skkn using pre reading activities to help students feel more interested in reading

Tên sáng kiến: Using Pre-Reading Activities to Help Students Feel More Interested in Reading 2.. Being an English teacher, what should we do to draw students’ attention and toengage them

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI

Đơn vị : Trường THPT NGÔ QUYỀN

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

(các phim, ảnh, sản phẩm phần mềm)

Năm học: 2019-2020

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SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI

Đơn vị : Trường THPT NGÔ QUYỀN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ………

1 Background ………

2 Reasons for choosing the topic ………

3 The scope of the research ………

4 The objective of the research ……… ………

CONTENTS ………

I RATIONALE OF THE RESEARCH .………

II RESEARCH CONTENTS ………

1 Procedure ………

Activity 1: Mind-mapping ………

Activity 2: Matching ……… ………….………

Activity 3: Competition Game - Hangman ………

Activity 4 : Discussion … ……….………

Activity 5: Word Sort ……… …… ……

2 Advantages and disadvantages of applying these Pre-reading activities in the class ………

3 Evaluation ………

a Novelty of the research ………

b Evaluation of the research ………

c Applicability of the research ………

CONCLUSION ………

REFERENCES ………

Appendix 1 ………

Appendix 2 ………

Page

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THÔNG TIN CHUNG VỀ SÁNG KIẾN

1 Tên sáng kiến: Using Pre-Reading Activities to Help Students Feel More Interested in Reading

2 Lĩnh vực áp dụng sáng kiến: Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn.

3 Tác giả:

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- Trình độ chuyên môn: Thạc sỹ Giảng dạy Tiếng Anh

- Chức vụ, đơn vị công tác: Phó Hiệu trưởng – Trường THPT Ngô Quyền

- Điện thoại: 0918191335 Email: bphuxuannq@gmail.com

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4 Đồng tác giả (nếu có): không

- Họ và tên: ……… …… Nam (nữ):

- Trình độ chuyên môn: …

- Chức vụ, đơn vị công tác: …

- Điện thoại: …… ……… Email: …

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TOPIC: USING PRE-READING ACTIVITIES TO HELP STUDENTS FEEL MORE INTERESTED IN READING

INTRODUCTION

1 Background

Nowadays learning English is considered to be very essential in our modern

society because it is an international language which is necessary for manydifferent kinds of activities including education, politics, and socio-economics.Knowing English also gives you golden chances to get a good job in amultinational company in Vietnam or finding work abroad What is moreEnglish is one of the core subjects in all Vietnamese secondary schools, highschools, colleges and universities Therefore, classroom teaching is really ademanding job

Most Vietnamese teachers have to work with a class of forty five students ormore and there is usually a wide variety of abilities in each class In readingclass, it is common that teachers always play the centred roles and explaineverything to students while students do nothing As a result, they find nopleasure or interest in reading lessons

2 Reasons for choosing the topic

Through discussions with some of the teachers and students’ in my school I havefound out some problems in teaching and learning reading Most teacherschoose the teaching career with the hope that they could spark the joy oflearning in their students However, classroom teaching is a demanding job.Teachers sometimes recognize that their students find no pleasure in the act ofreading

Being an English teacher, what should we do to draw students’ attention and toengage them in reading lessons as well as give them as many opportunities aspossible to take part in active activities in the classroom? This requires bothstudents’ and teacher’s efforts However, it is our own job to make theclassroom a lively and communicative place How can we create such aclassroom?

My experience has taught me that Pre-reading activities are very important forhelping students to understand the background of the text and help students feelmore interested in reading periods They can spark students’ curiosity and

promote a comfortable atmosphere in the classroom As a result, students willget more involved in the lesson and a better learning process will take place.Before you play a sport or do some physical activities it is advisable to warm upand prepare your body for the upcoming task It is the same way with reading It

is better for teachers to give students a chance to warm up and prepare theirmind for reading so that they can perform well and increase their comprehension

in reading lessons

Allwright (1984) also believes that we can design some activities to attractstudents' attention, to help them put aside distracting thoughts and to get themready for whatever activities that follow

