Applying different warm - Up activities in teaching speaking lessons for the 10th form students at Nhu Xuan High School

 1 
INDEX 
NUMBER 
IN ORDER 
TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE 
 1 PART 1: INTRODUCTION 2 
 2 1.1. Reasons to choose the theme 2 
3 1.2. Purposes of the research 2 
4 1.3. Methods of the research 2 
5 1.4. Scope of the research 3 
6 PART 2: CONTENTS 4 
7 2.1. Theoretical basis of the problem 4 
8 a.Definition of speaking skill 4 
9 b.The importance of speaking skill 5 
10 c.The role of warm- up activities in speaking lesson 5 
11 2.2. Some problems before applying this experience 
initative 
6 
12 2.3. Some solutions to the problem 7 
13 2.4. The effect of experience initative 7 
14 PART 3: CONCLUSIONS AND 
RECOMMENDATIONS 
14 
15 3.1. Conclusion 16 
16 3.2. Recommendations 16 
17 4.REFERENCES 17 
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1. INTRODUCTION 
1.1. The reasons to choose the theme. 
English is one of the most dominating laguage of the world which is 
having its impact on every field of work. It not only provides us an access to 
world scholarship and world trade but also gives the youth a chance to get a 
good job and join the international activities. Undoubtedly, English plays a 
much greater role in the world that it is evitable for people to ignore it fully. 
Nowadays, with the development of economy and relationship between 
nations. English becomes an effective means of international communication. It 
is used as the official language in many fields of life such as economics, politics, 
science, technology, sports and many others. This leads to an increasing demand 
for English learning, especially speaking skill. People need oral communication 
in daily life more than written words. Therefore, the teaching of speaking has 
recently been paid more attention to learners. It can‟t be deniable that the ability 
to use verbal communication in a second language effectively contributes to the 
success of learners at school time as well as in their lives. However, how to 
teach and learn speaking effectively is still a challenging question to both 
teachers and students at many gigh school despite teachers‟s efforts to provide 
students with opportunities to develop their communicative skills. 
 Nhu xuan high school is situated in a moutainous district where students 
do not have many opportunities to communicate with foreign people. Therefore, 
Their English is not good, especially English speaking skill. A great number of 
students are afraid of learning to speak English and say that it is difficult for 
them to be good at this skill and there is not a real language environment for 
them to do their practice every day. Many students find it very difficult to 
express their ideas in English due to nervousness and lack confidence in front of 
the class. As a result, they are afraid of speaking skill, the class is tense and 
passive because students don‟t want to say out their thought. 
 All the aboved mentioned reasons and factors have inspired me to conduct 
a research titled : “ applying different warm-up activities in teaching speaking 
lessons for the 10
th
 form students at Nhu Xuan High School” 
 1.2. Purposes of the research 
 - The major aims of the study are : 
 - To emphasize the role of warm- up activities in teaching speaking skill. 
 - To investigate the present situation of teaching and learning speaking of 
the 10
th
 form at Nhu Xuan high school. 
 - To provide some useful warm-up activities to get students in the right 
mood for speaking and help them feel more confident and eager to speak 
English in speaking lessons. 
 - To investigate the effectiveness of using warm-up activities in teaching 
speaking lesson at the three classes 10 C3, 10 C5, 10 C8 of Nhu Xuan high 
school. 
 1.3. The scope of the research 
 The study focuses specifically on some warm- up activities applied in 
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teaching speaking lessons to the 10
th
 grade students at Nhu Xuan high school, 
namely, three classes 10 C3, 10 C5, 10C8. 
 1.4. The methods of research 
 - Studying materials : I have read some books and materials on internet 
about how to motiavte students to speaking effectively by using warm- up 
activities. 
 - Delivering survey questionaire and observing speaking lessons: To 
fulfill this study, I have delived some survey questionaires to students and 
teachers and observed some speaking classes to find out the teachers‟s and 
students‟ attitudes towards teaching and learning speaking. 
 - My real teaching at three 10
th
 form classes at my school. 
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2. CONTENTS 
 2.1.Theoretical background 
 a. Definition of speaking skill 
 Speaking is “ the process of building and sharing meaning through the use 
of verbal and non- verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts” ( Chaney, 1998, 
p.13 ). Speaking is a crucial part of second language learning and teaching. 
