is compulsory but also because they are interested in English and they are aware well of the importance of English for their job in the future As a matter of fact,

it is not easy to master a foreign language at all Learning English is not an exception It requires many sub-skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing Being a receptive skill, reading also has some certain requirements to the students, not just a process of understanding grammar structures mechanically In fact, many students are very good at grammar and vocabulary but they cannot finish the reading tasks successfully

Of course, there are many ways to teach reading skill, however, the given question is that which way is the most effective for the students Nowadays, we are trying to teach English in a communicative way In real teaching in high school, not many teachers use communicative activities in English classes, especially in reading lessons They only teach students reading skills through mechanical drills in the textbook Thus, the author caries out a study on the useful communicative activities in English reading classes to somewhat help students to improve their reading skill in particular and their language competence in general

For the reasons above, the author decides to choose the topic “Strategic Communicative Activities to Motivate Grade 10 in Reading Skill ” as her

experience ideas

2 Aims and Objectives of the Study

The aims and objectives of the study are as follows:

- To provide some basic knowledge ranging from Communicative

language teaching to communication in real life

- To make an investigation into the real situation of using communicative activities in teaching and learning English reading skill at Dong Son II High school

- To provide some suggested communicative activities to partly improve reading skills for the 10th form students

To fully achieve these aims, the study has to answer the following questions:

* What are Communicative Activities? What is “reading”?

* What is the real situation of using communicative activities in English reading lessons for the 10th form students at Dong Son II High School?

* What kinds of Communicative Activities can be applied in English reading classes to improve reading skill for the 10th students?

3 Scope of the Study

Furthermore, in this experience, the author also attempts to carry out the research on the following two subjects:

- Situation of teaching and learning English reading skill at Dong Son II High School From these, the author’s purpose is to give some suggested communicative activities as a technique to partly improve reading skills for the

10th form students

- 50 students of class 10A4 (2018 -2019)

4 Method of the Study

To finish this study, the author has used quantitative and qualitative methods

First, the author collects and analyzes the materials which refer to Communicative Language Teaching, Reading Skill and Communicative Activities in English reading classes

Then, she conducts a survey to get information about the real situation about teaching and learning English reading at Dong Son II High School

After that, the author analyzes and synthesizes the collected data

Finally, the author discusses about some suggested communicative activities in English reading classes for the 10th form students

II DEVELOPMENT

A THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

I The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

1 The Aims of CLT

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) began in Britain in the 1960s

as a replacement to the earlier structural method called Situational Language Teaching

The goal of CLT is to develop what Hymes (1972, cited in Richards and Rodgers 2001: 159) referred to as “communicative competence” This term was referred in order to contrast to Chomsky’s theory of grammatical competence For Chomsky, linguistic theory was mainly concentrated on the mastery of grammatical structures, on the knowledge of sentence building, the ability to produce grammatically correct sentences in a language

In contrast, Hymes’s theory of communicative competence focused on what a speaker needs to know in order to be communicatively competent in a speech of community In other words, communicative competence can be understood as the ability to use language correctly and appropriately to accomplish the communication goals in authentic and meaningful situations Communicative competence is measured by determining if, and to what degree, the goals of interaction are achieved

In addition, CLT also developed procedures for the teaching of the four skills that knowledge the interdependence of language and communication Because communicative principles can be applied to the teaching of any skill, at any level, and because of the wide variety of classroom activities, description of typical classroom procedures used in a lesson based on CLT principles is not feasible In CLT, traditional procedures are not rejected but they are reinterpreted and expanded Teaching points are introduced in dialogue form, grammatical items are isolated for controlled practice, and then freer activities are provided Pair and group work is suggested to encourage students to use and practice functions and forms It can be said that CLT procedures are evolutionary rather than revolutionary

