skkn PROMOTING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ GRAMMATICAL ABILITY THROUGH CONTEXT

In traditional ways of teaching grammar, teachers often introduce forms, explain the usage of the grammar points and then have students complete the follow-up exercises.. A lot of resear

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SÁNG KIẾN

PROMOTING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ GRAMMATICAL ABILITY

THROUGH CONTEXT

(Ghi đầy đủ tên gọi giải pháp bằng chữ in hoa đậm)

Người thực hiện: Vũ Cẩm Thu Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu:

- Quản lý giáo dục 

- Phương pháp giáo dục 

- Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn: Tiếng Anh 

(Ghi rõ tên bộ môn)

- Lĩnh vực khác: 

(Ghi rõ tên lĩnh vực)

Có đính kèm: Các sản phẩm không thể hiện trong bản in sáng kiến

 Mô hình  Đĩa CD (DVD)  Phim ảnh  Hiện vật khác

(các phim, ảnh, sản phẩm phần mềm)

Năm học: 2019 - 2020

SỞ GIÁO DỤC - ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI TRƯỜNG THPT NGÔ QUYỀN

Mã số:

SÁNG KIẾN

PROMOTING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ GRAMMATICAL ABILITY

THROUGH CONTEXT

Người thực hiện: Vũ Cẩm Thu Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu:

- Quản lý giáo dục 

- Phương pháp giáo dục 

- Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn: Tiếng Anh 

- Lĩnh vực khác: 

Có đính kèm: Các sản phẩm không thể hiện trong bản in sáng kiến

 Mô hình  Đĩa CD (DVD)  Phim ảnh  Hiện vật khác

(các phim, ảnh, sản phẩm phần mềm)

Năm học: 2019 - 2020

TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION Error: Reference source not found

1 Background /context Error: Reference source not found

2 The scope of the research Error: Reference source not found

3 Rationale 1

4 Research aims (Purposes) 2

CONTENTS OF THE RESEARCH 2

I REALITY OF TEACHING AND LEARNING SPEAKING 2

II RESEARCH CONTENTS 3

1 Research procedures/ definitions of terms Error: Reference source not found 2 Advantages and disadvantages of meaningful activities 7

3 Evaluation of the research 8

a Novelty of the research ( Innovations) Error: Reference source not found b Effectiveness Error: Reference source not found c Applicability of the research Error: Reference source not found CONCLUSION 9

REFERENCES Error: Reference source not found

APPENDIX: RESEARCH DESIGN Error: Reference source not found

Appendix 1: Research Question Error: Reference source not found

Appendix 2: Error: Reference source not found

1 PPP ( Presentation – Practice – Production )

2 EFL ( English as a foreign language )

3 ESL ( English as a second language )

THÔNG TIN CHUNG VỀ SÁNG KIẾN

1 Tên sáng kiến:

PROMOTING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ GRAMMATICAL

ABILITY THROUGH CONTEXT

2 Lĩnh vực áp dụng sáng kiến: Giảng dạy môn Tiếng Anh

3 Tác giả:

- Họ và tên: Vũ Cẩm Thu Nam (nữ): Nữ

- Trình độ chuyên môn: Cử nhân Tiếng Anh

- Chức vụ, đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT Ngô Quyền

- Điện thoại: 0847018963 Email: camthu0408@gmail.com

Tỷ lệ đóng góp tạo ra sáng kiến (%): 100%

(Nếu là sáng kiến riêng của tác giả, ghi 100%; nếu có đồng tác giả, ghi số lượng % bản thân đóng góp)

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TOPIC :

PROMOTING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’

GRAMMATICAL ABILITY THROUGH CONTEXT

INTRODUCTION

1 Background /context

In recent years, teaching grammar has become one of the most challenging issues of English language teachers In fact, at high schools teachers have difficulty making grammar instructions interesting to students In traditional ways of teaching grammar, teachers often introduce forms, explain the usage of the grammar points and then have students complete the follow-up exercises Therefore, students have to learn

by heart grammatical structures in a passive way, which fails to hold students’ interest This has urged educators and researchers to look for effective methods of teaching grammar, and my hypothesis is that teaching through context can get students to communicate more efficiently Context-based grammar plays an important role in helping teachers enhance students’ learning effectiveness It will contribute to motivating students to study grammar because they will have more chances of understanding how the new grammar structures work

2 The scope of the research

This case study is conducted in my school – Ngo Quyen High School situated

in the centre of Bien Hoa City with the participation of 90 students in 2 different classes aged 17 years old

3 Rationale

According to Krahnke (1985), grammar plays an instrumental role in language teaching and it should be paid attention to when teaching a language although teachers have tendency to focus on teaching four main skills –reading, speaking, listening and writing

