hoi khoe thể dục 9 trần đình củng thư viện tư liệu giáo dục

phonemic awareness directly at an early age (kindergarten); teaching each sound - spelling correspondence explicitly; teaching frequent, highly regular sound - spelling relation ships [r]

Part 1: Introduction

I Background information:

1 Vocabulary as a language element:

2 Vocabulary in language teaching and learning:

3 Some features of English word's form

II Reality

III The need

IV The aim

5 “Reading Transcription” a necessary skill for learners

I Examples of the presenting procedure

1 Hello

2 Good afternoon

III Conclusion

Reference materials

Part 1: Introduction

I Background information:

1 Vocabulary as a language element:

Vocabulary is the total number of words in a language, according to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary 1995 It may be single words, but may also

be phrases, idioms or multi words that consist of these concepts such as form, meaning, part of speech, collocation, grammar

Vocabulary plays an important role in any language because it is the main component expressing meaning of communication Talking about that, Harmer (1991:24) asserts, "Without the lexical knowledge, they (learners) would not be able to use grammar to generate sentences with meaning" He still reemphasizes this idea later in that book (page 53) that if language structures make up the

skeleton of language then it is vocabulary that provides the vital organ and the flesh An ability to manipulate grammatical structures does not have any potential for expressing meaning unless words are used" Scrievener (1994:73) also has the same point of view on the importance of vocabulary as Harmer, and especially he adds "Beginners often manage to communicate in English by using the

accumulative effects of individual words ) It is obvious that vocabulary is very important

Though all of the experts have their own ways to express the important roles

of vocabulary in a language, the common point among them is that they are all positive that vocabulary is a necessary language element that can never be ignored

2 Vocabulary in language teaching and learning:

Vocabulary also plays a vital role in language teaching and learning It can

be easily seen in many researches However, in my study I focus only on the roles

in language classroom, and in developing language skill process

Firstly, in language classroom learners have to master a certain number of vocabularies to understand what the teacher says, because in second language lesson, as Baker (1996: 278) says, “Language is the subject matter In second language classroom, the second language is often used for classroom management.This makes second language teaching different from other curriculum areas where the language of control is separated from the subject matter taught" Scrievener (1996:278) also states, "Vocabulary is very important and need to be dealt with systematically in its all right It is not simply an addition to grammar skill lessons Our job does not finish as soon as a learner has first met some new vocabulary; weneed to help them practice, learn, store recall, and use it item" Besides, learners of

a language often have to do oral activities through pair works, or group pairs, so it

is necessary to master a certain amount of vocabulary in the target language in order that they can get instructions from others, and especially they can express their own thoughts

Secondly, vocabulary is essential to developing language skill process of thelearners Language skills, including listening, speaking, reading, and writing, are grouped into two categories They are receptive skills (listening and reading) and productive skills (speaking and writing) However, these skills can only exist if thelearners have enough "vocabulary" Scrivener (1994:21) agrees, "It is important to remember that no area of skills or language system exists in isolation There can

be no speaking if you do not have vocabulary to speak with " Linda ( ) also

emphasize the roles of vocabulary in each skill " For example, in listening skill, after motivating students to listen to, teacher helps students deal with difficulties

of lexical; in speaking skill ' recognizing ' words and phrase in English script and relating these to the spoken form was set in number 1 Vocabulary has the same place in writing and reading skills" It is clear that vocabulary should be provided

as " pre - teaching " for language skills to help learners get them perfectly

3 Some features of English word's form:

Like any other language, English has two forms, and as the result, English words have these forms They are spoken form and written form (sound and

letter) The first one is made up by the 44 phonemes (which are some times called the 44 basic sounds), and it includes stress, sound ending, sound linking, rhythm and intonation The second one is represented by the 26 letters, called the alphabet.The two forms have correspondence in most cases, however there are many

exception existing between them such as these following features:

First, different letter may represent the same sound, or in other word, one sound may be described by more than one letter For example, the sound / u:/ can

be written by " wo" in "two"; "o" in "to"; "oo" in ''too"

Second, Same letter can be pronounced with different sounds It also means that one letter may represent more than one sounds To make it clear, we look into

an examples; letter "a" in "man" is pronounced / /, but in "make" is /ei / , and in " call" is /: /

Third, letters appear within a word, but are not pronounced We usually call them the silent letter For instance, letter "h" in "hour", "honest"; letter "b" in

pronounced as/ '/; "Deny" as / deni / which should be /di'nai/ Besides, when speaking English they hardly pay any attention to stress, sound endings, sound linking, intonation, that sometimes cause confusion to foreigners in understanding what Vietnamese pupils mean Many times, the pupils do not speak English

accurately, misunderstandings happen Though the up to now misunderstanding have been only funny and forgivable they are out of expectation or in other words Vietnamese pupils have not succeeded in expressing their own thought in those situations What is about written form of English? Is it much better? It is the fact that Vietnamese pupils are quite good at spelling they are usually able to write the correct form of English words and remember their meaning However, the

beginners are sometimes confused in writing English words For example, they write 'he" "hi"; "mother" "mather"; "have" "heve" The fact that Vietnamese pupils usually have difficulty in English form can be explain by many reasonable causes The first one I want to mention is the feature of English form, which I proved above (see I.3) The second one is the habit of our own language

According to O'Connor (1980:3)," the main problem of English pronunciation is tobuild a new set of boxes corresponding to the sounds of English and to break downthe arrangement of boxes which the habits of our native language have so strongly built up" We are all Vietnamese people living in Vietnam Therefore, Vietnamese surrounds us Vietnam is different from English in comparison It has its own rules, which contain no stress, no sound ending, no sound linking Besides, the time spent on learning English at school is rather short, only 4-5 periods per week, and each period last for only 45 minutes Moreover, only when these periods come, can teachers correct students' English However, it is very difficult for the teachers to do so because there are too many pupils in each class (usually 40-50 pupils) Therefore, the teacher cannot pay attention to all the pupils That is why the pupils usually have to work on their own It seems that working on their own isvery good; however, our pupils are so young They are very active, and they have

a short-term memory Thus, it is difficult for them to keep all the things taught andcorrected by their teachers al though they can imitate their teacher quite well at first It means that they can remember what given by the teacher very well at the class However, when they come home they certainly forget some thing, besides, all the activities around require Vietnamese but not English, so they have very little opportunity to use the English taught at school Therefore, they are easier to forget it and they think English is similar to Vietnamese All the things mentioned above lead to the fact that Vietnamese pupils usually make English sounds like

Vietnamese That is why there is no stress, no sound ending, no sounds linking in English spoken by Vietnamese pupils.

III The need:

The target of English teaching at school in our country is giving the pupils a basic knowledge of everyday English so that they can communicate with

foreigners after leaving school It means that they can speak, listen, read, and write

in English about the life around and they can make foreigners understand In order

to do so, we have to pay attention to the two main noticed things below:

The first more important one as Harmer said is that our pupils are to say what they want to say This means that their pronunciation should be at least adequate for that purpose In our teaching, we will want to be sure that the studentscan make the various sounds that occur in English We will help them to

differentiate between these sounds especially where such distinction change

meaning, for example, "live" /i/ and /i: /, and help them understand and use certain sound rules For instance the different pronunciation of the "-ed" past tense ending.Besides, the pupils need to use rhythm and stress correctly if they are to be

understood We will make sure that when they learn new words they know where are stressed and we will make sure that they are able to say etc with appropriate stress, and we will show them how stress can be used to change the meaning of question sentences and phrase In addition, our pupils need to recognize

intonation At very least, they need to recognize whether the tune of someone's voice suggests that the speaker is sure, or uncertain When we teach language, we will try to ensure that pupils use it with intonation, which is appropriate In short,

