skkntieng anh sáng kiến kinh nghiệm nguyễn hồng hạnh trang học liệu trường thcs phương trung

Necessarily, among the teachers of my school I should work harder and harder so as to master the language and always give my students good lessons, which means that my students always ha[r]

I PROBLEM SITUATION:

1 Reasons for choosing the theme:

1.1 Rationale of theory:

Nowadays, English is playing a very important role in the global

development Therefore, the teaching of English has been improved inmethod of the communicative, learner-centered approach which isadaptable to give students many opportunities to communicate in English.However, at many junior high schools in Vietnam, the teaching ofEnglish has not really developed students’ ability, activeness andmotivation

1.2 Rationale of practice:

Speaking is a crucial part of language learning The mastery ofspeaking skill in English is a priority for many language learners.Nowadays, many learners even consider the ability to speak the language

is the aim of language learning They often evaluate their success inlanguage learning as well as the effectiveness of their English courses onthe basic of how well they feel they have improved in the spokenlanguage proficiency Despite its importance, for a long time, teachingspeaking has been depreciated Traditional teaching methods have seemed

to emphasize the learning of language system (rules of grammar and lists

of vocabulary items …) as a goal in its own right and failed to givelearners an ability to gain realistic experiences in actually using thelanguage knowledge gained Moreover, very often when people study alanguage, they accumulate a lot of 'up-in the head' knowledge, but thenfind that they can't actually use this language to express what they want

to There seem to be some difficulties in moving language from 'up-there'knowledge to actively usable language Without experience in using thelanguage, students may tend to be nervous about trying to say something.Nowadays things have been different Today's world requires that the goal

of learning speaking English should develop students' communicationskill so that students can express themselves and use the target language tostate opinions, express their feelings and exchange information Manynew teaching methods have been introduced and applied to serve the basicneed of English learners Among them, communicative approach andlearner-centered approach seem to be the most effective ways to teach oralcommunication Also, we should apply these methods in teaching the fourskills and focus on designing speaking activities in appropriate stages ofEnglish lessons while teaching other skills so that students always have alot of chances to practice speaking while learning English

1.3 Urgency:

Now I am teaching English at a junior high school near my house I used

to teach English at two other junior high schools in my district What Ihave realized is that a large number of students are afraid of learning to

speak English and say that it is difficult for them to be good at this skilland there is not a real language environment for them to do their practiceevery day Moreover, their awareness of importance of being good at thisskill is not really made clear because speaking skill is not usually included

in their exams, so they often learn English only for their written exams,not for communication In addition, some teachers of English do not stillmanage to put real interest in their lessons Another reason is because ofthe lack of necessary equipment for teaching English at many schools inViet Nam Indeed, the school where I am working as a teacher of Englishhas been famous for its good quality in education for years Most students

of my school are well brought up by their parents and they identify a goodmotivation in their studying, which leads to their better study results forEnglish as well as other subjects at school However, according to thesurvey carried out at the beginning of this school year at my school, morethan 70% of the students reported that they are worried about their Englishspeaking skill They said that they could hardly make a simpleconversation in English or express what they thought Importantly, most

of them assumed that speaking is very difficult for them to master.Therefore, if students do not learn how to speak or do not get manyopportunities to speak in the language classroom, they may soon get de-motivated and lose interest in learning On the other hand, if the rightactivities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a lot of fun,raising general learner motivation and making the English languageclassroom fun and dynamic

1.4 My ability:

Necessarily, among the teachers of my school I should work harder andharder so as to master the language and always give my students goodlessons, which means that my students always have the chance to developtheir speaking skill in the language That is the matter I have beenabsorbed in and that is the reason for my theme

2 Purpose of study:

I would like to give out some of my own experience in improvingstudents’ ability of speaking English

3 Researched knowledge:

Ways to make students more excited about developing their speaking

skill and ways to encourage students to feel confident enough to expresstheir ideas in front of the class

4 Researched participants:

Students of my junior high school

5 Ways to conduct the theme:

- My real teaching at my school

- Surveys

6 Time and place for conducting the theme:

- Time: School year 2015- 2016 - Place: At my junior high school

II PROBLEM SOLUTION:

1 Logical basis:

The goal of teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency.