In order to be competent language learners, students are recommended to learn and know about grammar This will help them to make sentences meaningful and express their words and messages effectively Furthermore, it can enhance students to master four main skills: build good sentences in writing, make sentences clear to understand in speaking conversations, identify the main points in listening talks and understand the key ideas in reading passages With the lack of grammar, students cannot develop language skills Like Emery (1978), she compared the failure of language skills due to the state of not knowing grammar with unskilled drivers who

do not know what makes the car run This contributes to the fact that grammar is indispensable and essential in EFL language teaching

Tabbert (1984) also pointed that some classic mistakes learners faced were using incorrect tenses, mismatching subjects and verbs, confusing the use of articles,

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mismatching the position of adjectives and nouns This is the reason why she claimed that students need to learn grammar

Teaching grammar requires teachers a lot work to do One essential aspect of teaching grammar is the ability to help learners gain an understanding of the nature of language like patterns which create what people speak, listen, read and write (Azar, 2007) In fact, people no longer use only simple single words, sounds, body expressions to communicate with others since they know how to apply grammar into the real context

Ellis (2006) also emphasized that grammar instruction includes methods that make learners identify specific grammatical form in a way that helps learners both comprehend it linguistically and produce it effectively A lot of researchers also stressed the importance of teaching grammar that it cannot be ignored and if learners are not taught grammar, they cannot develop the language skills professionally (Richards & Renandya, 2002)

There has been a debate whether a suitable method of teaching grammar is applied in the classroom Although the traditional grammar teaching PPP is used, this method does not bring effects In fact, presenting grammar in context helps students know how grammar is used and improve their knowledge in language skills Obviously, teaching grammar in isolated sentences is an impractical way as it will not motivate students’ ability to discover the rules and functions of grammar structures in sentences It is believed that students need to experience grammar in a variety of context so that they can use it correctly and apply it efficiently Hence, context-based teaching grammar should be carried out in the classrooms

4 Research aims (Purposes)

This research aims at investigating the effects of implementing teaching grammar through context on the development of students’ language competence It also aims to identify students’ problems and their learning styles with the expectation that this new method will help them to get the hang of perceiving the rules of new grammar structures and providing accuracy in the target language

CONTENTS OF THE RESEARCH

I REALITY OF TEACHING AND LEARNING GRAMMAR

In recent years, the most popular traditional grammar teaching approach is PPP (Presentation – Practice – Production) However, Long and Doughty (2009) claimed that this approach is not effective because it cannot enable students to apply what they have learnt into communicative context This means that they understand the rules clearly, but they cannot use them to communicate with others and recognize how grammar rules work in sentences, which prevents the effectiveness of learning grammar Therefore, it is the teachers who are responsible for helping students comprehend the meaning and the usage of language; and also show them what the grammatical form of the new language is and how it is used in speaking and writing This leads to a new approach of grammar instruction - teaching grammar through context

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II RESEARCH CONTENTS

1 Research procedures / definitions of terms

This case study will be conducted with 90 students divided into two different groups Each group includes 45 students The experimental group is the group of students who are taught lessons integrated with new method – teaching grammar through context, whereas the group of students who are taught like the normal lessons (traditional method: PPP) form the control group A pre-test will be carried out to make sure that both two groups have the same proficiency level At the end of the second term, two groups are tested in order to get the scores of each learner Those test scores will be analyzed and collected to serve for data of the findings After that,

my colleagues and I will join a meeting to compare the results of the experimental group and the control group to examine the effects of applying contexts in teaching grammar on the ability to discover rules and functions of grammar structures as well

as apply it into language skills

Those groups of students are experimented at the second term and they are taught in the English course-book Grade 11 (Vietnamese Ministry of Education) All students are taught the same lesson; however, there is one group of students are taught grammar through contexts, whereas the other group are taught grammar by using classical method (the teacher explains the rules and forms and then uses some drills to get students familiar with the new grammar structures) Additionally, I will be the teacher of 2 groups of students to investigate the real effects as well as to make students feel comfortable to take part in the lessons

The study includes 2 tests: one pre-test and one post-test for both 2 groups A pre-test is a grammar test Because this kind of test aims at being a standard to show that students have the same level of English competence, it will be derived from the knowledge they have learnt before which is in the English Course-book Grade 11 at the first term After that, the students taking part in the research are divided into 2 groups: experimental group and control group They are taught the grammar lessons

of the second term of the course-book The control group are exposed to lessons with the traditional, explicit grammar teaching, while the experimental group are taught grammar lessons through their contexts

