ApplyingJigsaw technique to teach speaking skill for 12th graders

NGHEAN DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAININGNAM DAN 1 HIGH SCHOOL TEACHING EXPERIENCE APPLYING JIGSAW TECHNIQUE TO TEACH SPEAKING SKILL ÁP DỤNG KỸ THUẬT JIGSAW ĐỂ DẠY KỸ NĂNG NÓI CHO HỌ

NGHEAN DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

NAM DAN 1 HIGH SCHOOL

TEACHING EXPERIENCE APPLYING JIGSAW TECHNIQUE

TO TEACH SPEAKING SKILL

(ÁP DỤNG KỸ THUẬT JIGSAW

ĐỂ DẠY KỸ NĂNG NÓI CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 12)

Subject: English Writer: Phan Thị Vinh Group: English

School: Nam Dan 1 high school

Year of experiment: 2020 -2021

CONTENT

II AIMS OF THE STUDY 2

3 Benefits of using Jigsaw activities in foreign language teaching and

4 Procedure of implementing Jigsaw technique in classroom 4

2 Students’ level of speaking proficiency 6

3 Factual information from the teachers’ questionnaires 7

1 The comparisons between pre survey questionnaire and post survey

APPENDIX 32

PART 1 INTRODUCTION

I RATIONALE

Among the four skills, speaking is one of the most important to bedeveloped for language learners Despite its importance,this skill has beenoverlooked in schools due to different reasons such as theemphasis on thedevelopment of reading techniques, vocabulary and structural patterns to meet therequirements of all compulsory exams, especially university entranceexaminations It is also a demanding skill for the majority of students at Nam Dan

1 high school in particular and those at other high schools in general Students,especially 12th graders, not only pay no attention to learning this skill but have nomotivation in speaking lessons as well A large number of students revealed thatthey are bored with the repetition of speaking activities in the classroom such as:questions and answers, reading out loud the dialogue They also think there is noneed to improve speaking as this skill is not required in the exams Consequently, alarge number of high school students are found to be at a very low level of spokenEnglish Many of them can hardly complete a simple sentence about familiartopics such as hobbies or families Moreover, when working in groups, afrequently used activity in most speaking lessons, more advanced learners tend toparticipate more actively than weaker learners In other words, the strongerstudents even dominate whereas the weaker ones don’t even try, which may result

in their frustration, boredom, loss of concentration or disruptive behaviors

Having been working as a teacher of English for more than 10 years, I havealways been making every effort to find out the most efficient teaching methods toimprove this situation It is important for the teacher to create an active learningenvironment in the classroom, where learners are aware of their responsibilitiesand actively involved in their group works From the best of my knowledge aboutJigsaw technique, I strongly hold the belief that it will make a great contribution toimproving this situation at my school Jigsaw has been designed to promotecooperation by making individuals dependent on each other In this technique,each student is responsible for learning a part of a broad topic and teaching it to

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other learners That is, each learner is dependent on other group members to learnthe main topic It encourages students’ participation in a classroom where learnershave a critical role for success and this depends on active cooperation andparticipation

From the reasons above, I have seen the need to adapt activities encouragingstudents to speak by applying jigsaw technique, and therefore would like to do a

research entitled: “ApplyingJigsaw technique to teach speaking skill for 12 th

graders”

II AIMS OF THE STUDY

The study will focus on exploring the effects of jigsaw activities on students’attitudes towards the speaking activities, their participation in these activities andstudents’ speaking proficiency

III THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study was carried out among 12th graders from two classes at Nam Dan

1 high school and Thanh Chuong 3 high school, who were taught by the speakingactivities adapted using jigsaw technique

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According to Nunan (1989),speaking is “ an interactive process two persons ormore are involved in a real-life situation they exchange talk or use the language so

as to fulfill a certain communicative purpose or accomplish a certain socialfunction.” Additionally, Burns & Joyce (1997) stated that speaking is also defined

as an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing,receiving and processing information Its form and meaning are dependent on thecontext in which it occurs, the participants, and the purposes of speaking.Leanersneed to acquire some speaking aspects to have a good speaking skill As proposed

by Brown (2001: 168), those aspects are pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, andaccuracy