2 Teacher’s Roles and Learner’s Roles in CLT

The aims of CLT, “communicative competence” also imply new roles in the classroom for teacher and learners So how do the roles of teacher and learners change in CLT? In traditional second language classroom, teacher was the center; teacher controlled activities in the class Teacher talks all the time and students only listen and write down everything However, in CLT, the role

of teacher and students has changed a lot

3 Teacher’s Roles

According to Breen and Candlind (1980:99, cited in Richards and

Rodgers, 2001:167), teacher in CLT has some main roles following:

The first role is to facilitate the communicate process between all participants in the classroom and the various activities and texts

The second role is to act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group

The third role for the teacher is that of researcher and learner, with much

to contribute in terms of appropriate knowledge and abilities, actual and observed experience of the nature of learning and organizational capacities Other roles assumed for teacher are needed analyst, counselor, and group process manager

CLT procedures often require teachers to acquire less teacher-centered classroom management skills It is the teacher’s responsibility to organize the classroom as a setting for communication and communicative activities

4 Learner’s Roles

Since the teacher’s role in CLT is less dominant than in a teacher-centered method, students are seen as more responsible managers of their own learning

According to Breen and Candlind (1980:110, cited in Richards and Rodgers, 2001:166), the learners can be negotiators - between the self, the learning process, and the object of learning – emerges from and interacts with the role of joint negotiator within the group and within the classroom procedures and activities which the group undertakes The implication for the learner is that

he should contribute as much as he gains, and thereby learn in an interdependent way

Additionally, in CLT, students are expected to interact primarily with each other than with the teacher and to engage in negotiating meaning actively The correction of errors maybe absent or infrequent Thus, CLT procedures should

be focused on learner-centered instructions to enhance the students’ communicative competence

II Reading Skill

1 Definition of Reading

Reading is an important skill in order to master a language However, it is not easy to establish a clear definition of reading The ways of understanding about reading are different, depending on the reading purposes of the readers Most educators would agree that the major purpose of reading should be the construction of meaning - comprehending and actively responding to what is read From this purpose, there have been two main ways to understand about the term “reading” as follows:

First, “reading is a complex information processing skill in which the readers interact with the text to (re)create meaningful discourse” (Silberstein,

1993, p.12)

It can be inferred from this definition that reading is not just a process of picking up the literal meaning by understanding the meaning of all words in the given text The readers, when reading a text, have to coordinate a lot of information related to the text to interpret it in a meaningful way By this way, the readers can facilitate reading comprehension tasks and also understand the text better

Second, “reading is the process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interaction among the reader’s existing knowledge, the information suggested by the text being read and the context of the reading situation” (cited from http://www.michiganreading.org.)

In this point of view, in order to understand the text thoroughly, the readers have to use their own knowledge to interpret the information in the given text In addition, it is possible that the meaning of a text varies depending

on each reading context; therefore, a good reader should be an active and flexible one who can apply various reading strategies to infer the meaning of a text in different situations

As mentioned above, there have been many ways of defining reading, however, these are two of the most widely cited and agreed-upon definitions From these definitions, we can see that the readers play an important role in deducing the text in order to realize communicative functions Thus, it is necessary for the students learning how to read in an effective way

2 The Importance of Reading

Like listening, reading is a receptive skill with many sub skills just as involved in listening Reading is very important in real life in general and in language learning in particular “Reading may contribute significantly to competence in a second language This is a good reason, in fact, to hypothesize that reading makes a contribution to overall competence, to all four skills” (Krashen & Terrel, 1983:131)

From this point of view, reading can enhance the learners’ general language competence The students’ ultimate objective is to use language in real communication Thus, by reading a lot, students can improve their English background knowledge and their English vocabulary as well These things can help students use language creatively in real life

In addition, reading also makes a great contribution to other language skills

We know that the four language skills are closely related to each other not only in teaching but in learning as well When reading, students have a chance to enrich their vocabulary, grammatical structures, and their knowledge about the real world, etc For this reason, the improvement of reading can promote further improvement

in other skills such as speaking, listening and writing as well In

order to be good language learners, it is necessary for students to master all four language skills together