“our aim should be to make sure that students can always be understood to say what they want to say They will need good pronunciation for this though they may need not to have perfect accent”

Another thing is that the pupils are able to write what they want to write with the least mistakes, or in other words, it seems that spelling has been focused

on more than on sounds in Vietnamese schools nowadays, because almost the test

in English are written ones That is why the pupils usually pay more attention to how to write the words correctly in order that they can get good marks However, they still have to cope with many problems, such as those spelling mistakes

mentioned above In conclusion, we need to help our pupils master the form of English in order that they can communicate with foreigners in everyday life

English after having school It means that can, at least, say what they want to say, and write they want to write with the least misunderstanding caused by the form ofEnglish

IV The aim:

Because of the reality and the need mentioned above, I am doing a research

to contribute something for schoolteachers of English in Vietnam and in my

teaching career at Luong Ngoc Quyen school as well I cannot assert that my research is good, but I think it may be a bit useful for conscious teachers That is why I suggest that we should help our pupils acquire a reading transcription skill (phonemic transcription) to help them study English on their own more effectivelywhile surrounded by Vietnamese It is only a small technique but it is very useful

V Methods:

Doing this research, I mainly based on two methods The first one is collecting materials I collected information from books, magazines and especially from Internet Then, I analyzed them and chose supporting information The second one is my own experiences when studying English and teaching some children English Besides, I use some other suitable methods to complete my working with different levels of pupils

Part 2: The content

I Theoretical bases:

The research bases mainly on four language-teaching methods They are transcription,phonics method, whole language method, and sound beginnings

1 Transcription:

Transcription is a written or printed copy of spoken words, according to the

Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary 1995 The one mentioned in the research is the phonemic transcription or the broad transcription, which uses only phonemic symbols, and it is widely used in the glossary at the end of pupil's textbooks, or in many current English dictionaries in Vietnam It is convenient for teaching a language, especially English because it has fixed symbols, includes sound ending, word stress, and above all,

it represents the international Standard English

The first useful point of the transcription is that it has fixed symbols, so it seems to

be quite easy to learn To make it clear, Peter Roach (1990:38) says, “The most

important point to remember is the rather obvious - seeming fact that the number of phonemic symbols must be exactly the same as the numbers of phonemes we decide exist in a language It is rather like writing with a type writer - There is a fixed number ofkeys that you can express" In addition to this, he also points out in this that “In

phonemic transcription every speech sound must be identified as one of the phonemes and written with the appropriate symbols and only phonemic symbols may be used" This means that in phonemic transcription each sound is represented by one or a set of the symbols Therefore, there is a correspondence between them in which there is only one way to pronounce these symbols As a result, we can avoid wrong pronunciation of the English words if we look into their transcription and know how to read them

The second convenient point of the transcription is that it includes word stress, sound ending even basic intonation "The transcription itself can handle such things as syntacticstress, weak form, accent, and intonation if we do not confine it to words in dictionary Inother words, if we pay due attention to language in use, language in context and

interactive nature of communication, then we will automatically have to take into

account these features" Therefore, learning English through the transcription, pupils can step by step get used to stress, sound ending, sound linking, intonation to be master them

Another important point is that the transcription itself can represent the international standard we are looking for If we adopt the transcription itself as the standard, then we can avoid most of the problems of models, standard, and target of the language we are studying As a result, if we use transcription for speaking English, we may have a good pronunciation, or at least, our pronunciation may be accurate enough to communicate with foreigners; make them understand what we mean

2 Phonics method:

Phonics method, which sometimes called phonetic method, or phonic, is a method

of teaching beginners to read and pronounce words by having them relate letters to sounds It is generally thought of as the traditional method of teaching children how to read In my research, I only mention the way of incorporating phonics into reading curriculum, or in other words, it own approaches, and the teaching procedure following this method