3 The scope of the research

The application of these activities was carried out among a class of forty12-graders at Ngo Quyen High School in some lessons in both first and secondsemester of the school year 2019-2020

These Pre-reading activities finish in about 5 minutes of lesson time, butsome can be even shorter and others can be lengthened

4 Objective of the research

Among the four skills of learning English, reading is paid much attention

to by the teachers at high schools, however the students feel uninterested inreading classes because they lack motivation from the beginning of the lessons

The main objective of the research is to help students feel more interested

in reading lessons by using Pre-reading activities

CONTENTS

I RATIONALE OF THE RESEARCH

The importance of reading:

Carrell (1984, p.1) states “reading is by far the most important of the four macroskills, particularly in English as a second or a foreign language”

Reading is one important way to improve your general language skills inEnglish for the following reasons:

 Reading can improve your English vocabulary and communication skills

 Reading can help you improve your writing vocabulary

 Reading helps you expand your knowledge and make you smarter

 Reading is a good way to enhance your critical and analytical thinking skills

 Reading will also offer you a chance to travel and use your imagination inways you have never imagined

Sookchotirat (2005) suggests that reading skill is the most important skill as it isthe basis of all the success in one’s life Good readers can gain more knowledge

of any kind from reading Reading makes the reader more knowledgeable, andreading makes the reader have wider perspectives and vision Reading helps thereader get new ideas leading to cognitive development When the readertransfers what they read to apply with their own idea a new perspective or idea iscreated

Harmer (1998: 68) also makes clear that reading is useful for many purposes.Reading texts provides opportunities to study a language: vocabulary, grammar,punctuation, and the way we construct sentences, paragraphs and texts Readingtexts also provides good models for English writing Lastly, good reading textscan introduce interesting topics, stimulate discussion, excite imaginativeresponses and be the springboard for well-rounded, fascinating lessons

Yeeding (2007) investigated the effects of pre-reading activities on learners’motivation and reading comprehension ability Results showed that the activitiessubjects were highly motivated, enthusiastic to read After the experiment, theyscored significantly higher

The teaching should accommodate learners’ development of the 4 languageskills Reading skill, in particular, is the most important skill in second orforeign language learning (Carrell, 1988)

Reading skill plays such an important role in learning English, however, throughdiscussions with some of the teachers and students’ in my school I have foundout some problems in teaching and learning reading Students usually feel tiredand bored at the beginning of the lesson, they study passively and find nopleasure in the act of reading Some of them just try to struggle with the text

(e.g.: unknown words and complicated grammar rules) to find the answers to

comprehension questions It was also very surprising to find out that most ofthem did not understand the purpose of reading They spent nearly 80% of thetime on translating the text word by word into Vietnamese, even a simple one.Because they thought that they could only understand the text completely if theytranslated the text Besides, some of the students also translate comprehensionquestions about the text before giving answers to the teacher

Through the observation in my classes for many ages I also realized the sameproblem that my students did not show much interest in the reading lessonstherefore I decided to design some Pre-reading activities such as Mind-mapping;Matching; Competition Game – Hangman; Discussion and Word Sort, etc to seewhether they really help me draw students’ attention to the content of the newlessons and feel more interested in the reading class

II RESEARCH CONTENTS

 This contains some activities that teachers can use in class and I used

the Units in “English books 11 & 12” as examples in my activities.

1 Procedure:

Step 1: Getting started

From the beginning of the research I had a lot of informal discussions with some

of the teachers and students’ in my school in order to get some initial reflections

on learning and teaching reading in the school

Step 2: Preparations

Since the innovation involved in variety of activities, the teacher had toconcentrate on selecting and designing the activities based on the topic of eachUnit

Step 3: Implementing the innovation

Some of the units in English 11 & 12 books were chosen during the innovationprocess

Activity 1 : MIND-MAPPING

Al-Jarf (2011) defines mind-mapping as “a graphic organizer in which the majorcategories radiate from a central idea and subcategories are represented asbranches of larger branches” (p.4) He also asserts that, this visual tool can beused to assist learning because it helps students “to generate ideas, take notes,organize thinking and develop concepts”