Teaching speaking means teaching how touse language for communication,for transferring ideas, thought or even feelings to other people The goal ofteaching speaking skill is to communicate efficiently Therefore, languageactivities is speaking class should focus on language use individually This requiresthe teacher not only to create warm and humanistic classroom atmosphere, but also

to provide each student oppotunities to speak, therefore, it is clear that language isvery important The teacher teaches speaking by carrying out the students incertain situation when the ideas have an oral command of the language need todescribe the topic

2 Overview of Jigsaw activities.

The Jigsaw method was originally developed by Elliot Aronson in 1970 inAustin, Texas As Cooperative Learning technique, it has been studied by numbers

of researchers at different levels and subjects There have been severalmodifications introduced in Jigsaw strategy In the original Jigsaw, the class isdivided into groups and each group has part of the implementation to complete anactivity.Each student of the group was given different material Then, all studentswho have the same part of material gathered to form an “expert group” In thisexpert group, the students discuss until they master the material After that, theyreturn to their original group to explain the others about the material The classmust fit the pieces together so complete the whole In so doing, they must use their

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language resources to communicate meaningfully and so take part inmeaningful communication practice.

Below is the illustration of jigsaw techniquesutilized in this research:

This technique is a method of organizing classroom activity that makesstudents dependent on each other to succeed Just as in a jigsaw puzzle, each piece-each student's part is essential for the completion and full understanding of thefinal product If each student's part is essential, then each student is essential, andthat is precisely what makes this strategy so effective It is designed to increaselearners’sense of respectability toward their own learning and the learning ofothers Learners not only learn the material provided, but they also provide andteach the other members in their groups

3 Benefits of using Jigsaw activities in foreign language teaching and learning.

Lots of researchhas been conducted to confirm the benefit of Jigsaw inprimary, secondary and even university levels in developing student’s criticalthinking process, communication skill and the ability to express them Thistechnique can be useful, well-structured template for carrying out effective inclass group work Like jigsaw, each piece, or each student part, is important for the

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completion for a full understanding of the final product Each student isindispensablebecause they each have an essential piece of information to to add tothe group Cooperation and communication are necessary because no one cansucceed completely unless each member contributors The advantages of Jigsawaccording to Aronson (2008):

- It gives students the opportunity to teach themselves about the material

- Student are able to practice peer teaching, which requires in-depthunderstanding about the material

- Students become more fluent in English as they have to explain the material

a role of cognitive guide or facilitator

From Aronson’s suggestions above, it can be said that teaching speakingthrough jigsaw gives opportunities to the students to work cooperatively to analyze

a topic and then to encourage others and share their opinion with the whole class

4 Procedure of implementing Jigsaw technique in classroom.

The jigsaw classroom is very simple to use Here are ten steps inimplementing Jigsaw in classroom according to Aronson (2008):

- Step 1: Divide studentsinto 5or 6 person jigsaw groups The groupsshould be diverse in terms of gender and ability

- Step 2: Appoint one student from each group as the leader Initially thisperson should be the most mature student in the group

- Step 3: Divide the day’s lesson into 5-6 segments

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- Step 4: Assign each student to learn one segment, making sure studentshave direct access only to their own segment.

- Step 5 Give students time to read over their segment at least twice andbecome familiar with it There is no need for them to memorize it

- Step 6 Next is forming the Jigsaw group in which the student of shouldgather to with the student with same material This is called the “expertgroup” In this group the students have to discuss the main point of thematerial, solve the problem and rehearse the presentation they are going tomake

- Step 7: Bring the students back to their jigsaw groups

- Step 8: Ask each student to present her or his segment to the group.Encourage others in the group to ask questions for clarification

- Step 9: Observation the process If any group is having trouble, make anappropriate intervention