B.SITUATION OF TEACHING READING SKILL AT DONG SON II

HIGH SCHOOL

Dong Son II High School was founded in 2002 in countryside Most of the students in Dong Son II High School come from poor farming family where they have quite poor learning conditions The students here do not have much time for learning, especially for learning English There is only a small number

of students paying attention to learning English It is easy to understand why teaching English seems more difficult and complicating for these students than those from the other high schools

As a matter of fact, a successful class is the one in which students play the center role and communicative competence is the goal of teaching Therefore, it

is actually necessary for the teacher to monitor the class in such a way that students have as many chances as possible to communicate with each other when fulfilling a task Using communicative activities is one of the most effective ways They help students to become more active and more confident when they express their understanding about the reading text Through communicative activities the students also understand the lesson better In fact, communicative activities are available, however, how and in what way to apply those activities in real teaching and learning English is still a question for many teachers

C.SOME APPLIED ACTIVITIES

The teaching practice at Dong Son II High School has made the author herself realize that teaching and learning English quite boring; students sometimes not motivated in learning the lessons She has also had a chance to observe English reading classes taught by all of six teachers in Dong Son II High School It is obvious that each teacher has their own ways to teach English reading and guide students to solve reading tasks in the textbook Nowadays, we are trying to teach English following Communicative Approach However, the fact is that many teachers still use the traditional method of teaching They mainly focus on grammatical structures and vocabulary They guide students how to use English grammar to do exercises in the textbook Some teachers also teach their students how to translate a piece of English language into Vietnamese one

For reading skill in particular, some teachers often use only the textbook again and again They teach students by asking them to follow the mechanical drills in the textbook Therefore, most of the students have no intrinsic motivation in learning English reading As a result, English reading skills of students at Dong Son II High School is not good There are also some teachers providing extra communicative activities in reading classes In such classes, the students are able to complete successfully the reading tasks and understand the reading passage better In addition, the students feel more interested in reading

lessons and have more motivation in their English learning as well Therefore, the result of English learning will be higher

The author has herself also had the opportunity to check the effectiveness

of applying reading communicative activities in teaching reading when she gives the lessons to the students She has seen that by using communicative activities, the students have had more motivation in joining the lessons and they have also understood the text more thoroughly

To sum up, using communicative activities in English reading classes brings many benefits for students in learning English Therefore, it should be widespread applied in teaching and learning English Consequently, the students will not only improve their reading skills but also other language skills will be better day by day

As mentioned above, communicative activities are various and can be applied in teaching all four language skills Thus, within this study, the author only suggests some communicative activities in English reading classes for the 10th form students

The author hopes that these activities will help students understand the text most effectively and partly improve their reading skills

1 Out of ten

1.1.Types of activity: pair or group work

1.2 Aims: This activity aims at checking students’ understanding about the

content of the text and improving students’ interaction in the class as well

1.3 Instruction:

The teacher asks the students to write the numbers from 1 to 10 after each sentence in the text Number “1” means “I understood almost nothing in this sentence”, number “10” means “I understood everything in this sentence” The numbers from 2-9 are arranged following the degree of the students’ understanding from the lower degree to the higher one

Let the students work in pairs or groups Students show their scores to each other and then the students with the higher score will help the lower one understand more

* Application:

Almost of units in the textbook can apply this type of activity for the post-reading part After finishing post-reading tasks in while- post-reading, the teacher can ask the students to move around class to ask each other about whatever they do not understand in the text

2 Finding Synonyms

2.1 Types of activity: pair work or group work

2.2 Aims: This kind of activity can help students enrich their vocabulary and

from that they can understand the text better

2.3 Instruction:

Asking the students to find 5-6 favorite words from the text (they should

be important words in the text) and then discuss in groups to find the synonyms

of these words Each student has their own words Thus, after exchanging the ideas in groups, students can enrich their vocabulary Moreover, because the students know more words in the text, their understanding about the text is also improved

2.4.Application:

The teacher can apply this type of activity independently or combine it with matching tasks in while-reading After first reading, the teacher asks the students to work in groups to discuss about the synonyms of their favorite words Through this activity, the students can do matching tasks more easily Many units in the new textbook can use this kind of activity such as:

Unit 3: People’ Background (Task 1)

Unit 4: Special Education (Task 1)

Unit 7: The Mass Media (Task 1)

Unit 10: Conservation (Task 1)

3 Get it wrong

3.1 Types of activity: pair work or group work

3.2.Aims: This activity is for detailed checking of the text for specific

information or summarizing the reading text

3.3 Instruction:

The teacher prepares a summary passage (including some deliberate mistakes) of the text, copies it into many pieces as the hand- outs and delivers them to each pair or group of students After that, the teacher asks the students to discuss to cross out the mistakes and substitute the correct information

3.4 Application:

“Get it wrong” activity can be used for both while-reading and

post-reading parts In some lessons, the teacher can combine this activity with True/ False tasks to conduct a summary passage including both right and wrong information The following units can apply this kind of activity:

* Unit 3: People’s Background (Task 2)

* Unit 7: The Mass Media (Task 2)

* Unit 10: Conservation (Task 2)

* Unit 14: The World Cup (Task 3)

4 Role Play

4.1.Types of activity: pair work, group work or teacher-whole class

4.2.Aims: checking students’ understanding about the text and improving their

communicative competence

4.3.Instruction:

The teacher calls a group of students coming up before class and playing the roles of someone rather than themselves and using the language appropriately to the new context Other students play the role of audience and give comments if necessary

4.4.Application:

Role play is usually used for post-reading activity after students finishing reading tasks in while-reading Some lessons can apply this type of activity as follows:

* Unit 1: A Day in the Life of… (After you read)

* Unit 8: The Story of my Village (After you read)

* Unit 11: National Parks (After you read)

5 Students Interview

5.1 Types of activity: pair work or group work

5.2.Aims: This activity can help students improve their scanning skill by asking and answering questions to get information about the text

5.3 Instruction:

Students should come up with a variety of questions relating to the passage and go around class to interview other students about the information they need

5.4 Application:

This type of activity can be applied in while-reading and post-reading as well For while-reading, the teacher can combine it with the task “Answering the questions” Students can use both the given questions in the task and their own questions to interview each other For post -reading, this activity can be used for free talking Students can move around the class and ask any question relating to the passage to help them understand the text thoroughly Almost every unit in the textbook can apply this kind of activity

6 Completing Network

6.1 Types of activity: group work or whole class

6.2. Aims: Improving students’ vocabulary and checking their understanding about the text by finding out related information basing on a key word

6.3 Instruction:

The teacher gives a key word on the board and then asks students to find out as much as possible the words relating that key word (the key word is about the main point of the passage)

6.4 Application:

The teacher can use this activity for pre-reading or post-reading part in almost every unit in the textbook For example, in unit 16 “Historical Places”, the teacher can check students’ understanding about the passage by asking them

to complete the network below:

location

• Ly dynasty

• Suggested answers:location

• Confusion ways

• Royal examination

• Briliant scholars

• Between 1076 - 1779

• Talented men

7 Crossword Puzzle

• Types of activity: group work

• Aims: This activity is aimed at improving students’ guessing skill by finding out the key word that relates to the topic of the lesson and arising their vocabulary as well

• Instruction:

The teacher divides class into small groups of 4 – 5 students and then teacher distributes the crossword puzzle handouts for students to do in their own groups After finding out the key word, the students can somewhat guess at the content of the lesson

• Application:

This type of activity can be applied in most of the units for “Before you read” part

8 Lucky Number

• Type of activity: group work

• Aims of activity: This kind of activity is aimed at helping students to improve their scanning skill by answering the questions about the content

of the reading passage

• Instruction:

For this game, the students can work in group of six members The teacher prepares 6-8 cards with numbers in one side and the questions about the content of the text in the other side of the card

Each group will choose a number they like and after choosing the number, they have to answer the question in the other side of the card The other groups also have to listen to answer those questions because if that group can not answer the questions, the others will have chances to answer them Each correct