Learners should be able to make themselves understood

To help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking,instructors can use a balanced activities approach that combines languageinput, structured output, and communicative output

2 Practical basis:

For most learners, the ability to speak a foreign language issynonymous with knowing that language because speech is the basicmeans of human communication

English learners no longer expect the traditional approach of theirteachers based on developing mainly the grammatical competence andusing methodology popular in the past

Today, teachers are expected to provide their students with usefulactive knowledge of the foreign language, not just theory about thelanguage

3 Developing students’ speaking skill while teaching speaking itself:

There are many rules teachers of English must remember while teaching speaking so that they can help students improve their speaking skill

3.1 Firstly, teachers must make sure that students feel safe and confident while they express themselves:

In my point of view, the first thing that teachers have to do to help

students improve their speaking skill is that they have to help themovercome their feelings of shyness and nervousness when practicingEnglish in their class One of the best ways to solve this problem is to putthem in 'safe' situations in class where they are inspired and encouraged tomanage to use the language from their background Organizingcommunicative activities in pairs, in groups is also an effective way toserve this aim Working in pairs, in groups, students will feel less anxiouswhen they are 'on show' in front of the whole class together Moreover,pair-work and group-work can help shy students who would never sayanything in a whole class activity have the confidence to open theirmouths Students can also learn from one another's new ideas so that theywill have something to speak in front of the class later Another thing thatteachers should remember to help students have confidence in speaking isteachers’ positive correction and feedback Making errors is a natural andunavoidable part of the learning process, but how to correct students’errors is particularly important Teachers need to provide appropriatefeedbacks and corrections, but they ought not to interrupt the flow of

communication Teachers should take notes while pairs or groups aretalking and address the problems to the class after the activity withoutembarrassing the student who made the error Teachers can also write theerrors on the board and ask who can correct it Teachers should encouragetheir students to speak whatever they can and focus on what they have gotright, not on what they have got wrong Teachers should also help them todevelop positive attitudes towards their friends’ errors and to correctthemselves Teachers should try to develop for themselves positivestrategies of error corrections When students achieve success in oralcommunication, they will feel confident and secure and they will enjoylearning English Also, they will have confidence to take part incommunicative activities later.

3.2 Secondly, teachers must pay attention to warm-up activities:

Warm-up is also an important part which contributes to the success of aspeaking lesson Warm-ups help learners put aside their daily distractionsand focus on English Warm-ups also encourage whole-groupparticipation which can build a sense of community within the group andwarm-ups can help to arouse students' interest in speaking

Teachers should vary warm-up activities to attract students' attentionand interest because if they feel excited about their lessons from thebeginning, they will make a good contribution to it In order to givestudents exciting readiness for their speaking lesson, teachers can dodifferent things to arouse students’ interest by using various teachingtechniques such as brainstorming, word web, chatting, etc

Before a new lesson I often motivate my students by chatting to themabout the topic of interest, giving them preparation tasks or quick warm-

up to get them in the right mood for the new lesson Brainstorming is one

of the simplest teaching techniques, but it is one of the most effectivekinds of motivation because it takes a short time I can write key words onthe blackboard and the class is encouraged to think of ideas, words,phrases associated with them

I have taught my grade 8 students English as a selective subject sincethe beginning of this school year The following slide was designed on my

power point lesson plan for one speaking lesson (Grade 8 selective

The possible answer key for the warm-up activity

For Period 15 (Grade 8 selective subject), I used the technique “word

web” in order to warm up the speaking lesson This activity could help mystudents revise the prepositions of place they had learned and could help them get ready for the new lesson with more interest

Next, these pictures were shown so as to elicit the topic of the speakinglesson and my students could easily find out that the speaking topic was

“DESCRIBING ROOMS IN A HOUSE”

Kitchen

Bedroom

Living room

Bathroom

3.3 Thirdly, students must be well-prepared and well-instructed

before they practice speaking English:

Another point that makes it difficult for students to practice speakingEnglish is that their knowledge of the language is poor and they don't haveenough ideas to talk about the topic As a result, in order to help students

do their speaking tasks better, teachers have to provide them withnecessary language input and give students clear instructions.

The following example is given as an illustration This slide is extracted

from my power point lesson plan (Period 15- Grade 8 selective subject).

Although I was sure that the students had learned this grammatical

knowledge from their previous lessons in Unit 3 (Tiếng Anh 8), I still

gave the students the chance to learn this knowledge again Moreover, the

“WORDWEB” warm-up activity mentioned above also helped mystudents to look back the useful prepositions of place This necessarylanguage input could make “DESCRIBING ROOMS IN A HOUSE”speaking task easier for my students

,

2 There + (be)…… to the left/ right of

* USEFUL STRUCTURES

in the middle of above/ beneath

3 To the left of/ Next to/ …… , there (be) ……

on the other side of next to/ beside

1 S + (be) to the left of/ ………

next to/ beside/

( the desk )

4 To the left of/ beside/…… (be)……….

[ Next to the desk is the bookshelf.]

……

3.4 Fourthly, varying communicative activities is also important:

As I have just presented above, effective methods of teaching indirectly

encourage oral interaction and they can provide motivation The directway to promote oral communication is to provide students withopportunities to participate and to communicate with each other so thatstudents can learn the language from speaking The more opportunities ofspeaking the language they have, the more fluent they become Actually,various activities in each lesson add interest to students and help makestudents more dynamic and active In speaking, students will be motivated

if teachers provide them with various communicative activities Below are

some common speaking activities that I often carry out in my classes tomake my speaking lessons more interesting and to motivate my students

in practicing speaking English:

3.4.1 Discussions:

In a discussion, students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas

about an event, or find solutions Before a discussion, it is essential that thepurpose of the discussion activity is set by their teachers In this way, thediscussion points are relevant to this purpose In a discussion, teachers canform groups of 4 or 5 students Then each group works on their topic for agiven time period and presents their opinions to the class For efficientgroup discussions, it is always better not to form large groups because quietstudents may avoid contributing their ideas in large groups Generallyspeaking, in class or group discussions, whatever the aim is, studentsshould always be encouraged to ask questions, paraphrase ideas, expresssupports, check for clarification, and so on

3.4.2 Role play:

Another way of getting students to speak is role-play Students pretendthey are in various social contexts and have a variety of social roles Inrole-play activities, teachers give learners information such as who theyare and what they think or how they feel

3.4.3 Information gaps:

In this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs Onestudent will have the information that the other partner does not have andthe two partners will share their information Information gap activitiesserve many purposes such as solving a problem or collectinginformation… These activities are effective because everybody has theopportunity to talk extensively in the target language The aim of thisactivity is to get learners to use the language they are learning to interact

in realistic and meaningful ways, usually involving exchanges ofinformation and opinions

An example is illustrated in Unit 11/ part A3-Period 67 (Tiếng Anh 7) This is a speaking lesson The grade 7 students were divided into close

pairs In each pair, one was A and the other was B They had to fill in themissing information to complete the medical records (A and B) In order

to encourage my students to feel more confident for the speaking task, I

first let them use different target language structures (which school does

he go to?/ where does he study?/ which school does he study at?/ how tall is he? / what is his height?/ where does he live?/ what is his home address?/……….) which were easy enough for them Afterwards, I

encouraged their classmates to give the other ways of making thequestions and the answers In addition, good marks were given to mystudents’ good work and no bad marks were given to any bad speakingwork

This is a scene of the activity

Medical record

School :

Class : _

FULL NAME

-Forename : _

Surename : _

Address : _

- - - - Male Female - - - Age : _ - - - Weight : kg - - - Height : cm

This speaking lesson continued with another gap-information task The

class was divided into pairs, too (not the same students are paired in

different classroom activities) In each of the pairs, one was a nurse and

the other was a patient They had to make dialogues to complete theirmedical records

3.4.4 Brainstorming:

This helps students produce ideas in a limited amount of time The good

characteristics of brainstorming is that students are not criticized for theirideas, so students will be open to sharing new ideas Brainstorming is one

of the simplest, but the most effective kind of motivation because it is nottime-consuming Teacher can write a key word on the blackboard and theclass is encouraged to think of ideas, words, phrases associated with them 3.4.5 Storytelling:

Students can briefly summarize a tale or a story they heard from

somebody beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell theirclassmates Storytelling fosters creative thinking

3.4.6 Interviews:

Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various people

It is a good idea that teachers provide a rubric to students so that theyknow what type of questions they can ask or what path to follow, butstudents should prepare their own interview questions

3.4.7 Reporting:

Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper ormagazine and, in class, they report to their friends what they find as themost interesting news Students can also talk about whether they haveexperienced anything worth telling their friends in their daily lives beforeclass

3.4.8 Group planning tasks:

An example of this is planning a party or an excursion for the whole

group In this activity, teachers should allow them a good amount of time

to prepare for a presentation in which they attempt to persuade the rest ofthe class to agree with their arrangements

3.4.9 Picture Narrating:

This activity is based on several sequential pictures Students are

asked to tell the story taking place in the sequential pictures by payingattention to the criteria provided by their teachers as a rubric Rubrics caninclude the vocabulary or structures they need to use while narrating 3.4.10 Picture Describing:

One way to make use of pictures in a speaking activity is to give

students just one picture and having them describe what it is in the picture.For this activity, students can form groups and each group is given adifferent picture Students discuss the picture with their groups, then aspokesperson for each group describes the picture to the whole class Thisactivity fosters the creativity and imagination of learners as well as theirpublic speaking skills

3.5 Last but not least, teachers should also pay attention to these points:

The communicative activities listed above can help teachers a lot in

promoting their students' speaking skills because they are quite interestingand they give students a reason to speak in different situations and aboutdifferent topics However, how teachers should run an activity effectively

so as to achieve their aims is also a problem

Here I would like to provide you with a basic route-map plan for running a simple EFL activity (English as a Foreign Language):

Activity route map:

Teachers should:

1 Before the lesson: (teachers prepare at home)

- familiarize themselves with the material and the activity

- prepare any materials or texts they need

2 In class:

- lead-in and prepare for the activity (this may help to raise motivation

or interest, or perhaps to focus on language items that might be useful

in the activity

- model the conversation or the talk Typical lead-ins are: showing apicture connected to the topic, asking questions/writing up or readingout a sentence starting a viewpoint, eliciting reactions/

3

- set up the activity: giving instructions, making groupings, organizingthe class, ect

4

- run the activity: Students do the activity, maybe in pairs or in groupswhile teachers monitor and help them.

5.

- close the activity and invite feedbacks from learners: Teachers asksome groups to perform in front of the class and give feedbacks

6 Post activity:

- do any appropriate follow-on work

Good atmosphere in the class and friendly relationship between teachers and students:

Presenting their opinions and feelings in front of a lot of people in theirnative language has been a challenge to many people and using anotherlanguage to convey what they want to say is of course more challenging.Therefore, if the teacher does not encourage his students and make themfeel good about their teacher and their lessons, the class will become tenseand dull and interaction cannot take place in the class effectively

As a teacher in a language class, we should always create a good classatmosphere from the beginning because our students, especially youngstudents, will have no communication if they do not feel good about theirteachers and their English class

Teacher's and students' involvement:

The main aim of organizing a communicative activity is to get students

to speak, then one way to achieve that would be for a teacher to reduce hisown contributions Probably the less a teacher speaks, the more space it

will allow his students It could be useful to aim to say nothing while the activity is underway, and save any contribution for before and after.

4 Improving students’ speaking while teaching other skills:

4.1 While teaching reading, listening and writing:

As it has been mentioned above, speaking is an important skill to any

learners of English or any other languages Therefore, teachers must helpstudents to make full use of every chance to practice speaking This can be

done at different stages of a lesson: Pre-, While- and Post- Before

students read or listen to a text/ a dialogue/ a conversation or write about acertain topic, they should be prepared for what they are going to readabout in advance by discussing some questions and talking about theirown experiences relating to the topic These activities can be carried out

in pairs or in groups, or sometimes teachers ask questions and studentsanswer The teacher at this time should play the role of an assistant.Teachers should use different ways to encourage students to be engaged inoral communication and to present their ideas Teachers can also apply

this when they present new language (vocabulary, structures, etc.) or

review what their students have learned Teachers can make students think

and pay more attention to their teaching by asking students for theiropinions, suggestions, or by encouraging them to guess new words, byhaving them contribute what they remember or already know instead ofintroducing directly the new lesson