At the end of the second term (after 8 weeks), there is a post-test which is extracted from the Course-book of the second term for both 2 groups The test is the grammar test including multiple choice and sentence transformation tasks Instructions are given before the tests to avoid misunderstanding among students There are 40 questions, each of which is 25 points The total score is 100 points Four colleagues and I will mark the students’ papers, collect data and analyze data through transcription

To make sure the fairness and efficiency of the study, two kinds of test: pre-test and post-test are in the paper test and marked both the person who teaches them and four partners in my department

Data is collected through the results of the post-test Besides, two methods: questionnaire and interview are also applied to collect the data The questionnaire includes open and close-ended questions to investigate learners’ attitudes and

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viewpoints towards learning grammar through context and raise their awareness of the importance of studying grammar in contexts While students do the questionnaire, the teacher explains and gives possible and necessary guidance so that they can meet the requirements of the questionnaire

Interviews are conducted with the help of four partners in my English Team They are asked some questions about their points of view about teaching grammar in contexts in their lessons The questions are designed as open-ended questions The interview will last 30 minutes for each interviewee Moreover, the place and the purpose of the interview will be informed beforehand and in details to create the comfortable feelings among the participants Each teacher will be interviewed one time at the beginning of the research and their answers will be recorded by a cassette recorder

After students take post-test, the results are collected and analyzed I will have one colleague make a table of all the scores of 90 students of both two groups on Microsolf Excel and arrange the scores from the highest to the lowest score; especially to differentiate the score of 2 groups, I will color the score of the control group blue and the experimental group will be in red After that, four colleagues and I will hold a meeting to analyze the results to see whether the new grammar teaching technique (teaching grammar through contexts) can bring the effective results If this method is successful (the score of the experimental group is higher than that of the control group), it will be implemented in the most of my students and all the students

in my school in the long run

 Application

a) Unit 2: The past tense (Past simple & Past continuous)

In this lesson, I will teach two English tenses in a context:

Jane comes from Italy She is now living and working in the outskirts of Italy Her English is quite good as she has studied it at school for over 10 years and she has

worked for a company where English is the necessity Some weeks ago, she went to London for the first time to visit four high school friends She stayed there for a week and in that time Jane and her friends had a busy schedule – they visited many famous

places in London such as The London Eye, Tower of London, Sea Life London,

Madame Tussauds, ZSL Lonson Zoo, ate some famous foods in different restaurants every day, walked up the steep hills, and did lots of shopping in the fantastic department stores They took lots of photographs during the trip

One evening Jane and her friends were having dinner when the fire alarm went off, but the waiters seemed to be calm They still carried on working Everyone around continued eating Jane and her friends wondered why everyone still went on eating with their meals even though the fire alarm was sounding Jane and her friends decided to get out quickly, but just as they went out of the door they saw a sign at the

entrance of the restaurant warning customers that there was going to be a fire alarm

test that evening At that time, Jane and his friends felt a bit embarrassed.

STEPS:

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 Firstly, I ask the class if anyone has been to/would like to go to London If anyone has, they can tell the others something about it If no one has not been to, they can tell me what London like through what they know on television or on the Internet I also show some pictures of London to motivate the class to talk about it

 Secondly, I’ll tell my students that they were going to read about Jane – a cute girl who visited London for the first time They read the text and answer the questions: “Why did Jane visit London? How many people was she with? Why did they stop eating dinner at one restaurant? Did they finish their meal later?”

 Thirdly, I’ll highlight 2 sentences from the text, 1 sentence with past simple, 1 sentence with past continuous

 Next, I’ll ask students to underline other examples of the past simple and past continuous, discuss the use of two tenses in pairs or small groups

 After that, I conclude the forms and uses of 2 tenses

 Lastly, I ask students to write sentences using these two tenses

Through context the students will see the usage of grammatical patterns better, and the context help them understand how to use grammar forms and structures In the following contexts again two English tenses are presented

b) Unit 12: RELATIVE CLAUSE

In this lesson I teach my students RELATIVE CLAUSE in context

In fact, it’s really a consolidation because they have already it learnt before

STEPS:

 Firstly, I’ll show my students the picture of The Mona Lisa and ask if they know the person who painted such masterpiece I tell the students that they were going

to learn some very interesting things about Leonardo Da Vinci, a genius of the

15th century And their task is to recognize what grammar point is referred to in the text

 Secondly, I give my students a small text about Leonardo Da Vinci The students work in groups, scan the text and answer “the grammar point is RELATIVE CLAUSE”

 I have my students read the paragraphs again and underline the relative pronouns they’ve found

 Next, I have students work in groups, discuss the use of the relative pronouns in these contexts While they are doing I go round and ask them why “who, whom, which, that …” are used in these contexts When students have finished discussing they soon remember what they had leant

 After that I’ll help them revise the grammar point and provide them with some advanced structures