Create a positive environment for primary students to acquire english

EDUCATION AND TRAINING THANH HOA
THACH THANH DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
INITIATIVE EXPERIENCE
CREATE A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT FOR PRIMARY STUDENTS TO ACQUIRE ENGLISH 
 Performed by: Do Thi Ha
	 Job title: Teacher
	 Unit of work: Thanh Truc Primary School
	 Initiatives in the field of (subject): English 
THANH HOA, 2018
TABLE OF CONTENT
Number
Content
Page
1
1. Introduction
2
2
1.1. Reasons for choosing topic.
2
3
1.2. Research purposes.
2
4
1.3. Research subjects.
3
5
1.4. Research Methods.
3
6
2. The content of the experience initiative
3
7
2.1. Theoretical foundations of the experience.
3
8
2.2. The real situation before applying the experience initiative.
3
9
2.3. The solution used to solve the problem.
5
10
2.4. The effectiveness of experience initiatives.
13
11
3. Conclusion.
14
12
3.1. Conclusions.
14
13
3.2. Recommendations, suggestions.
14
1. INTRODUCTION. 
1.1. Reasons for choosing topic.
According to the perspective of Party and State, education is aimed at fully developing people to satisfy the common demand of industrialization and modernization. Foreign languages in general and English in particular play an important role as an active means supporting for our country’s integrating process most effectively. Therefore, improving the education quality in general and the English in particular are considered as one of the most concern of the current education.
English has been taught in primary schools with the guidance document of Ministry of Education and Training since 1996. In 2003, the Ministry issued the English teaching program of primary education guiding targets and contents in nationwide. However, there have been lots of existed shortages of facilities in classrooms, teaching materials such as books, tapes, CDs, Cassettes, etc. Especially, almost all teachers are only trained for “Introduction and guidance to use the set of books” in one day without being trained on primary education professionally. Hence, there is still a range of difficulties in teaching skills for students at primary school.
 The primary environment is the fundamental place forming habits and communication capacities. Frequent communication results in braveries for students without fears of making mistakes in public speaking. As for students lacking proficiency in the mother tongue language, they had a lot of difficulties in getting access to a foreign language. Their timidity makes oral communication limited greatly. From my own teaching experiences, I’m pleased to introduce: “Create a positive environment for Primary students to acquire English”, and I expect to contribute a part to English teaching more effectiveness and attract more students in loving this subject.
1.2. Research purposes
 For years, the teaching method for kids has been similar to one for adults apart from supplementing some songs and games into lectures. It’s clear that the receptive process of our mother tongue language and the next process in the school period are natural. Language capacity is generated by imitating, unconscious learning through different forms such as communicating with relatives, reading stories, connecting with communities, singing, reading poems, painting, etc. The difference of children’s receptive process in comparison with adults is that adults’ receptiveness is conscious and annalistic but children’s one is natural via intuition. 
There are two kinds of material languages which almost every learner needs develop: receptive language and productive language. Receptive language is the language factor possibly realized and not produced by learners. Productive language is the language factor possibly used in speaking or writing. Students will become familiar with realizing new factors through situations if those are repeated many times. To practice using the receptive language, students have to learn how to reflex with new words naturally. In curriculums, grammars are sentences or questions and answers practiced more than once. It is essential that samples are given clearly and fully for students to understand what they have to do in some class activities. 
1.3. Research subjects
 To learn English well, the learning environment in general is very important. Studying and practising in the friendly and positive arts center will held students to practise and apply their knowlegge while enhancing their confident in using English. Hence, my research in this subject is the most exciting environment to engage in language communication in the English language.
1.4. Research methods
The methods I use in my experience include:
- Method of study through research.
- Methods of analysis and aggregation of reference documents.
- The method is very strict through teaching in my lessons.
- Interactive methods of communication.
2. THE CONTENT OF THE EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE.
	2.1. Theoretical foundations of the experience initiative.
 Today the party and the state are very interested in learning English, especially in the primary school, foreign language projects have been proposed to teachers in primary school. And to make good progress in that project, the major learning environment of English is even more important. For students of primary school children learn through play, play to learn, the more complex environment they are attracted to participate in their interaction to help children learn more effectively. In fact, during the lecture, students will remember words and phrases faster when they are communicated in a positive environment.
 	2.2. The real situation before applying the experience initiative.
	According to the regulation of Ministry of Education and Training, every child is permitted to study two lessons with 40 minutes per lesson. Several qualified schools could have more lessons, four lessons per week. Hence, the period for students to get access to English is obviously short in comparison with the total communicating hours every week. Moreover, English environment is restricted in classroom hours and students use Vietnamese when lessons end. Children don’t actually need to use English except for the requirement of studying and examination. All the requirements using English are practical and there isn’t other natural English environment for children. 
Children are unable to concentrate on what teachers are delivering in a long period. Consequently, they should be engaged in different activities, to perform various tasks by themselves with exercise types always changed and diversified communication situations.
Children often obtain and imitate knowledge quickly and also forget what have learned quickly. They are naturally curious, dynamic and creative. Children always demand to discover outside environment and interact with others. It cannot be denied that they are interested and creative in games.
 In fact, even native children run into difficulties in pronouncing several English sounds like r, l, sh, and th and their pronunciation could be fully correct when they grow up. The importance of the initial stage is developing simple communication capacity in a new language without creating fears of making mistakes, which significantly affect on students’ motivations for studies. There is one factor basically impacting on language studying process: children will not study without motivation. 
- Almost all students pronounce word stress incorrectly.
Example: ‘wonderful, ‘Sunday, No‘vember, etc.
- In addition, they haven’t been able to pronounce words with s, z, p, k.
Example: /s/ -> its, excuse
 /z/ -> please, she’s 
 /p/ -> puzzle, people, puppet
 /k/ -> clock, book, like 
- Students also read incorrectly. Most of them do not remember vocabulary, especially long words .
Example: good afternoon, school library, bathroom, interesting, difficult
- Students’ communication is not fluently due to fears of making mistakes. Their 
ability to form a completed sentence is not still good. They still confuse with the position of word class (verbs, preposition, adjectives, nouns and questioning words, etc.)
Example: My brother’s name’s Peter.
 That is my friend.
 There’s a bed in the room.
 When’s Children’s Day?	
	The statistic result at the beginning of this school year through directly interviewing students at grade 3, 4 and 5 at Thanh Truc Primary School.
Total Number of students
Good
Quite good
Medium
Weak
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
107 (grade 3)
5
4.7
20
18.7
63
58.9
19
17.7
110 (grade 4)
6
5.5
18
16.3
61
55.5
25
22.7
81 (grade 5)
4
4.9
15
18.5
48
59.3
14
17.3
With the result above, from this early school year, I always try to find the best methods to design interesting lectures inspiring students so that they could turn what they have learned into productive language via oral communication, integrate with the developing tendency of foreign language subject: learning a foreign language is learn how to communicate but not focusing on grammar as in the past. 
2.3 The solutions used to solve the problem. 
	2.3.1. Chant to learn:
	Chants can be really useful, and the primary students enjoy them. A chant is simply vocabulary spoken over a background of music or rhythm. They are useful because something about the music energizes the students, and they have to pronounce the word in a rhythm. Also, if we are not comfortable with singing in front of our students, chants are great.
For children, teachers need to have the right method, to develop learning styles so that the class is more lively fun, the more excited the students are, the higher the efficiency.Teaching the integration of subject knowledge into games, chant lessons will help students become more active, remember vocabulary and sentence structure, more excitement with the lesson.
       Each language lesson can create a chant corresponding to the content of the unit. So in the process of teaching, I always create a chant to help them review the class just to create a comfortable atmosphere for children ready to acquire knowledge.
 Example: English 3 - Unit 19: Lesson 2.
When finished teaching weather words and practice the sample questions and answers about the weather. I designed the following chant:
 What's the weather like? It's sunny. It's sunny.
 What's the weather like? It's rainy. It's rainy.
 What's the weather like? It's cloudy. It's cloudy.
 What's the weather like? It's a lift. It's a lift.
 What's the weather like? It's snowy. It's snowy.
 What's the weather like? It's stormy. It's stormy.
         By guiding the children to learn chant, I noticed that my students remember the vocabulary, remember the pattern in the classroom. Also remember the tone of the chant as well as the intonation of the sentence. The most important point is to create excitement in language lessons. The children are attracted to the paper, learn more and more self-conscious.
2.3.1.1. Vocabulary chants: 
Example: Unit 8 : This is my pen. – grade 3
 ( ruler, sharpener, pen) 
Ru/ler - 2 sounds, shar/pe/ner - 3 sounds, pen/ - 1 sound.
Ruler, sharpener, pen.
Ruler, sharpener, pen.
Ruler, sharpener.
Ruler, sharpener.
Ruler, sharpener, pen.
	The teacher claps to the rhythm of the word, asks the students to follow, the teacher claps to the rhythm - the students read the word. Follow up for the students to practice the whole class, pair. With the use of "vocabulary chant" to help students excite more when learning and remember faster.
	2.3.1.2. Grammar chants:
Example:
English 3: Unit 15: Do you have any toys?
 - Team A: Do you have any puzzles? 
 - Team B: Yes, I do. (looking at the pictures hanging down on the board).
 - Team A: Do you have any dolls? 
- Team B: No, I don’t. (looking at the pictures hanging upside down on the board).
2.3.2. Sing to learn:	
 The use of songs in English classes has been suggested since it is believed that these will make young learners get more benefits. There are many types of songs and one of these is action song type. A fun and joyful class atmosphere is a situation that is beneficial for learners, but only fun is not enough. Teachers should be able to create a fun but educating English class. Action songs are songs which are completed with particular body movements that support the meaning of the song. English songs often have simple, repetitive, playful, healthy lyrics. Songs are often easy to learn and can quickly become your fa Example: Action song
 Sing with me!
Na Na Na
I’m so happy!
Oh, so happy!
Sing with me!
Clap, clap, clap your hands
Clap, clap, clap your hands.
Stomp, stomp, stomp your feet.
Stomp, stomp, stomp your feet.
Swing, Swing, Swing your arms
Swing, Swing, Swing your arms.
Dance everybody and sing with me!
 Besides, the songs are also a bridge to make our students more sociable in class. When the melody is heard, all can join together, including those who are shy or afraid to communicate and can sing along or can participate in a song performance in front of the class. Especially if we know how to be skilful, give our students confidence in expressing yourself in English singing, or even in communication.
 Many English songs for children also contain simple cultural content. Or many other songs increase their ability to develop memory and concentration, or have physical connections: they can play characters, or mimic the actions of the characters in the song. sing. This helps them to memorize her language longer and to act flexibly, avoiding her sitting or listening in English.
Certainly, if we can start our students' lesson with an English-themed song with the right topic, we will be engaging in a faster and more effective lesson.
	2.3.3. Play games to learn:	
	A new teaching method could create an amount of inspiration and creativities for teachers. Each teacher has his own unique creativities during teaching process. If teachers repeat the same method in every lesson, students will get bored and even feel that lessons come as normally without inspiration and expectation. 
 	Games are also considered to be an important entertainment form. In fact, they could be used to consolidate material languages as shown above by the method attracting students. In all every form, games could perform functions of exercises of practicing skills because we can review and introduce material languages in funny and well-organized ways through games. The method of skill practicing section often goes with repeating with teacher-centered. The method takes effects when students learn new words and sentence structures. On the contrary, games are often open-ended and student-centered.
	There are various types of games. Several ones focus on vocabularies or sentence structures. And there are games promoting both vocabularies and sentence structure. Here are several games that I usually apply into my lecture in my class: 
 2.3.3.1. Word - practicing
 Requirements: At least two players and if need a dictionary. In the classroom teachers can be divided into two groups and the teacher or student is the referee.
 How to play: Take any English word (this teacher can do), eg yesterday. Use the letters that make up the word, specifically: y, e, s, t, e, r, d, a, y to create other words, who make more words than win. In the example above we can generate words like: yes, trader, year, steady-state ... Encourage integration.
With this game, students have to try to remember all the words in their minds, while helping to forget words can learn new words among the words that the player creates. Teachers think and find words with letters that can form other words within the content they have learned or to test the student's vocabulary.
	2.3.3.2. Guessing - word
 This game is basically the same as the "Hidden Hats" game on TV. The master (teacher or student) chooses a name or a word for a subject, then draws the number of squares corresponding to the number of letters of that name or word. From the given hint, the player will guess one letter at a time, if the letter is in the letter, then the character will write the letter in the correct place. Anyone who finds out the name wins. In contrast, after 5 wrong guesses (the number of times determined by the host and the player) but not found, the player will lose. There may be two or more students in charge of the game. Whoever wins multiple times wins.
	These games help students to play and learn not only in class, but also in every place, and at the same time, while studying vocabulary effectively. The games attract students to take lessons, especially reading comprehension, conversation to introduce the topic. The games also train the children to be able to judge, to create, to train the quick reflexes, decisiveness, confidence, create a happy atmosphere.The reality is that with teacher classes organizing English games, students are very excited to come to class, understand deeper and more natural, less shy of inherent. With some classes, teachers do not put the game in the classroom, students may be afraid to speak, knowledge is not deep, afraid to attend school, not really interested in the subject. However, in order for the game to be effective, teachers need to be well-prepared and flexible to schedule the time, and choose a game that matches the content of the lesson. Teachers also need to be prepared for the necessary equipment. In the process of organizing the game must go from easy to difficult, should not reverse it. When the student loses a penalties should be gentle, delicate, encouraging students to try more next time. When playing, do not be biased or discriminated against sexually, or try to punish you. While playing an English game, the clutter in the classroom is unavoidable. This is likely to affect other classes, so the teacher must really be a dynamic host, solving every situation. Surprisingly, it can happen that the game can be performed effectively.
	2.3.3.3. Matching game:
 	Two students run to the board, and match the pictures to the words on the board. The faster is the winner.
Example:
English 4: Unit 17: How much is the T- shirt?
	2.3.3.4. Acting game:
	This activity could be implemented in different forms but all the forms are aimed at expressing meaning through gestures. The simplest way to play the game is that word cards or pictures are upside down in a pile. One student takes a card at the top of the pile without reavealing what the word is to the classmates and the rest of the students guess the words. In another more simple method without using word cards or pictures, the teacher will whisper the word to a student. Then, the student continues to do the same steps above. 
Example: English 5: Unit 11: What’s the matter with you?
a sore eye
a stomachache
a headache
a sore throat
a backache
2.3.3.5. Simple actions
Simple actions are great way to get children to be ready for learning English by doing some actions like this:
 Brush your teeth, brush, brush, brush.	
Wash your face, wash, wash, wash.
Wash your hands, wash, wash, wash.
Clap our hands, clap, clap, clap.
Shake our hands, shake, shake, shake.
In order to get the students’ attention, I say:
If you hear me, clap twice.
 If you hear me, clap once.
 If you hear me, clap three times. 
Students keep quiet to listen if clap twice, once or three times happily together.
2.3.3.6. The ballgame:
This is a great icebreaker, especially for young students. All I need is a ball. Passing the ball round saying a word or a full sentence.
Example: 
Living room
Bedroom
Dining room
 Garden
My house
 Kitchen
Bathroom
Step 1: Get the students to a form a circle.
Step 2: Hold the ball up and do the model. 
Step 3: Pick a student at random and throw the ball to him or her. The student that catches the ball must then.
2.3.3.7. “Back to the board” game:
The game “Back to the Board” is a good way for student to understand and consolidate new v