Skills training experience for grade 6 students to ask and answer the question wh - Question

THANH HOA EDUCATION & TRAINING DEPARTMENT
THANH HOA EDUCATION & TRAINING OFFICE
INITIATIVE
“Skills training EXPERIENCE FOR Grade 6 students To ask and answer the question "WH - QUESTION
 The implementer: Phạm Thị Nga
 Occupation: A teacher of English
 Group: Dong Linh Secondary School
 Subject: English
THANH HOA 2016
I. INTRODUCTION
1.The reason of choosing the topic
	English is a very important tool in modern society. Moreover it also is a tool to facilitate integration with the international community and the region. It helps us to access information on international science and technology, education, culture, health, industry, agriculture that is changing every hour and every day. In addition, English also helps us access advanced cultures as well as important international events.
 	For the reasons above, being as an English teacher in a secondary school, I am always concerned about and wondered how to help my students reach English easily and apply it in the most flexible in the communication scenarios. As we know, in English there are many types of questions, of which questions to ask from the " WH - question " is kind of frequently asked questions. Although it is the common question types, it is confusing for many students. This type of question is often not correctly answered by many students, especially new students who are learning English as 6th graders. Through exams, semester tests, regular inspection, as well as in the teaching process, I discovered this problem and it is my concern as well as colleagues. After the period of researching solutions for this problem, I would like to present some ideas and little experience of teaching and practicing the question "Wh-question" for student of 6th grade.
2.The aim of studying the topic
 As we know, students of grade 6 often find it hard to learn a foreign language, to create the interest and inspiration from students is a must that teachers should find the effective way .
 In fact, traditional method is not suitable any more at current time, students tend to sit and listen to the teachers without giving their own ideas, which leads to slow results.The class seems to be noisy as students don’t understand the lessons or find no interest in it. Teachers should find a suitable method to make the lesson intersting and new to students, which can let them curiously discover the language 
 The topic helps students to memorize the way to use Wh- questions properly. Students can practice a lot with various kinds of exercises. Some techniques are used to check how students understand the lesson.
3.The objects of studying
Students in grade 6 at Dong Linh secondary school
(Throughout teaching and working with students of grade 6)
4.The method of studying
These experiences have been studied on the following methods: 
Studying of material
Giving outlined mirror
Operating and using method
Checking, connecting. projected classed
Studying from experienced colleagues
II. CONTENT
1.The theoric installation of the problems
 What are the causes of the wrong answers to the questions related to Wh-questions? Apart from reasons of teaching and learning as mentioned above, the analysis of the following grammar will show us "Wh-question" is the kind of question that is not easy to students of grade 6.
Firstly, students do not understand about the auxiliary verbs. In the framework of the 6th grade, they just remember a certain number of questions, if we change a little in question, the students will not know when to use the verb "be", when to use ordinary verb in the present tense and how to divide verbs in the 3rd person singular pronoun. 
 Secondly, "Wh-question" is a question with one subject in which the subject is often a personal pronoun (except idioms). Thus the answer requires conversion of the noun being a subject (of a sentence) in question into the personal pronouns in the answer, or the personal pronouns to the different personal pronouns for suitable context (eg: “You” in question but “I” in answer’ or your school can use It to replace, etc.). It is also very difficult for students if they do not get much exercise.
Thirdly, There is a type of the question to find out information, students are required to find the exact information needed to answer, but they sometime are confused, for example putting excess or lack of information, or making a completely false information, such as "a man ask about chicken, a woman answer about duck", for example, "How old are you? " - "I am fine, thanks." Or "What does your father do?”-" He reads 
These three issues are crucial and the most difficult for students. Besides determination of the structure or the tense in question is the problems that 6th graders students do not usually think about.
2. Practical background
In general, teachers described the structure of each question for students to grasp this question but basically conveying methods are also quite embarrassing, Response of student to these questions seems to be machinelike, less accurate and meet much trouble. 
For the students, they had access to English at the primary school, however they only learn English language in a modeled and machinelike way, they do not think much about grammar, spelling. When answering the questions, especially the question "Wh-question", the answer seems to be inertial, according to the pronunciation way that teachers often train their students. For example, students always answer, "I am a student" to the question "what does she do?”. They are not noticed the differences, the auxiliary verb and the subject in the question. Considering that this is a way of learning like a machine and lack of thinking. Through a survey for students of grade 6, I offer 10 questions.