Some of the communicative tasks teachers can give students whileteaching listening or reading or writing may be as follows:

 Discussing about the text

 Summarizing texts

 Reviewing texts

 Using a 'follow-up' speaking task related to the topic

Clearly, teachers can encourage students to share their knowledge withthose who do not and teachers can help students make full use of everychance to practice speaking And in fact, telling someone about what theyhave read or listened is a very natural reaction to a text

Speaking activities can be also used as a mean for students to checktheir answers with each other after they listen or read a text/ a dialogue/….Students may answer their teachers’ questions directly or discuss thequestions in pairs

Furthermore, teachers can encourage students to talk by asking them tosummarize what they have read or listened Students take turns to talk ingroups and then they may present their ideas in pairs

4.2 Some illustrations of TEACHING SPEAKING by using

communicative tasks while teaching reading, listening or writing:

4.2.1 Pre-reading stage:

I designed a discussion activity in the pre-reading stage of Period 30

(Unit 5/B3- Tiếng Anh 7) My students worked in groups of 4 or 5,

discussing the following two questions:

- As a Vietnamese student, what do you usually do at recess?

- Do you think American students often do the same things or different things at recess?

Another illustration is that my students had to discuss the question

“What do you often do after school?” in the pre-reading part of Period

31 (Unit 6/A1- Tiếng Anh 7) The students were encouraged to answer the

question in close pairs in a given amount of time and then they worked intwo teams, completing the wordwebs in a limited amount of time

After school ACTIVITIES

Play volleyball

Wordweb

After school ACTIVITIES

Play volleyball

Wordweb

4.2.2 Pre-listening stage:

The following is a pre-listening activity designed to give my studentsthe chance to practice speaking English I had prepared a photo of a

library and in the pre-listening part of the fifth lesson of Unit 4

(B3,4-Tiếng Anh 7), I told my students to look at the photo and answer my

question: “Is it a photo of a library?” It was quite easy for my students

to give their answer “Yes”

Next, a series of other questions were raised and some individuals ofthe class gave their answers to the questions when the rest of the classlistened and corrected their classmates’ mistakes if necessary

“What are they?” (The answer key: They are the bookshelves.)

“What can you see on the shelves?” (The answer key: I can see many

books.)

“What is it?” (The answer key: It is the study area / the reading area )

“Who are they?” (The answer key: They are the readers. )

Then, the picture of a library (Unit 4/B3- Tiếng Anh 7) was introduced

to the class and other questions were raised:

“What is it for number 8?” (The answer key: It is the librarian’s desk.)

“Where is it?”

“What is it for number 1?” (The answer key: It is the study area.)

“Where is it?”

“What are they for number 4 and number 5?”

(The answer key: They are the racks.)

“Where are they?”

ect.

This activity helped my students practice speaking something by

answering my questions and by student-student correcting their mistakes

and helped me present the new vocabulary in an active interaction withthe students

Another illustration is a discussion question in the pre-listening activity

of lesson 5 of Unit 8 (B4 - Tiếng Anh 7) My students were asked to look

at the pictures of the five things that Mrs Robinson buys and my students

(in close pairs) answer the question “What does Mrs Robinson buy?” I

raised the question so as to check my students’ knowledge for thevocabulary shown in the pictures and gave them the opportunity to talksomething

4.2.3 Pre-writing stage:

In fact, almost all writing tasks are often designed in the post-reading,

post-listening and post-speaking stages of the lessons in Tiếng Anh 6 and

Tiếng Anh 7 The writing skill is taught much more officially in Tiếng Anh 8 and Tiếng Anh 9.

In order to help my students better do the writing task “Write lists of things you do in different seasons and then write about you, beginning with In the spring, I…………” for Unit 13/B2 (Tiếng Anh 6),

my grade 6 students were first encouraged to make dialogues with theirpartners

Example:

Student A: What do you do in the spring?

Student B: I usually ride a bike What do you do in the spring?

Student A: I often go fishing What do you do in the fall?

Various speaking activities are often designed in this part of a reading

lesson These are the illustrations: