Activities to motivate the 12th form students’ learning in revision classes for the gcse examination at Thach Thanh 3 high school

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO THANH HOÁ 
TRƯỜNG THPT THẠCH THÀNH 3
SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM
ACTIVITIES TO MOTIVATE THE 12TH FORM STUDENTS’ LEARNING IN REVISION CLASSES FOR THE GCSE EXAMINATION AT THACH THANH 3 HIGH SCHOOL
Người thực hiện: Hà Thị Lý
Chức vụ: Giáo viên
SKKN thuộc lĩnh vực : Tiếng Anh
THANH HOÁ NĂM 2017
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
1.1. REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE RESEARCH
1.2. AIMS OF THE RESEARCH
1.3. SCOPE AND OBJECT OF THE RESEARCH 
1.4. RESEARCHING METHOD
II. MAIN CONTENT
2.1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1.1. Definition of motivation
2.1.2. Strategies for motivating students in classroom
 2.2. THE SITUATION OF TEACHING AND LEARNING BEFORE THE APPLYING OF THE RESEARCH
2.3. ACTIVITIES TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS IN REVISION CLASSES
 2.3.1. Using the first lesson for needs analysis and goal setting.
2.3. 2.Changing ways for managing each lesson.
2.3.3. Changing ways for assessing students.
2.4 RESULT AFTER APPLYING THE RESEARCH IN TEACHING
III. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
	3.1. CONCLUSION
	3.2. SUGGESTIONS
REFERENCE BOOKS AND QUOTATIONS
1.1. REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE RESEARCH
Passing the GCSE 	examination is the most important goal of all high school students after such a long studying period of 12 years. In the school year of 2017, this is becoming more and more important and challening as the ministry of education has officially decided to merge the GCSE and the entrance examination to university into one. The new way of changing has put students under a lot of pressure. However, during the first few times teaching and helping students to revise for the GCSE, I had many frustrations because I often found many of my students were not motivated in class. There were always students absent from class, and even for those who came to class, some of them were often absent-minded, and some would even doze off in class. Later, after talking with some of the students, I realized that students found the class boring and didn’t feel they had learned much in class. Since most students had access to the teacher’s book from which they could get the answers and background information for all the materials we used in class, they didn’t feel it necessary or important to be attentive in class. Frustrated by such feedback from my students, I decided to introduce some changes into my lessons so as to motivate my students.
1.2. AIMS OF THE RESEARCH
- To introduce some activities in revision classes to motivate students in learning to prepare for the GCSE examination. 
1.3. SCOPE, OBJECT OF THE RESEARCH 
- Scope : Researching in the process of teaching revision lessons for the GCSE English at Thach Thanh 3high school.
	 The study focused on 122 12 th graders from the classes 12A4, 12A6, 12A7 at Thach Thanh 3 high school
- Object: This subject is concerned with ways of organizing activities in the revision class. 
1.4. RESEARCHING METHOD: Reading reference books , discussing with other teachers, applying in teaching, observing and drawing out experiences.
II. CONTENT
2.1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
 In order to solve the problem, I set myself two tasks for a literature review: finding out what is motivation and what are the strategies that a teacher can use to motivate their students; and how those strategies have been integrated into revision classes.
2.1.1. Definition of motivation
Research has found that motivation is concerned with both a person’s behavior in carrying out a task and the reasons for carrying out that task (Maehr & Meyer, 1997). In terms of behavior, it is a kind of “personal investment” which is reflected in the “direction, intensity, persistence and quality of what is done and expressed” (Maehr & Meyer, 1997, p.373). In terms of underlying reasons, motivation is concerned with “why anyone does or does not invest in any particular activity” (Maehr & Meyer, 1997, p.380). Many motivational constructs have been identified that are believed essential in influencing people’s personal investment, such as task-oriented /ego-oriented goals, attributions about past success or failure, perceived self-efficacy, etc. (Cf. Dornyei, 2001). These constructs have supplemented the traditional social approach of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation in language learning (Gardner & Lambert, 1972).
2.1.2. Strategies for motivating students in classroom
Researchers have found that both individual factors, such as interest in the subject matter, perception of its usefulness, general desire to achieve, self-confidence and self-esteem, as well as patience and persistence (e.g., Sass, 1989), and situational factors, such as those aspects of the teaching situation that enhance students’ motivation, may affect a given student's motivation to learn (Dornyei & Csizer 1998; Lucas, 1990; McMillan & Forsyth, 1991; Sass, 1989). The two sets of factors actually interact with each other and work together to influence student motivation in the classroom, as the interaction paradigm suggests (Maehr & Meyer, 1997). Being very much concerned with what a teacher can do in classroom to enhance student motivation, I focused mainly on situational factors, which primarily fall into the following three aspects.
It has also been found that if teachers can make students active participants in learning, students will be motivated to learn (Lucas, 1990). More specifically, it is concerned with the quality of classroom activities and the way these activities are presented and administered. It is suggested that the teaching materials should have relevance to the learning goals and be of appropriate difficulty level to the students concerned, a variety of learning tasks should be presented properly with realistic goals and effective strategies in reaching those goals, and students need to complete those tasks by doing, making, writing, solving, creating rather than just passively listening (Ames, 1992; Dornyei & Csizer, 1998; Lucas, 1990; McMillan & Forsyth, 1991; Sass, 1989). When students find a learning task interesting, engaging, meaningful, and useful, they tend to be highly motivated to carry it out.
In addition, it has been found that if teachers can provide students with opportunities to see their own progress and experience successes, students will gradually build up their self-confidence and be more willing to work hard (Dornyei & Csizer, 1998; Frosyth & McMillan, 1991). More specifically, teachers may first set realistic expectations for their students, then assign tasks that are neither too easy nor too difficult, and finally give timely and informative feedback that supports students’ beliefs that they can do well and help them see their own progress. In this way, students will gradually build up their self-confidence and be more willing to continue to work hard (Dornyei & Csizer, 1998; Frosyth & McMillan, 1991; Stipek, 1988).
2.2. THE SITUATION OF TEACHING AND LEARNING BEFORE THE APPLYING NEW WAYS OF TEACHING.
This is the seventh year I have helped students to do some preparations for the GCSE exams. By my experience of teaching and through discussing with other teachers who are doing the same job as mine, I found that revision classes were often boring to both the teachers and the students. The after revision classes seemed to repeat the one before as the teacher gave some exercises, questions or tests and students were forced to deal with them in a fixed time. The teachers then gave feedback and asked students to remember some skills that might help them in the real GCSE exams. Most students expressed that they felt really tired and they could’t concentrate on what they are doing. More than 70% of the 12th form students agreed they didn’t like sitting in revision classes. The only reasons for them to attend those classes are to meet their parents’wishes as well as to follow the school’s curriculum. Despite the teachers’ efforts, the students seemed not pay attention and started creating noisy chatting classes. Sometimes, the classroom happened to be a bedroom because many students dozed off . Although my colleagúe and I have confronted a number of difficulties, one of which was students’ lack motivation. The following table show the students’performance before my changes in teaching: 
lớp
Sĩ số
Điểm khaỏ sát THPT QG lần 1
Trên 7 điểm
Từ 5.2 đến 7điểm
Từ 3 đến 5 điểm
Từ 1,2 đến 3 điểm
 Nhỏ hơn hoặc bằng 1 diểm
SL
%
SL
%
SL
%
SL
%
SL
%
12A4
41
1
2.6%
5
12.1%
10
24.3%
25
61%
0
0%
12A6
42
1
2.4%
6
14.2%
9
21.4%
26
62%
0
0%
12A7
39
0
0%
3
7%
8
21%
27
69%
1
3%
2.3.WAYS TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS IN REVISION CLASSES
As being a teacher of English for more than ten years, I am mostly inspired by a famous saying by Albert Einstein: “I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” [1]
I carried out some changes to the way of teaching during the revision period for students at grade 12 in two term of the school year 2016- 2017, Bearing the motivating strategies and my own teaching context in mind, I made the following three changes to my teaching: devoting the first session for needs analysis and goal setting, changing ways for managing each session, and changing ways for assessing students.
2.3.1 Using two first lessons to needs analysis and goal setting
I used the first class to help students to understand what they are going to deal with in the GCSE English examination. Each students are required to write down their own purposes and goals for taking the GCSE English exam. After learning the importance of giving students a clear purpose and goal at the beginning of a course, I decided to devote the first lesson helping my students’ to find out their own learning needs, learning expectations, and see the value of the revision lesson. Therefore, for the first lesson, I spent the first period providing students with explicit knowledge about the revision process. 
2.3.2. Changing ways for managing each lesson.
Before I introduced this second change into my teaching, my teaching generally followed the textbook, although at the beginning of each session I asked two students to report two recent pieces of news respectively to the whole class. My way of handling the textbook was like this: I usually asked students to do the related exercises in students’ textbooks, and then checked answers. When some students couldn’t answer a question correctly, I usually explained those difficult points. After making sure most students had understood a part, I would turn material for the next part and we would go through the same cycle again. It seemed that the teaching objective was to finish the exercises in the textbook. Since many students had the teachers’ book that contained all the answers to the exercises in our textbook, they didn’t listen attentively in class, and when asked to answer a question, some of them would simply read answers from the teacher’s book. Obviously, they were coping with my questions rather than making use of the exercises.
To make each session purposeful, engaging, and well structured for students, I divided each session (45 minutes) into three parts: skill training, in lesson breaktime, and lecture. Skill-training usually came first in each session so that when doing the following tasks, students would purposefully practice the skills they had just learned. Regarding the revision materials, and the materials for the other parts were taken either from the textbook or other resources and I tried to make them relevant to the English test in the GCSE . I also tried to arrange the materials in such a way so that they became increasingly difficult in terms of input speed, vocabulary, or sentence structures as we went through a whole session. In this session I will ask students to discuss in group what are the kind of questions and what are the helpful tips to identify the answers to the questions. At the end of this session I will ask some students to show their answer on board. And here starts the session two: in lesson break time.However before the beginning of this session, I must set the rules.The student with the most correct answers will be rewarded with some nine gifts or presents. The student with the least correct answers will sing a song or do what the winner tell him to do. If the number of correct answers are more than that the teacher requires, the teacher must play a song or even sing a song to her student. In this part, the class will have chance to listen to songs both in English or Vietnamese, watch their friends who have incorrect answers doing role play or some other funny activities. I try to create friendly and comfortably atmostphere. Students will be able to give as many ways of explaining to the questions. Making mistakes is acceptable and encouraged provided that students feel self-confident, free to exchange ideas and excited about the lesson. During this part, I will note down important vocabulary, structures, grammar ruleson the blackboard . Those notes will be reteaching or explaining by my students in the third session. In this part, my students will be able to revise their knowledge og language and represent it in front of the class. They will be able to remember the lesson in classroom, not have to go home and learn by heart as usual.
2.3.3.Changing ways for assessing students
In order to promote learner autonomy and personalize the learning process as well as to help students see their continued progress and gradually build up their confidence, I used journal writing ( both in English and in Vietnamese) to assess my students, in addition to the traditional assessment methods which included dictation, mid-term and final exams, and evaluation of students’ classroom performances.