- Step 10: At the end of the session, as with the individual’s approach, eachgroup would then create a presentation and share it with the entire class.This method can be especially useful when introducing a new topic thatcontains different perspectives or subtopics or sub-areas Students should alsoprepare digital devices to search for more information related to their tasks and theinstruments for presentation

II FACTUAL SITUATION

1 Setting of the study

This study was conducted at Nam Dan 1 high school in Nam Dan district,and Thanh Chuong 3 high school in Thanh Chuong district, whose students arefamous for traditional fondness for learning and great academic achievements Thereason I chose Thanh Chuong 3 high school for the 2ndresearch site is that it bearssome similarities to Nam Dan 1 high school, where I am working The mostcommon thing is the level of English proficiency of the participants

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Moreover, in each school, the teaching and learning facilities has frequentlyupgraded to create a favorable learning environment for students and help student

to be fully developed, especially for teaching and learning English The libraryprovides students with an enormous source of learning materials and references.Classrooms for grade 11 and 12 at Nam Dan 1 high school is equipped with aprojector, which is frequently used in English lessons

Although efforts have been made, there are also some obstacles which result

in the unexpected outcomes of teaching and learning English in both schools.Firstly, the majority of the students pay little or no attention to learning English as

it is not the subject for their university entrance examination Moreover, althoughall of the students have learned English since the first year of secondary schools,many of them lack foundation background knowledge, which discourages them tolearn the subject As a result, their performance in learning English is quite poor

To deal with these problems, most of the teachers here always try to improvetheir professional knowledge; however, many of them find teaching this subjecteffectively is a demanding task

2 Students’ level of speaking proficiency

This part is the presentation of scores of the pre-test, which was conductedbefore the application in order to investigate students’ level of spoken Englishproficiency and to ensure that the students in two groups were of the same level.Content of the test relates to familiar topics they have already learnt Due to timelimitation, this was done within 3 optional periods Students picked up the topicsrandomly, had 1 minute to prepare and then had 3-5 minutes to make a shortpresentation in front of the class Students performances were assessed according

to 4 scales assessment rubric, adapted from TFU Foreign Language AssessmentRubrics, including poor (between 0.0 and 4.5 points), average (between 5.0 and 6.5points), good (between 7.0 and 8.5 points) and exceptional (between 9.0 and 10points):

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Assessment Rubric for speaking performances

The chart below presents pre-test scores of the participants at the tworesearch sites It is clearly from the chart that in both schools, a large percentage ofthe students were at Poor and Average level, only a small number of them got goodgrades and no one was obtained exceptional scores The mean scores of thestudents at Nam Dan 1 high school and Thanh Chuong 3 high school was 4.86 and4.79 respectively As can be seen, there were minor differences between the scores

of the participants at the two research sites These results show that the learners’levels of speaking English competence were approximately the same and werevery low before the application

Figure 1: Results of the

pre-test

8Poor Average Good Exceptional

3 Factual information from the teachers’ questionnaires

There are 9 teachers of English at Thanh Chuong 3 high school and 7 otherteachers at Nam Dan 1 high school, most of whom are well trained and graduatedfrom universities in our country All of the teachers always make efforts toimprove their professional knowledge; however, most of them find teaching thissubject, especially speaking skill, is a demanding task due to students’ low level ofEnglish proficiency.Through the data collected from survey questionnaire forteachers, I have noted some challenges in teaching and learning speaking skill inclassroom

Firstly, 12 out of 16 teachers, accounting for 75% noted that among 4language skills, speaking is the most challenging for their students According toteachers at the two research sites, these problems happened because they have lowlevel of the language proficiency (vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar), theylack motivation for the subject, the learning environment discourages them, theyhave little student-talking time, the lessons do not interest them and activities arenot suitable for their right level Two remarkable causes that all of the teachersagreed were students’ low motivation and unsuitable teaching methods

Moreover, all of them frequently usedgroup work in their speaking lessonsbut with some challenges They always grouped their students according to theirseats Students sitting to each other were put into small groups, regardless of theirlevels Therefore, the biggest problem was that good students were alwaysdominant in all group work The weak students, on the other hand, tent to be over-dependent on them and never tried to speak up