This activity is used to:

- attract the students’ attention to the content of the new lesson

- present concepts in the classroom

- deliver an overview of the topic without superfluous information

- give students a chance to review and widen their vocabulary

Before teaching the new lesson, the teacher takes a key word in the readingpassage and asks the students to suggest all the words which associate with it.Write each suggestion on the board with a line joining it to the original word in acircle, so that you get a “sunray” effect

 Let’s take Unit 1: HOME LIFE (English 12) as an example:

Teacher writes down the word FAMILY on the board and has students

brainstorm all the words they can think of:

The word FAMILY may produce something like the sketch below

respect close-knit family

 Let’s take Unit 11: SOURCES OF ENERGY - English 11 as another

example:

Teacher writes down the word ENERGY on the board and has students

brainstorm all the words they can think of:

ENEGRY

The word ENERGY may produce something like the sketch below

electricity geothermal

 Variation:

The teacher may divide the class into groups of four, give them somehandouts The groups will work together to identify from the given list asmany words related to the word ENERGY as possible in 3 minutes

After 3 minutes, the teacher invites the representative of each group to come

to the board and write their list One point is given for the correct answer.The group gets the highest points wins the game

 For example in Unit 11: SOURCES OF ENERGY - English

11 List:

Wildlife, power, habitat, fuel, fog, nuclear, extinction, solar, erosion, wind, water, heat, sewage, geothermal, moon, renewable, Mars, biodiversity, non- renewable, fertilizer, earthquake, windmill, oil, creature, coal, famine, gas, rainforest, electricity, petroleum, climate, urbanization, pesticide

Answers:

power, fuel, nuclear, solar, wind, water, heat, geothermal, renewable, renewable, windmill, oil, coal, gas, electricity, petroleum

non-Activity 2: MATCHING

Matching games improve language, concentration and memory

We can use this kind of activity to introduce the new lesson as well as draw

students’ attention on the theme of the unit

Let’s take Unit 12: THE ASIAN GAMES – English 11 as an example:

 Divide the class into two groups A & B

 Stick the pictures of sports on the board

 Distribute the cards of the names of the sports to the students:

Volleyball; Shooting; Weightlifting; Wrestling; Fencing; Table tennis

 Call out the pictures in any order and the representatives of each group should run to the board and stick the names under the pictures

 The group with more correct answers will be the winner

 Give more information about these sports (e.g in what countries they are played, indoor or outdoor sports, who are the famous players of these sports…) and introduce the new lesson.

1 2

The group that gives the correct answers first is the winner.

8 Picture 8: CD ROMS

Activity 3: COMPETITION GAME – HANGMAN

As Hadfield (1998) points out that one of the strategies to teach English is byusing games A game is an activity with rules, a goal and an element of fun.Wright, Betteridge and Buckby (2005) also agree that language learning is veryhard and efforts are required over a long period of time Games help the teacher

to create contexts in which language is useful and meaningful, therefore; theyhelp and encourage students to sustain their interest and work

The use of Hangman game really helps teachers to motivate students and createfun atmosphere in the classroom before the new lesson is presented

In this activity students are shown a set of blank letters that match a word orphrase and they have to guess what these letters are reveal the hidden word.The teacher divides the class into two groups A & B and draws each of them agallows on the board

The teacher explains to students that they are going to play a “Hangman” game.The teacher explains the rules of the game: students are given a secret word andthe groups will take turn to guess it by telling what letters they think there are inthis word

If students choose a letter that appears one or more times in the secret word theletter(s) will be revealed from the blank letters and students can keep onguessing the next letter On the other hand, if students guess a letter that is not inthe secret word, then a piece of the man being hanged will be added to thegallows and they will lose their turn

Students will get one point for each letter they can guess correctly When thegame is over, teacher will count how many points each group has collected andthe group with more points will win the game

Students will have fun playing this game, feel more excited to start the newlesson and also improve their English at the same time

 Let’s take Unit 6: COMPETITIONS – English 11 as an example: