Helping students in quan son high school use smartphones effectively in english lessons

To improve the quality of teaching and learning English, the teachers of English who are diligent to reform the teaching methods, have applied the information technology effectively for

PART I THE INTRODUCTION

I THE REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE THEME

English has undoubtedly become part of our daily lives and it has become

a vital and mandatory communication language in Vietnam in context of the fourth industrial revolution This has motivated Vietnamese to learn English to facilitate effective communication among their counterparts and meet the development requirements of the country The importance of English was immediately acknowledged by the Vietnamese government and as a result the English language programs were made compulsory beginning with the primary schools Therefore, there is a great demand for teaching and learning English in Viet Nam

The teaching and learning English in Vietnam is a big challenge To improve the quality of teaching and learning English, the teachers of English who are diligent to reform the teaching methods, have applied the information technology effectively for transfera lot of meaningful English lessons to students To catch up with the new teaching methods and get better results in learning English,the students tried their best to learn all of the knowledge in text book, references, Actually, in the era of the globalization and international exchange, students can learn English through computers, laptops, tablets, TVs, Internet Espcially, with the dramatically development of smartphones, learning English on smartphones gets more attention

In Quan Son high school, most of students have their own smartphones In the past few years, students were forced to use smartphones in the classroom They often used smartphones for entertainment like surfing facebook, tiktok, internet, or taking photographs, watching film,videos, playing games A few of them use smartphone for ther study outside the classroom However, since the Circular No 32/2020 /TT-BGDDT dated September 15, 2020 of the Ministry of Education and Training was passed, students are allowed to use phones during class time to serve learning purposes with their teachers’ permission Students at Quan Son high school can use smartphones more widely, but the effect for study remains limited While some students take advantages of this Circular to play games and use for their own purposes, other students don’t know how to apply them to learn English effectively

As a teacher, We must have responsibility to guide our students to learn English in the most effective ways and get the best out of smartphones to learn English instead of using for the worthless things and making the lessons time-consuming Because of above reasons I make a decision to choose the initiative

named “Helping students in Quan Son high school use smartphones effectively in English lessons”.

II THE PURPOSE OF THE INITIATIVE

The main purpose of this theme is to assist students in Quan Son high school find out the benefits of smartphones and use them to learn to propose pronunciations, definitions, grammatical tenses, language skills with a countless

number of examples Furthermore, This theme will help students minimize the waste time to exposed to any kind of information which can prove to be harmful for them Last but not least, teachers are dedicated professionals who have a lasting impact on students Each day we will exercise our creativity, patience and communication skills as we present engaging lessons We always have to design the new online or offline activities for our lessons find out the meaningful websites, webinars, softwares so that our students access to learn and make the good interaction in the class This is also the important preparation for online teaching to deal with the worst situations in the time of coronavirus pandemic

III THE REEARCHED SUBJECTS

When researching this theme, I would like to concentrate on students who comes from remote and difficult villages in Quan Son district where most

of people are ethnic minority ones Because they are in need of manythings, their awareness of learning English is still limited and the capacity of using modern technology has been rather low Many students are addicted smartphones for playing games but studying Hence the grade point of English subject of students there in the GCSE examinations and the entrance examinations has been lower than it in other regions in Thanh Hoa province This urges me to change my mind and make a good decision to do something and improve the situations In the limited scale of this initiative, I mainly focus

on the students in class 11A2 at Quan Son high school And then I will widen to apply to teaching other ones in our school the next school years

IV THE METHODS TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM

When researching this theme, I have studied the role of modern technology in teaching and learning English by taking part in ULIS National Conference 2021 And I knew exactly the fact of using smartphones of students

at Quan Son high school Therefore, I have used the following methods

- Reading the researches related to using technology and mobiles teachnologies

to teach and learn English

- Searching ways of using smartphones in learning English

- Asking the collegues for advice and help

- Observing and conducting real surveys on students in my school and changes the ways of teaching in time

- Investigating and estimating the result of each survey so as to find out useful tips and experiences