Phonics method has two ways of incorporating phonics into reading curriculum They are synthetic approach and analytic approach With the synthetic one, children learn the 44 basic sounds that can be produced by the 26 letters of English alphabet, and vocabulary words are only introduced when all the letter sounds have been master Students are taught to sound out unfamiliar words one letter at a time based on their sounds With the analytic one, students first acquire a basic vocabulary of words they know by sight and then study the relationships of letters and sounds by analyzing how they operate within these words

According to the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development in its report for The Future of Teaching and Learning, major implications and key

principles of effective reading instruction identified in the research along with concrete examples of the principles were sighted to " prevent reading problems" They

recommended a phonics method following six steps They are beginning teaching

phonemic awareness directly at an early age (kindergarten); teaching each sound - spelling correspondence explicitly; teaching frequent, highly regular sound - spelling relation ships systematically; showing children exactly how to sound out words; using connected, decodable texts for children to practise the sound - spelling relationships they learn; and using interesting stories to develop language comprehension.

The first step of the procedure is to begin teaching phonemic awareness directly at

an early age The teacher teaches the children how to recognize the individual sounds in words and phonemic awareness with listening and oral reproduction task such as word

to word matching; phoneme deletion; blending; sound isolation; phoneme segmentation;phoneme counting; deleting phonemes; and sound to word matching

The second step is teaching each sound - spelling correspondence explicitly

Explicit instruction means that a phoneme is isolated for children and has a specific sound associated with it This is taught in practice session about 5 minutes long The rest of the lesson involves using same phonemes in the context of words and stories composed of only the letter phoneme relationships the children know at that point

Teaching frequent, highly regular sound - spelling relation ships systematically is another step of the procedure The most effective instruction programs teach children how to read successfully with only 40 to 50 sound - spelling relationships Writing can require up to 70 sounds - spelling ones To teach systematically means to coordinate the instruction of the sound - spelling with the materials which children are asked to read The older of the introduction of this relationship should be planned to allow reading material composed of meaningful words and stories as soon as possible

The next step is to show how children exactly how to sound out words After children have learnt two or three sound - spelling correspondences, teacher begins

teaching them how to blend the sounds into words Show them how to move

sequentially from the left to the right through spellings as they "sound out ", or say the sound for each spelling Practice blending words composed of only the sound - spelling relationship, the children have learnt everyday

Using connected, decodable texts for children to practise the sound -spelling relationships they learn is another step The findings of the NKHD research emphasize that children need extensive practice applying their knowledge of sound - spelling

relationship to task of reading as they are learning them This integration of phonics and reading can only occur with the use of decodable texts Decodable text is composed of words that use the sound - spelling correspondences which children have been

systematically taught Only decodable texts provide the children the opportunities to practise their knowledge of sound - letter relationships in the context of connected reading

The last step of the teaching procedure is the use interesting stories to develop language comprehension The use of interesting stories and great literature to develop language comprehension is not ruled out by this research Only the use of stories as reading materials for none reader is ruled out The reading stories of the teacher can play

an important role in building the children's oral language comprehension, which

ultimately affects their reading comprehension The story - based activities should be structured to build comprehension skills, not decoding skills However, using real story

to develop comprehension should be balanced with decoding instruction because they are separated from each other, While children are learning to decode, both activities willoccur Therefore, comprehension and decoding instruction should be balanced

Phonics method is generally followed by doing dictation and by testing students

on their ability to spell individual words accurately It relies on both visual and auditory memory, independence of meaning (which is used as one of the chief arguments against this method) Because auditory discrimination is so important in phonics program, ear training, often in the form of listening game, is general parts The various phonetic elements such as long vowels and short vowels are introduced once at a time, often accompanied by key words that reinforce memorization of each sound, for example

"apple" for the short a

Another common technique in phonics instruction is the use of word families (alsocalled phonograms), a group of words that share the common beginning, middle, or ending sound such as all, ball, call, etc