I decided to try journal writing because previous research suggested that journal writing can be both a reflective tool and a communication tool (Loughran, 1996; Morrison, 1996; Norton, 1998; Peyton & Reed, 1990). Therefore, it can be a personal writing place where students may reflect on their own learning experience, describe their feelings and reactions to the class activities and express their thoughts about the new way of learning. In addition to being a reflective tool, journal writing may also offer a safe place for a written dialogue between the teacher and students where the teacher may provide individualized feedback to every student. Furthermore, it has been used in different subject areas and to people of different age groups. Considering all the advantages of journal writing as well as the characteristics of my students, I thought it might be worthwhile to try this method, although it was totally new to me, in my listening course to satisfy the different needs of all my students in this mixed-ability class and to motivate them to work hard.
For journal writing, there were two parts: reflections on in-class activities and their outside-class practices. For in-class activities, I asked students to write about their feelings about the materials, the class activities, and importantly their own performances. I sometimes asked them such questions as “How do you feel about the revision materials we had today? Are they at the right difficulty level for you? What are some of your difficulties?”, “How interesting or useful do you find the tasks we did today? Would you like to do more of this kind of tasks in future?”, or “How well did you perform on today’s tasks? Are you satisfied with your own performance? Why or why not?” For students’ outside-class practices, I asked students not to do exercises but to prepare at least 5 questions that they have gone through. In the next class students will exchange the prepared questions to many of their friends and this is the time they learn naturally from their friends and also become a teacher of their partner. I especially encouraged them to keep a record of any progress by having them do a real test after each three week. I hoped that by requiring students to do this kind of reflection, it might to some extent force them to become conscious of the learning and process and their own way of making progress. Every time students came to the classroom, they should bring this exercise-book which contained their journal writing and prepared questions. I would randomly collect eight students’ journals, give feedback, and return to them the next day. I assessed students’ journals according to how conscientious they were.
2.4. RESULT AFTER APPLYING THE RESEARCH IN TEACHING
Students became more attentive and conscientious in class
Through my class observation, I could see the difference in my students’ classroom behavior and performance when they were in second term compared to that of their first term. First, class attendance was higher compared with that in the previous term. In the previous term, in most cases there were three or four students absent and many students were late for class. But during that fall term, only two students were absent only once throughout the whole term, because they were ill, and there was a student from another class who attended many of my lessons. During the class hours, nobody dozed off, although we had our class in the afternoon. They were active in taking notes, discussing with their partners, and checking their understanding. Nobody referred to the teacher's book when we listened to some materials from the textbook. Seeing this attention and conscientiousness on my students’ part, I felt quite rewarded and thought my efforts were not in vain.
Students became more enthusiastic about doing practise tests
In addition to their attentive behavior in class, my students also did a lot of practice test in and after class, as shown from their journals. From the randomly collected journals, I could see that all my students finished the tasks. 
Students’ practicing became more purposeful
Students’ journals reflected that they were more able to concentrate on one problem at one time. They are motivated to work in class and they really enjoy the class atmostphere. The songs and interesting “liveshow” of their friends make them really excited and happy. They are not tired of learning and trying to do exercises given. Now, they are eager to do them. Sometimes, I devoted several weeks focusing on one factor. Later, through students’ journals, I found that two students set themselves the goal of learning five new words each day, three students set the goal of improving their pronunciation, two students said they would learn more family words, and one student said he would read more news. All of these showed that they began to understand themselves better, understand their own difficulties better, and could make their practicing more purposeful.
Students realized the importance of persistent practice
Through students’ journals as well as the informal interviews with some of my students, I found most of them realized the importance of persistent practice in spite of the difficulties they were having then. Three students told me that before they became conscious of their difficulties, they often felt frustrated because they thought they had practiced a lot but couldn’t see any progress. After they became clear about their own difficulties, and after I told them the stories of some successful interpreters, they became more patient with themselves and were more determined to work hard and practice more. This change was also reflected in three other students’ journals. Here is one journal entry from one student translated into English:
I always find English class the most difficult to follow. New words,the complicated sentence structure usually block my way of understanding. I know this is because I haven’t got enough practice. Practice makes perfect. So I must look for opportunities myself to practise more and I really happy to find my progress after each practise test.[2]
Students like this way of teaching
From students’ responses to my open-en