PART II THE CONTENT

I.THE THEORICAL FOUNDATION OF THIS THEME

In the past, learning and education simply meant face-to-face lectures, reading books or printed handouts, taking notes and completing assignments generally in the form of answering questions or writing essays In 21st century teaching practices are revolutionized as classes are more students centered instead of being teacher centered The increasingly raised the issue of using

modern technologies in the educational process English teachers are relentless

to find out not only new technical means, but also a new forms and methods of teaching, new approach to learning Therefore, smartphones and mobile technologies have been used widely to teach and learn Enlish in different places

in Viet Nam The role of smartphones and mobile technologies in education must not be ignored (Tikoria & Agariya, 2017) They advance students’ understanding by increasing academic performance, social media participation and information sharing; They help their social skills by giving them opportunities to seek academic assistance and support, and many more Beside that, they also bring a lot of drawback to the students who use it everyday Teachers or experienced people must be the guiders to control those disadvantages and assit them to mine the good data

II THE CURRENT SITUATION OF THE THEME

Before the Circular No 32/2020 /TT-BGDDT dated September 15, 2020

of the Ministry of Education and Training was passed, students were not allowed

to use smartphones in the class so they keep pace with all technological developments embedded in these smartphones outside These students are more skillful in using them than their parents or grandparents Therefore, users of smartphones can use them for educational as well as for communication purposes in a way that makes their learning easier and more enjoyable However, Many students have embraced their own smartphone devices to use for research-purposes but schools and use these devices for selfish-reasons After the Circular No 32/2020 /TT-BGDDT dated September 15, 2020 of the Ministry of Education and Training was passed, with the uses of cell-phones in schools, students can actually learn from anywhere at any time even when inside the classroom In fact, today some students can attend virtual-classrooms while using smartphones that have been connected over the internet and the fact is that online-learning is becoming very popular than never before Teacher can design many interactive games, online tasks that students can do on their smatphones But the question is that how to use it more effectively while many bad programs

on the phones are attracted them

III.THE CONTENT OF THE INITIATIVE

1 Using smartphones in vocabulary lessons.

Smartphone is a good tool for practising and enhancing students’ vocabulary Smartphones helps them to learn new words and meanings and their vocabulary is enhanced by using mobile dictionary as well as due to chatting in English on their Smartphone (Small, 2014) There are many websites, softwares

for dicttionaries, but the most suitable dictionary suggested for children is“ Oxford Dictionary of English” It has accurate and clear definitions, rich examples, words for the specialist, grammar, synonyms/antonyms, pronunciation with clear audio.We can use it by online or offline It is sad that It

is not free Another useful choice is TFLAT dictionary which is free and has many functions and the most important is that it’s free After choosing the dictionary, we guide students to use it productively; We only use in some situations and don’t use it to look up all of the new words, they have to guess them base on the context

In addition, students can interact with teachers and other students by taking part in checking vocabulary games prepared by teachers The role of teacher in this game is very important, he/ she has to use the webs and the softwares like quizlet, kahoot,… to design some interactive games on the phones and get students to play those games in the most effective way The most common web used to design games is kahoot which has had a positive effect on learning performance, classroom dynamics, attitudes, and anxiety

It helps the teachers understand the weak areas of their students and assists in planning reinforcement of those weak areas It is also a helpful tool for self-evaluation, as it challenges students in “Ghost Mode” to evaluate their own understanding and reinforce learning Using kahoot, will make our students enjoy coming to class and is sure to boost the morale during those trying times

of the semester Whenever students use educational technology, it’s important to teach and emphasize digital citizenship This way re-enforces our lessons and assures a safe learning environment The following steps are to use kahoot on checking vocabulary activity

Some the applied activities in textbook English

UNIT 8 CELEBRATIONS – ENGLISH 11

PART A: READING Part II Practice

a Activity 1 Vocabulary.

- Teacher asks students to look at the book and underline the following words: “excitement, positive”

Fill the questions and answers, set the time

Create kahoot

Share ID and link Students get ID and link

- Teacher asks them to use TFLAT dictionary to find out the meaning of those words

- Students use TFLAT to look up the new words And here is the product

- Teacher asks students to click the audio button to listen to the pronunciation and repeat these words

- With other words “agrarian, candied fruit, lucky money”, teacher uses real objects and pictures, to teach

- Teacher calls some students to read aloud the words in front of the class, then give feedback

b Activity 2 Checking vocabulary ( using Kahoot).