Despite its importance, for many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued 
and English language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a 
repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues. However, today‟s world 
requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students‟ 
communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express 
themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in 
each communicative circumstance. 
 Speaking is being capable of speech, expressing or exchanging thoughts 
through using language. “Speaking is a productive aural/oral skill and it consists 
of producing systematic verbal utterances to convey meaning (Nunan, 2003, 
p.48).” (Harmer, 2001) notes down that from the communicative point of view, 
speaking has many different aspects including two major categories – accuracy, 
involving the correct use of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation practised 
through controlled and guided activities; and, fluency, considered to be „the 
ability to keep going when speaking spontaneously‟. Bygate (1991, p.3), also 
emphasizes knowledge of the language, and skill in using this knowledge for an 
effective communication. Language knowledge and skill in using it, are 
considered two fundamental elements of an effective communication. 
 Speaking is the most important skill, corroborates: “ of all the four skills, 
speaking seems intuitively the most important. People who know a language are 
reffered to as “ speakers” of the language, as if speaking included all other kinds 
of knowing, and many of not knowing, and many of not most foreign language 
learners are primary interested to speak” (Ur, 1996, p. 120). 
 Speaking skill is an interactive process of constructing meaning that 
involves producing and processing information. The peaking skill involves a 
communication ability to use language to chat and transmit messages in 
different and appropriate situations. It is to interact with participants and carry a 
message . Petrie ( 1987 ) citied that : “ speaking is an activity which most of us 
spend a great deal of time engaged in apparently without any effort and with not 
very much thought”. People around the world produce a lot of words without 
making great efforts, Brown in his turn ( 2000 )(Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 
1997 ) defines speaking as “ an interactive process of constructing meaning that 
involves producing and receiving and processing information”. Its form and 
meaning are dependent on the context in which it occurs including the 
participants themselves, their collective experiences, the physical environment, 
and the purposes of speaking. It is often spontaneous, open- ended and 
involving. Being skillful in speaking means to be able to decide what to say in 
the situation, saying it clearly and being flexible during a conversation when a 
difficult situation comes out, for that reason, speaking requires that learners not 
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only how to produce specific aspects of language such as grammar, 
pronunciation and vocaulary but aslo that they nderstand when, why, and what 
ways to produce language? Finally, speaking has its own skills, structures and 
conversations that the speaker should be aware(Burns & Joyce, 1997; Carter & 
McCarthy, 1995; Cohen, 1996). . 
 b. The importance of speaking skill 
 People express their ideas and interact with each other to give or ask for 
informatiom through speaking which is so much part of daily life” ( 
Thornburry, 2005, p.01 ). 
 Concerning the importance of speaking skill ( Cambridge, p.07 ) claimed 
that “ speaking is a highly channenging yet essential skill for most learners to 
acquire”, in addition, ( Renandya and Richards, 2002, p.201) state that “a 
large percentage of the world‟s language study English in order to develop 
proficiency in speaking” . Many English foreign language students consider the 
mastery of speaking skill a priority. Besides, they evaluate their success 
according to their spoken language proficiency ( Richard, 2008,p.19). 
 For many teachers, teaching speaking is so important.( Burn and Goh, 
1012, p.1-2) claim that “ teachers do much effort to help their students develop 
their spaeking abilities. For them speaking skill is important of three reasons. 
First, all language learners should be able to communicate well with the foreign 
language speakers. Second, many students are good at reading and writing, but 
thay have poor speaking and listening abilities. Third, many students memorize 
words from dictionaries, but they could not use them to speak English or to 
communicate in formal situations. Therefore, teaching speaking is a very 
important part in English language teaching and learning. 
 c. The role of warm-up activities in speaking lessons 
 As we know, warm- up is an important part which contributes to the 
success of a speaking lesson. Warm- up helps learners put aside their daily 
distractions and focus on English. Warm-ups also encourage whole group 
participant which can build a sense of community within the group and warm-
ups can help to arouse students‟s interest in speaking. 
 Warming up activities can foster motivation and this is, in turn, an 
essential component when planning warming up activities. According to 
Dornyei (2001), teachers need to try and actively generate positive students' 
attitudes toward learning. He also claims that the key issue in generating interest 
is to widen the student's appetite; that is, to arouse the students' curiosity and 
attention and to create an attractive image for the class so that they will get more 
involved with it and a better learning process will take place. 
 The importance of having warming up activities was mentioned above, 
but a question remains: What is a warming up activity? Allwright (1984) 
considers that warm up activities are designed to attract students' attention, to 
help them put aside distracting thoughts, and to get them ready to focus 
individually and as groups on whatever activities that follow. They will cause 
people to stop whatever they are doing or thinking and refocus their attention. 
We could say a warming up activity is a motivating starting point that will lead 
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students to become animated to work efficiently in the language class. For the 
purpose of our study, it was the activity used to encourage students' involvement 
and permeate the development of the whole lesson, so we avoided looking at 
them as isolated activities. 
 Warm- up is an effective way to help the students begin to think in 
English and to review previously introduced material. Different types of warm 
ups help provide variety and interest in the lesson. A warm up to prepare 
students for a period of concentration may involve physical movement with 
activities that keep them active by standing up, walking, jumping, matching 
pictures with sentences or vocabulary, drawing or writing personal experiences 
or stories, and singing or listening to familiar songs and chants. These are, 
among others, enjoyable and motivating warms up 
 2.2. Current status of the problem before applying innitiate 
experience. 
 To begin with, Nhu Xuan district is considered a poor, mountainous 
district of Thanh Hoa province. Although my school is located in the centre of 
district, Students‟s English is in bad quality. There is not a real language 
environment for them to do their practice every day. Students don‟t have many 
chances to communicate with native speakers. 
 Secondly, there are too many students in a class. Normally, each class has 
about 40 students. In addition, all of the classes are fixed with rows of desks. 
This makes it difficult for teachers for teachers to oraganize communicative 
tasks and keep control of the class. 
 Thirdly, most of the students are not good at the language, especially their 
communicative competences are poor although they have been exposed to the 
new curriculum since they were in secondary school. Normally, most of them 
don‟t know how to talk about the topic about the topic given. They can‟t make 
up the ideas to express in English because their vocabularies, structures are still 
limited. 
 Many students find it very difficult to show their ideas in English due to 
nervousness and lack confidence in front of the class. They feel shy, they are 
afraid of being laughed at, being lost face with their friends when they have 
mistakes. As a result, they are afraid of speaking skill, the class is tense and 
passive because students don‟t want to express their thought. 
 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 skill .Moreover, their awareness of 
importance of being good at this skill 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.. According to the survey carried out 
at the beginning of last school year at my school, more than 70% of the students 
reported that they are worried about their English speaking skill. They said that 
they could hardly make a simple conversation 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 
many opportunities to speak in the language classroom, they may soon get de-
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motivated and lose interest in learning. On the other hand, if the right activities 
are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a lot of fun, raising general 
learner motivation and making the English language classroom fun and 
dynamic. 
 2.3. Some solutions to the problem 
UNIT 1 : A day in the life of.......... 
 Warm-up: (4mn) : Matching 
 - Ask sts to close their books. 
 - Deliver the handout. 
 A B 
1. Civic education a. Tin học 
2. Technology b. t l 
3. Maths c. Sinh học 
4. Literature d. Thể dục 
5. Physics e. Địa l 
6. Biology f. Giáo dục công dân 
7. Chemistry g. ăn học 
8. Physical education h. Lịch sử 
9. Geography i. Công nghệ 
10. History j. Toán 
11. Informatics k. Hóa học 
 - Ask them to match one item in column A with one item in column B. 
 - Ask them to work in groups in 2 minutes, then check this exercise in 
chorus. 
 - Ask sts to read aloud the names of these subjects in chorus 
 - Asks the class : when do you have English lesson? 
 - Gets the aswer from the class and lead in the new lesson: Today, we are 
going to talk about timetable 
Unit 2 : School talks 
 - Warm-up ( 4mn ) : Completing the dialogue 
 - Introduce the situation and write a short dialogue on board: 
 "Suppose that you meet a friend at the supermarket. You are very busy 
.What will you say to open and end the conversation." 
 A: ............................... ( 1) 
 B: Hi Lan. How are you? 
 A: I’m fine. Thank you. And you? 
 B: I’m very well. Thanks. I haven’t seen you for a long time. Let’s go 
somewhere for a drink 
 A: Sorry, ..................... ( 2) 
 - Ask sts to complete the dialogue in pairs. 
 - Ask some pairs to report. 
 - Ok, that‟s a short conversation between A and B (1) & (2) are two ways 
to start and close a conversation 
 Today, we will practice speaking conversation having stating and dosing 
sentences 
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Unit 3 : People’s background 
 Warm-up (4mn): Game : Giving questions about people's background. 
 - Divides the class into four teams 
 - Aks students to discuss and give questions to know some information of 
a person‟s background in two minutes. 
 + family + education 
 + experience 
 - The team has more correct and faster questions will win the game. 
 - Elicits the answers from four teams 
 - Gives feedback and declares the winner 
 Suggested answer: 
 Family: 
 - How many people are there in your family? 
 - What does your father/ mother do? 
 Education: 
 - Where did you study at primary school/ junior secondary school? 
 - What subject do you like best? 
 - What degree do you have? 
 Experience: 
 - How long have you been a member of our school's speaking club? 
 - Have you ever won any prizes? 
Unit 4: Special education 
 Warm-up (4mn) Game : Network 
 - Asks sts to work in groups and make a list of words relating to school. 
The words must be correctly spelled and related to the topic. 
 - Ask some groups to report. 
 - The group with the longest list will be the winner. 
 - Suggested words: 
 Subjects: English, maths, literature,........... 
 Tests, breaks, homework, teacher, students,.....Secondary school , high 
school....... 
 OK, today, we will go to Lesson: Speaking to talk about school life of a 
student 
 School 
subjects 
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UNIT 5 : Technology and you 
 Warm-up( 5mn): GAME: Write down the name of some modern 
inventions 
 - Show Ss the pictures of a radio/ TV / computer / electric cooker / air-
conditioner / cell phone. 
- 
 - Divide the class into 2 teams. 
 - Stick all the pictures and ask Ss to look at and remember within 1 
minute, then go to the board, write down the name of each picture. 
 - The team winner is the one that has more correct answers. 
 - calls on two presentative of two teams to go to the board to write the 
answer 
 - Checks and declare the winner. 
 - Leads in the new lesson : In our lesson today, we are talking about the 
uses of some mordern inventions and information technology. 
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UNIT 6: An excursion 
 Warm-up (4 mn) : Answering the questions 
 - Ask some questions: 
 1. Have you ever gone on a boat trip? 
 2. When? 
 3. Is it interesting? 
 4. Which seat do you think the most suitable for you? 
 - Gets the answer from students 
 Suggested answer: 
 1. Yes, I have. 
 2. Last summer 
3. Yes, it is. 
 4. The seat on the sundeck 
 - Gives feedback and leads in the new lesson by saying: “Ok, there are 
many nice seats. Today, we study part B: Speaking to know how to choose the 
best seat then we go on a boat trip” 
UNIT 8: The story of my village 
 Warm-up (5 mn) : completing words 
 - Write the incomplete words on the board,ask sts to give complete words 
RO_DS 
M_DIC_L C_NT_E 
CR_PS 
SCH_OL 
FO_TB_LL GRO_ND 
 - Divides the class into four groups to complete the words. 
 - The group having more correct and faster words will win the game. 
 - Calls on the presentatives of four groups to go to the board to write their 
words 
 - Checks and declare the winner 
 Answer key : 
 ROADS 
 MEDICAL CENTRE 
 CROPS 
 SCHOOL 
 - Leads in : to make life in the country better, what should be done with 
things mentioned above ? 
Unit 9 : Undersea world 
 Warm-up: (5mn) : watching a video and answer the questions 
 - Plays a video of some polluted rivers/ beaches..., then asked sts what 
you can see in the video( link : 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VgSMrZP9rk ) 
 - Elicits the aswers from the students 
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 - Gives feedback and leads in the new lesson by saying : “ In our lesson