Furthermore, when being asked about the effectiveness of speaking activities

in text book “Tieng Anh 12”, the majority of the teachers thought that that most ofthese tasks were uninteresting and unsuitable for their students’ level.Many ofthem are too challenging and cannot be done within a short time and do notencourage students to develop their language competence.Many of post-readingand post-listening tasks,whose aim is to integrate the target material into the real-

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life and personalized practice, does notgive learners opportunities to use of theknowledge gained in the lesson to produce their own language at all.

In addition, at the end of the questionnaires, all the teachers were asked togive ideas of how to improve this situation Their ideas were as follows:

- “The teachers should adapt activities in textbooks to make them more exciting order to encourage the students to speak English”.

- “Communicative activities should be used in speaking lesson”

- “Teachers should create a comfortable and relaxed learning environment for students to join in the speaking activities

- “Teachers should creative more hand-on activities to motivate students in speaking lesson”

- “Teachers and administrators should organize some extracurricular activitiesto give students more chances to practise speaking English”.

From the results taken from questionnaire for teachers, it is obvious that theneed to adapt these activities was worth considering

II SOLUTION

The following are jigsaw activities utilizedto improve students’ speakingcompetence They were applied in the post-stage of the reading, listening skill andwhile speaking stage The activities applied are described as follow:

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SAMPLE TEACHING ACTIVITIES Sample 1: UNIT 2 CULTURAL DIVERSITY

● Activity:Talking about the cultural differences between Viet Nam and America

● Objectives: By the end of this activity, students will be able to:

-Recognize some cultural differences.

-Make a presentation about these cultural differences.

● Stages applied: While-speaking

● Procedure:

I WARM UP: funny video

- T ask ss to watch the video and explain what makes it funny

Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VQXH0_emEk

- T lead in: culture differences in America and Vietnam

II PRE-SPEAKING: Brain storming

- T elicitsthe most common things to talk about culture of a country

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- Tasks eliciting questions to activate students’ background knowledge ofthe topic.

III WHILE-SPEAKING

1 Expert group work

- Ss sit in their expert groups assigned in advance

- T delivers handouts to the expert groups

- T encourages ss to use their digital devices to look up new words or searchfor more information T offer helps if necessary

- Ss discuss the suggested answers

2 Home group work

- Ss return to their home groups, present the suggested answers they’vediscussed, the others listen and complete their notes

- T controls, makes sure everyone in each group complete the task

- T offers help if necessary

- The whole groups write their answers on posters

IV POST-SPEAKING: Ss’ presentation

- T asks each group to hang their posters on the board and calls on studentsfrom each group randomly to present

- T gives feedback

● The illustration of students’ tasks:

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Sample 2: UNIT 5 HIGHER EDUCATION

● Activity:Making comparisonsbetween studying abroad and in a home country.

● Objectives: By the end of this activity, students will be able to:

- Recognize some drawbacks and benefits of each choice.

- Say which one they would choose and offer the reasons for their choice.

● Time allotted: 12 minutes

● Stage applied: Post-reading

● Procedure:

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1 Expert group work

- Ss sit in their expert groups assigned in advance

- T delivers handouts to the expert groups

- T encourages ss to use their digital devices to look up new words or searchfor more information T offer helps if necessary

- Ss discuss the suggested answers

2 Homegroup work

- Ss return to their home groups, present the suggested answers they’vedisscussed, the others listen and complete their notes

- T controls, makes sure everyone in each group complete the task

- T offers help if necessary

- The whole groups writetheir answers on posters

- T asks each group to hang on their posters on the board and calls onstudents from each group randomly to present

- T gives feedback

● The illustration of students’ tasks:

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STUDYING ABROAD OR IN HOME COUNTRY

WHICH ONE WOULD YOU CHOOSE?

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Sample 3: UNIT 6 FUTURE JOBS

● Activity:Describing jobs and talking about your favorite jobs.

● Objectives: By the end of this activity, students will be able to:

- Recognize some responsibilities, requirements and the importance of some

certain jobs

-Making a presentation describing these jobs and can make a similar

description of their favorite jobs

● Stage applied: While-speaking

● Procedure:

I WARM UP:

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Guessing game: Who am I?

- Ss sit in 5 groups (home groups)

- T introduces the game T hides pictures of different jobs, each groups taketurns to use Yes/No questions to find out the hidden jobs

- T control the game and lead in

II PRE-SPEAKING: Brain storming

- T elicit things to describe a job:

- T elicits to give an example

III WHILE-SPEAKING

1 Expert group work

- T asks ss to move to their expert groups

- T delivers handouts to the expert groups

- T encourages ss to use their digital devices to look up new words or searchfor more information

- T offer helps if necessary

- Ss discuss the suggested answers

2 Homegroup work

- Ss return to their home groups, present the suggested answers they’vediscussed, the others listen and complete their notes

- T controls, makes sure everyone in each group complete the task

- T offers help if necessary

IV POST-SPEAKING: Ss’ presentation

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- T calls on students from each group randomly to present.

- T gives feedback

● The illustration of students’ tasks:

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Sample 4: UNIT 8 LIFE IN THE FUTURE

● Activity:Making predictions about life in 50 years from now.

● Objectives: By the end of this activity, students will be able to:

-Making some predictions about changes in some certain fields in the future

● Time allotted: 12 minutes

● Stage applied: Post-reading

● Procedure:

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1 Expert group work

- Ss sit in their expert groups assigned in advance

- T delivers handouts to the expert groups

- T encourages ss to use their digital devices to look up new words or searchfor more information T offer helps if necessary

- Ss discuss the suggested answers

2 Home group work

- Ss return to their home group, present the suggested answers they’vediscussed, the others listen and complete their notes

- T controls, makes sure everyone in each group complete the task

- T offers help if necessary

- The whole groups write on posters

- T asks each group to hang their posters on the board and calls on studentsfrom each group randomly to present

- T gives feedback

● The illustration of students’ tasks:

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Sample 5: UNI10ENDANGERED SPECIES

● Activity:Giving a brief introduction to gorillas, an endangered animals

● Objectives: By the end of this activity, students will be able to:

- Recognize some information about gorillas, their threats and offer

conservation measures

- Makea short presentation using these pieces of information

● Time allotted: 12 minutes

● Stages applied: Post-listening

● Procedure:

1 Expert group work

- Ss sit in their expert groups assigned in advance

- T delivers handouts to the expert groups

- T encourages ss to use their digital devices to look up new words or searchfor more information T offer helps if necessary

- Ss discuss the suggested answers

2 Home group work

- Ss return to their home group, present the suggested answers they’vediscussed, the others listen and complete their notes

- T controls, makes sure everyone in each group complete the task

- T offers help if necessary

- The whole groups write on posters

- T asks each group to hang their posters on the board and calls on studentsfrom each group randomly to present

- T gives feedback

● The illustration of students’ tasks:

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Sample 6: UNIT 11 BOOKS

● Activity:Making comparisons between EBooks and printed books.

● Objectives: By the end of this activity, students will be able to:

- Recognize some drawbacks and benefits of each choice.

- Say which one they would choose and offer the reasons for their choice.

● Time allotted: 12 minutes

● Stages applied: Post-reading

● Procedure:

1 Expert group work

- Ss sit in their expert groups assigned in advance

- T delivers handouts to the expert groups

- T encourages ss to use their digital devices to look up new words or searchfor more information T offer helps if necessary

- Ss discuss the suggested answers

2 Home group work

- Ss return to their home group, present the suggested answers they’vediscussed, the others listen and complete their notes

- T controls, makes sure everyone in each group complete the task

- T offers help if necessary

- The whole groups write on posters

- T asks each group to hang their posters on the board and calls on studentsfrom each group randomly to present

- T gives feedback

● The illustration of students’ tasks:

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