- Teacher asks students to use their smartphones

- Teacher accesses to https://kahoot.com→ click to the library → choose the collection of the questions prepared before

→play → teach → classic → start then send the ID code and link to the students

- Teacher asks students to use the ID code and link to participate in the game

- Teacher asks students to read the questions carefully then give the correct answer on their phones

- Teacher observes and find out who didn’t take part in the game, who gave incorrect answers,…….After the game, teacher gives comment and finds out the winner

2 Using smartphones in reading lessons.

One of the important skills to be mastered by students when learning English is reading skill If the students have a good reading skill, they can gain information and expand their knowledge Reading is not only the skill that makes success in schools but also the skill that needs to be owned by any English speakers in the life of society, both during the study and after completing the

study The fact, teaching and learning reading skill in Vietnam is still a problem Many students still get the dificulties in reading test because they have little vocabulary, and the skills to do the test Moreover, many teachers are teaching skills by using the old methods, even the improvement of the modern technology Like other skills, we can learn reading on our smartphones in useful ways

In reading lessons, students can take part in vocabulary games, quiz games

by access to kahoot on the phones as I mentioned above Additionally, they can look up the unkown words by using TFLAT dictionary The web is recently used

by the teachers to engage students in the calssroom namely “https://quizizz.com” Teachers can design some activities of the lesson on the web like multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, check box, poli, or open-end For the students, they get the code from the teachers then start the games The key advantages that Quizizz seems to have over Kahoot is that with Quizizz, students see the questions, answers, and their leaderboard on their devise One of the interesting features of this web is that students can log in the web and find out a lot of the topics related to many topics and challenge other students This feature can motivate students to enhance their self-study ability

The following is the demo for applied activities in textbook

UNIT 8 CELEBRATIONS – ENGLISH 11

PART A: READING Part II Practice

Activity 4 Task 3

Teacher redesigns some questions for task 3 on the website “quizizz.com”

Make a game then give students passcode to participate in After students participate in, teacher starts the game and show the the questions which are on the students’ smartphones screen as follows

While students are giving answers, teachers can observe all the students’ action on the screen

When the game ends, teacher shows the winner, gives feedback and checks the answers By this way, students can interact with the teacher effectively It not only helps them reduce the pressure but also enhances their interest in the lesson

This web can be used in the revision lessons, especially for the grade-12-students Furthermore, It can be used to give the homework for students, they can access the web and get the topic given by the teacher It is interesting and competitive that studens challenge the others to do the homework together

3 Using smartphones in speaking lessons.

As English is widely used all over the world, there is a need for learners

to acquire the communication skills of it to get success in their respective fields

To get a good communication skill, we need to improve our speaking skill As being at school, students must be practised this skill carefully, but the problem

is that our students have no real environment to practise Instead of looking for a native speaker, we should use our smartphones directly to make our own environment to practise By this way, we can use English in the modern way and can be corrected pronunciation accurately In speaking lesson, we can use Kahoot introduced in 3.1 to check vocabulary and other websites to get information Teacher can design many activities for students practicing English

on the phones such as making a call, sending the voice messages, livestreaming, interviewing,… The most popular activity is often used is that using the voice recording which is available on any smartphones and is the student’s hobby In addition, any speaking tasks can be recorded Recordings can be done individually or in pairs or groups, inside or outside the classroom.It’s mainly used in the production part of all the speaking lessons After having their own outputs, students can share in the classroom, or mail to the teacher to get mark and feedback All of the qualified files can be uesd for teaching aids or collections like a portfolio At the end of the school year, student can present about their portfolio as a speaking competition among the students in the school

This process can be showed following and applied to teach

UNIT 8 CELEBRATIONS – ENGLISH 11

PART B: SPEAKING Activity 3: Work in pairs Ask and answer about the holidays above, using the dialoguge in task 1 as the model.

To make a start, Teacher sets a short speaking activity for students”

Work in pairs Ask and answer about the holidays above, using the

dialogue in task 1 as the model”

Students in pairs outline their speaking task then practise, they can ask

the teacher if they have any problem They can play different roles to

talk about the valentine’s day, thanksgiving, mid-autumn festival…

Students carry out recording the voice or video Some students are

confident and fluent in speaking can record without practise first