Easily motivate learners to confidently speak out by using handouts at Quang Xuong 4 high school
It can not deny the importance of English in all aspects of our daily life nowadays. The more the world’s economy develops, the wider the cultural, political and social exchanges become. Therefore, English has been considered as the of three core subjects in ưour country’s education system.
At present, there has been considerable reform in English curriculum at secondary level. Not only is it renovated in content and appearance but also in teaching method. Teaching foreign languages in general and English in particular no longer focuses students on studying the language system but helps them know how to use it as a means of communication. That means to improve students’ communicative ability which is expressed by the four productive skills: Reading, Speaking, Listening and Writing.
Of the skills mentioned above, Speaking is considered as a more difficult task for a large number of learners. Not only does it require a vast knowledge about the topics they would like to talk but also a great deal of vocabulary and grammatical structures to express what they mean. In addition, to acquire a perfect communicative competence, it is essential that learners should have a thorough grasp of suitable structures applied flexibly in diversified contexts.
In fact, at most of school in our country, both the teachers and students manly focus on teaching and learning Grammar rather than those of communicative competence. I have realized that students possibly do grammatical exercises quite well, however, hardly do they speak a sentence with correct grammatical rules, regardless say it in appropriate situations or not. Especially at my school, which is located in the poor countryside nearby the sea, the students hardly ever get a chance to communicate with the foreigners. It is open a question to me that I must do something to guide my students to enable to speak out English from their mouth in some daily situations.
In the school year of 2017 -2018, I taught English in class 10G and 10H at Quang Xuong 4 high school, I realized that my students had a quite good basic grammatical knowledge but most of them could not speak a simple sentence fluently. The main reasons for this problem are mainly because of the shortage of the speaking skill. In the other hand, another reason might contain in the hard topics in the English 10 textbook. I studied many methods and finally I was rather satisfied with using handouts to motivate them to talk. After a year of practice, I got some certain success.
It is the reasons mentioned above that have been encouraging me to choose the theme: “ Easily motivate learners to confidently speak out by using handouts at Quang Xuong 4 high school” .This is my experience I have got from teaching process last year. I hope that it may be useful for whom like the creativeness in teaching English.
APPENDIX CONTENTS PAGE A. PREFACE 1 I. Reasons for choosing the theme 1 1. Basis of theory 1 2. Basis of practice 2 II. Aims of the research 3 III. Objects of the research 4 IV. Methods of the research 4 B. CONTENTS 4 I. Definition of handouts 4 II. Effectiveness of using handouts in speaking lessons 4 III. Handouts and the ways to organize them in speaking lessons of English 10 4 1. Table Handouts 5 2. Mind map Handouts 8 3. Picture Handouts 8 C. APPLYING THE RESEARCH IN TEACHING 13 D. RESULTS OF THE RESEARCH 14 E. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 15 1. Conclusion 15 2. Recommendations 15 REFERENCE BOOKS 17 A- PREFACE I. REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE THEME : It can not deny the importance of English in all aspects of our daily life nowadays. The more the world’s economy develops, the wider the cultural, political and social exchanges become. Therefore, English has been considered as the of three core subjects in ưour country’s education system. At present, there has been considerable reform in English curriculum at secondary level. Not only is it renovated in content and appearance but also in teaching method. Teaching foreign languages in general and English in particular no longer focuses students on studying the language system but helps them know how to use it as a means of communication. That means to improve students’ communicative ability which is expressed by the four productive skills: Reading, Speaking, Listening and Writing. Of the skills mentioned above, Speaking is considered as a more difficult task for a large number of learners. Not only does it require a vast knowledge about the topics they would like to talk but also a great deal of vocabulary and grammatical structures to express what they mean. In addition, to acquire a perfect communicative competence, it is essential that learners should have a thorough grasp of suitable structures applied flexibly in diversified contexts. In fact, at most of school in our country, both the teachers and students manly focus on teaching and learning Grammar rather than those of communicative competence. I have realized that students possibly do grammatical exercises quite well, however, hardly do they speak a sentence with correct grammatical rules, regardless say it in appropriate situations or not. Especially at my school, which is located in the poor countryside nearby the sea, the students hardly ever get a chance to communicate with the foreigners. It is open a question to me that I must do something to guide my students to enable to speak out English from their mouth in some daily situations. In the school year of 2017 -2018, I taught English in class 10G and 10H at Quang Xuong 4 high school, I realized that my students had a quite good basic grammatical knowledge but most of them could not speak a simple sentence fluently. The main reasons for this problem are mainly because of the shortage of the speaking skill. In the other hand, another reason might contain in the hard topics in the English 10 textbook. I studied many methods and finally I was rather satisfied with using handouts to motivate them to talk. After a year of practice, I got some certain success. It is the reasons mentioned above that have been encouraging me to choose the theme: “ Easily motivate learners to confidently speak out by using handouts at Quang Xuong 4 high school” .This is my experience I have got from teaching process last year. I hope that it may be useful for whom like the creativeness in teaching English. II. AIMS OF THE RESEARCH : “ Take it easy ” is one of my techniques when teaching the weaker students. This method brings them the sense of joy and easiness when they learn English lessons in general and speaking lessons in particular through tables, pictures or images. In order to creat motivation and situations in which students are encouraged to speak, I have been using handouts not only to draw students’ attention but also enable them to actively take part in speaking activities. Through my years’ time of teaching English as well as exchanging, referring to related materials and drawing experiences after each lecture, I myself have found a suitable technique of teaching speaking skill for students in Grade 10 ( the first year of secondary level as well as the background for developing speaking skill in the next grades ). This technique has not only enabled me to lull most of students to take part in speaking lessons actively, enthusiatically and creatively but also creat an exciting atmosphere, raise students’s love for speaking English and help them increasingly upgrade their speaking skill by “ Easily motivate learners to confidently speak out by using handouts at Quang Xuong 4 high school” This technique has been applied in quite a long time of my teaching English 10 and I have got considerably hopeful result. Therefore, I decisively exchange my initiative experience with my collegues. III - OBJECTS OF THE RESEARCH : This subject is concerned with ways of organizing games in speaking lessons of Grade 10 English. IV- METHODS OF THE RESEARCH : - Using the text - book English 10 to apply to each speaking lesson . - Reading reference books to improve. - Using the soft ware POWERPOINT, pictures and other materials. - Discussing with other teachers. - Observing and drawing out experiences. B - CONTENTS I. BASIC OF THEORY In the Cambridge English Dictionary, Handout means a document give to students or reportere that contain information about a particular subject. In fact, They allow teachers to provide more detailed information than we would put on a slide or a task. They give the students something to take away from our presentation, to review later. They are one more way for the listeners to be reminded of what you have given for them Handout is especially useful if the presentation is highly technical or complex. They can further explain important information. For example, we may want to include in our handout supporting data that we chose not to include in the presentation, such who, what, where, when, whywe may use to give the students some guidelines. Handout can just be a simple small change from the difficult task in textbook providing a great deal of new words, new structures for students to practice. It is extremely useful in pair-work or groupwork. It not only gives students the opportunities to practice speaking more, but also forces them to read and think. Gradually, it will make students more confident to talk what they think easily and may creat the “ habit and reflexion of speaking” in the daily situations. Therefore, handout encourages students to interact and communicate in the target language and create a meaningful situations for language use. Morever, it makes the foreign language immediately useful to the students and brings the target language to life. By using handout can students speak English as naturally as they learn their mother tongue without being aware they are studying even to the hesitant and shy students. II. THE REALITY TEACHING AND LEARNING SPEAKING LESSON AT QUANG XUONG 4 HIGH SCHOOL As can be seen, English is a rather difficult subject to students particularly the rural ones. Among four language skills, speaking is considered the most challenging task for both teachers and learners. From the matter of fact, during most of speaking lessons, if teachers apply the old teaching method – teachers only read or give illustration and students’ work is either copying or imitating, there will be only a small number of students branstorming and working actively, the rest will passively listen regardless of understand the meaning, purposes and usages of structures and communicative situations given. Hence, this results in low teaching quality and few students with flying colours. To make it worse, students increasingly lose interest in practising speaking skill and fail to upgrade their communicative abilities. It is known that using handouts in teaching brings about a great number of benefits. Not only do the students are motivated, this also makes them get more ideas to express their thoughts. They find it easier and more exciting with the difficult topics in textbook. Using handouts changes the atmosphere of the class and makes the lessons more attractive. III. ENCOURAGING THE STUDENTS IN GRADE 10 TO BE MORE CONFIDENT IN SPEAKING LESSON BY USING HANDOUTS AS THE USEFUL TEACHING The students in my school are not very good at English because of many reasons, the primary one is the lack of confidence and the old teaching method. Generally, teachers can use handouts in many ways of teaching four skills including Reading, Speaking, Listening and Writing in any level of learners. However, in this theme, I focus on Speaking skill for grade 10 first because I had a chance to carry out this technique in the last school year, Besides this, I really want to help my students, who were lack of opportunity to talk English to a foreigner, to be aware of the importance of English in the mordern life. The third reason but most important is I dream to motivate them do what they are able to do but they do not know. I only give them the ambition, the love, the confidence, the suggestion for them to do it by themselves. Everything becomes easier if we know the way how to do it. Using handouts as a teaching aid requires the teacher the creation and a good knowlegde about teaching approach. Indeed, if the teacher neither understand the objectives of the lesson, nor prepare teaching plan carefully, using handouts in these case is ineffective. Not only is it useless but it also make the student becomes confused. There is a wide range of handouts which teachers probably take full advantages of to stimulate students in speaking lessons. In this work, I mention some kinds of handouts that I used effectively last year for my students. 1. Some typical handouts 1.1 Table handouts This type is the most popular because is is easy for teachers to creat and for the students to understand. It provides new words and new structures for especially the weak students who have a poor vocabulary. For example, when teaching part B. Speaking of Unit 1: “The day in the life of”, task 3 may be difficult for most of students, teacher create a table handout using the words and structures as in task 2. Sample handout 1 - Task 3 Unit 1 of Enlish 10: Complete the table below with your activities and then to your classmates. When What - At 6.00 + In the morning: - I always get up at - I - At 14.00, + In the afternoon: - I often - I - At 19.00 + In the evening: - I sometimes The funny small pictures make our brain feel relax and work more quickly than usual. The small change but the big result. Students are able to talk anything crossing in their mind naturally about what they often do everyday. The table handouts can be used in Unit 3: “People background”, teacher can mix the task 2 and 3 in one and using handouts. After task 1 as warming up, teacher asks students to work in groups of 4 ( each table is one group) to make the questions for the information needed in a background interview and give the answer with their personal information. Then ask one to talk about the backgroud of the others in front of the class, using the information in the table. The handout for this situation may be created as below: Sample handout 2 – Task 2+3 Unit 3: People background Work in group to complete the table then talk about the background of the member in each group. What to How to say Who to be asked know Student 1 Student 2 Student 3 Student 4 Date of birth When were you born? I was born in .. Place of birth Where were you born? Home Where do you live? Family - How many people in your family? - What do they do for living? Education Where did you study Primary/ Secondary School? Experience How did your work at school? Do the same with Task 2 + 3 Unit 12: Music The aim of this lesson is to help student ask and answer about their taste of music. If we use task 2 and task three, I think they are not very seamless. The students may be get stuck when they speak. Teacher can use handouts to help students feel excited with this task. Sample handout 3: Work in groups to ask and answer about the taste music of your partner, then report the result. Questions Partner 1 Partner 2 Partner 3 Partner 4 Kind of music What kind of music do you like? Pop/ Jazz Reason for listening Why do you like it?(Exciting/relaxing/ lyrical) exciting Favourite band/ musician/ singer What is/are your favorite band(s)singer(s)? Son Tung MTP Favorite song(s) What is/are your favorite song(s)? When listen to music When do you often listen to music? When teaching Unit 13, The students may have difficulties with the new words to describe about films. Task 2 and task 3 are not very easy with the weak students. The objecticve of this lesson is talk about the taste of films, therefore, teacher may use the handout to make the task simplify as below: Sample handout 4 - Unit 13 Films and Cinema Use the useful language in the handout then talk to your partners about your taste of flim Kind of film Useful adjectives Useful structures Detective Science fiction Love story Cartoon War Action Thriller Interesting/ moving/ good fun/ violent/ boring/ exciting/ Moving/realxing I like .film most Because It is.. I find it I often watch films on TV. The film I like best is I prefer than . 1. 2. Mind map handout This type is very useful to help students express many problems in sequence. For example, with the task : causes – consequences – solutions or talk about the advantages and disadvantages of something as in Unit 9: Undersea world. Teacher can mix task 2 and 3 in one using a handout as below: Sample handout 5 – Unit 9 Undersea world Discuss in groups then talk about the marine pollution: causes – Consequences – solutions, using the cues in the handouts Mind map about the sea pollution 1. 3. Picture handouts This type is used to help student in the describing task as in Unit 8: History of my village. In this speaking lesson, students have to discuss plans to improve the life of Ha Xuyen village. Teacher should use 2 pictures of a village in the past and now with many changes to motivate them to talk. Instead of reading only words in textbook, now thay have something interesting to think and to talk. The handout may be created as below: Sample hanout 6 – Unit 8: The history of my village Look the 2 pictures carefully, (pay attention to the differences on them), use the useful language in the middle to talk about the plans and the possible results of Ha Xuyen village. IN THE PAST Useful language: 1. narrow roads 2. poor crops 3. work hard all day 4. straw and mud houses 5. lack of school classrooms are in bad condition. . - widen the roads - grow cash crops - apply new farming methods and technoly - buil a new school NOW 1. large and raised the roads 2. big brick houses 3. having mordern device as TV, Computer, cellphone.. 4. new and big school with enough rooms for all children. Give students 10 minutes to work in groups and prepare what they want to talk from these pictures. When they speaking, teacher should ignore the grammatical mistakes to encourage them to talk. Using target language to express their ideas, their thoughts is more important in a speaking lesson than grammar. For teacher, the picture handouts require the time and the to search for the suitable pictures and design handouts. But the result is obvious quite good. Most of the sudents can talk about the changes of a village, at least some simple sentences for the weak. The most imprtant advantage of this type is the independence from textbook. They can talk without the help of the textbook and teacher as well. The students feel so free when express their ideas. Teacher can use the picture handouts to help students to leanr speaking lesson on Unit 12- Music – talk about the favourite band , musician, singer. Sample handout 7: Unit 12 – Music – Part B. Speaking for Warm up stage. “ Talk about your favorite band, musician or singer.” Do you know them? Group 1: - Native name: Nguyen Thanh Tung - Born: July 5 1994, Thai Binh Province - Education: Conservatory of Ho Chi Minh - Occupation: Singer – Song writer - Genres: V-Pop, Pop- dance, R&B .. - Famous songs: Cơn mưa ngang qua (The Rain gone by), Em của ngày hôm qua (Yesterday's You), Chắc ai đó sẽ về (She Would Come Back), Thái Bình mồ hôi rơi (Sweat Falls in Thai Binh), Không phải dạng vừa đâu (I’m Quite Something), Group 2: - Formed in Hanoi on 26 March 1995 from National University of Civil Engineering - Most famoust boyband in Vietnam- - Genres: Rock, hard- rock .. - Members: 5 : 1.Tran Tuan Hung ( founder - guitarist ) 2. Nguyen Minh Duc (bassist) 3. Vu Van Ha (Guitarist) 4. Pham Trung Hieu (Drummer) 5. Tran Lap - Albums: The soul of Rock (Tâm hồn của đá - 2002), Invisible (Vô hình - 2003),Magnets (Nam châm - 2004), Another Day( Ngày khác - 2010),Viet Land (Đất Việt - 2015) - The band is now in hiatus due to Tran Lap's death. Sample handout 8: Unit 14 –The World Cup. With this lesson, teacher should find some pictures of the young football club in the recent world cups: the 19th and 20th World cup. The ones in the textbook are quite old. Most of students do not know them. Teacher use handouts for task 3 to ask students to talk about the world cup winners. Instead of using the information in the table in task 2, teacher asks them to use the information in handouts. Group 1: Useful language - The 19th World cup in South Africa in 2010 - Final match: Spain and Nertherland - score : 1- 0 - Winner: Spain - Example: The 19th world cup was held . Group 2 Useful language - The 20 th World cup in Brazil in 2014 - Final match: Germany and Argentina - score : 1- 0 - Winner: Germany Example: The 20th world cup was held . The picture handouts are also used in Unit 16 Part B : Talk about the historical places. Teacher can choose the historical places in which we live, in Thanh Hoa province for example. Sample handout 9 : Unit 16 – Historical places. Ask students to look at the pictures carefully, then ask and answer about it. Group 1: Ho Citadel ( Vinh Loc District) Citadel of Hồ Dynasty constructed by the Hồ Dynasty (1400-1407). It is located in Tây Giai commune, Vĩnh Lộc District, in Thanh Hóa Province, in Vietnam's North Central Coast region. There are four gates: one at the south (fore gate), one at the north (back gate), one at the east (left gate), and one at the west (right gate). The southern gate is 9.5 m (31 ft) high and 15.17 m (49.8 ft) wide. The castle was constructed from stone blocks, each of which is 2×1×0.7 m size on average. Except for its gates, the castle is mostly ruined. The Citadel was inscribed on UNESCO World Heritage Sites on June 27, 2011 The 2 dragons without heads in the middle of the citadel Group 2: Ham Rong Bridge - Dragon’s Jaw ( Thanh Hoa city) Cầu Hàm Rồng - Hàm Rồng Bridge, - on Song Ma river, is situated 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of Thanh Hóa - Originally built by the French. From 1957, the Vietnamese started rebuilding - Completed in 1964, and inaugurated by Ho Chi Minh himself, - The final bridge was 160 m long, 17 m wide, and about 15 m above the river. 3. An example of teaching plan used in teaching in the last school year Unit 12 : Music Period 99 - B. Speaking A. Objectives: 1. Educational aim: Students should know how to talk about their taste of music . 2. Knowledge: - General knowledge: Students could understand about kinds of music - Language: asking and answering questions about music - New words: words related to music 3. Skills: talking about fav
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