Answer the following questions:
1. How old is your mother? 
2. Where does she live? 	 	 
3. How do you spell your name? 
4. What is your father’s name? 	
5. What is his address? 	 
6. What is his job? 	
7. What is there near your house? 	
8. Which school does your sister go to?
 9. How often does she go to school?
10. How far is it from your house to your school? 	
(Each correct answer is given 1 point)
The results were very low in quality; summary of results is presented as bellows:
Grade/class
Total of students
Point (0-4)
Point (4.5-7)
Point (7-10)
6A
36
25
11
0
6B
35
29
6
0
The above figure shows that the level of understanding of the question "Wh-question" of students is very weak. Besides, the majorities of students not only answer wrong, but also only use one type of personal pronouns such as "I am ..." or "I live ..." in response to the third person singular pronoun. They do not figure out how to use “to be”, verb or "there is / there are" to answer question correctly. The results not only showed quality of students, but also strongly affirm the problem that we must pay attention.
There is a reality to the students we often find, it is that lets students to read a passage and then use "WH-question" to test their understanding. The problem is that students often rewrite all the answers in the text rather than the correct answer. For example, in the passage, it is: " My school has 4 floors with 20 classrooms, and my class in on the second floor ”," students often write down the whole sentence while the question is: "How many classrooms are there in your school? ":
3. Solutions to implements: 
1. Identification of “Wh- question”
The "Wh-questions" are placed in the first sentence, allowing the speaker to find more information on their topic of interest. Depending the information that the speaker want to ask, list of Wh-question is presented below:
When? 
Where?
Who? 
Why? 
How? 
What? 
Time
Place
Person
Reason
Manner
Object/Idea/Action
Ask information about time 
Ask information about place
Ask information about someone
Ask information about reason
Ask information about manner
Ask information about object/ idea/action
Other words can also be used to ask for specific information 
Which one? 
Whose?
Whom? 
How much? 
How many? 
How long? 
How often?
How far?
What kind (of)?
Choice of alternatives
Possession
Person(Objective formal)
Price, amount( non- count)
Quantity (count)
Duration
Frequency
Distance
Description
2. Types of “Who – question” in English book for students of grade 6
2.1 
                                Who + V + Complement/ O...?
  Example: 
 Who is she looking for?
    Where is he? 
     Who teaches English?
2.2 Sentences have modal verbs (ought to ...)
                               Wh + Modal verbs + S + main Verb ...?
  Example: 
 Why must you go?
  When may you come? 
 What can I do for you? 
 2.3 Ordinary verbs: 
                              Wh + do/does + S + main Verb...?
 Example: 
 When do you go to the library?
 Where do you live? 
 How does he go to school? 
2.4 Answer for Wh – question.
- Wh - questions is answered by details, Yes/No is not applied in this case. Example: 
 A: Who is that? 
 B: My roommate
- Understand the structure of this form to provide explanation; comparison is very important factor to help students make faster progress.
3.The way to form Wh-questions
In addition to mastering Wh-question" to always provide accurate structures and examples for students, teachers also need to be learned some tricks such as:
1. Before students answer "Wh-questions", teachers should ask their students “do you know what kind of this question is?". This approach helps students shape the question, clearly understand that the question to ask for specific information before answering.
2. In terms of grammar, the teacher should make the students understand that "Wh-question" is used depending on the asked information is "subject" or "predicate" of a question.
 	- Type of information needed is the information about the subject of the question, students need to simply replace the person or object into the position of word to ask -Wh-question:
 Lan has a nice house Who has a nice house? 
 A tall tree is behind Lan’s house What is behind Lan’s house ? 
- Type of information needed locates in the predicate of the sentence, forming question with words to ask depending on whether “auxiliary verb” exists in the original sentence or not. An auxiliary verb is the verbs standing before the main verb. The auxiliary verbs are italicized and bolded below:
 I can do it 
	 They are leaving 
 She should brush teeth after meal
+To create questions using the form that information needed locates at the position of predicate of the sentence, First of all, teachers instruct their students to create a question with the form of Yes / No by shifting the subject and the auxiliary verb in a sentence. Then add the Wh-question to ask at the beginning of the sentence:
Affirmations
( You will leave 
sometime )
Shifting into the form of Yes / No question 
 Will you leave?
Wh-question
When will you leave?
In this sentence, Will is auxiliary verb is shifted to place prior to the subject then add when to form question, similarly we have two following questions
 ( He is doing something) à Is he doing à what is he doing? 
(They have been somewhere) à Have they been à where have they been? 
If the sentence has no auxiliary verb and the main verb is the verb "to be", in order to make a question, we just swap location between the subject of the sentence and the verb “to be”, then add words to match in question
Affirmations
( He is someone )
Shifting into the form of Yes / No question 
 Is he 
Wh-question
 Who is he ?
In this sentence, "He" is the subject and the main verb of the sentence is verb “to be” that is divided with the third singular person "is". To create a question in this case, the positions of the subject "He" and the verb "is" is shifted, then add words to ask (in this case, we add Who at the beginning of the sentence). Similar to the following question:
 (The meeting is sometime) à Is the meeting à When is the meeting? 
If in the narrative sentences (affirmations), the main verb of the sentence is ordinary verb, we add auxiliary verb before the subject of the sentence. Then we add suitable Wh-question at the beginning of the sentence to form a question. Remember that adding auxiliary verb must match with its subject. For example, in the present tense, the subject is I /We/You/They, plural nouns, we use auxiliary verb "do", the third singular person is He / She / It, or singular nouns, we have to use auxiliary verb"does".
Affirmations
( You want something )
Shifting into the form of Yes / No question 
 Do you want 
Wh-question
 What do you want?
In the above sentence, we do not see auxiliary verb in affirmations "you want something" so when switching to the question, we need to add auxiliary verb “do” before the subject "you" of the sentence. Then we ask for information about the object "Something" by adding words to ask "What" at the beginning of the sentence. As a result, we have a question "What do you want?”
Similarly, we have: 
Affirmations- Shifting into the form of Yes / No question - Wh-question
 (She likes something)à Does she like (third person-s) à what does she like? 
- Teachers need provide instructions to students on how to shift nouns into pronouns to avoid repetition or a pronoun in question to a pronoun in that answer with suitable context (when turning into pronouns, singular nouns for animals/plans/things are converted into “it", the plural nouns are transformed into "they"; the singular noun indicated for person is changed to "he, she" (depending on the noun), plural nouns is changed to "they".
For example: Nam ® 	he ; 	I and my sister ® they
 Your school ® It;	 Her books ® They 
 S1: Where is your father ? 
	 S2 : He is in the garden 
 S1 : Whose books are these ? 
 S2 : They are mine 
Particular case:
 You ® I ; 	You ® We
For example: S1: Where do you live ? 
	 S2 :- I live in Thanh hoa ( a person )
 -We live in Hanoi ( 2 people or more ) 
Or the case do not have to convert but remain subject to answer:
It®It 	He® He
She®She	They ® They 
 S1: What subject does he like ? 
	 S2 : He likes Math 
And idioms: 	Is there	®	There is/There isn’t
	Are there	®	There are/There aren’t	
 S1: How many people are there in your family ? 
	 S2 : There are three 
4. The types of exercises: 
 Type 1: Convert following nouns to pronouns:
Your father ® He	The weather ®
His mother ®	 	 	Vietnam	 ®
Nga ®	Her face	 ®
I and my sister ®	 	His hair	 ®
The girl ®	Lan and Nam 	 ®
The boys ®	Students	 ®
Your house ®	Your father’s name ®
Class ®	The teacher	 ®
Your pen ®	These,those	 ®
Her nose ®	 He and his friends ®
The purpose of exercise is to help students become familiar with the conversion of nouns to pronouns when they answer questions.	
 Example: S1: Where are the boys?
 S2: They are in the house 
Type 2 : Add suitable ( Wh- question) into blank to form a question. 
1....is this? This is Lan
day is it?
 do you like cats?
can I buy some milk? At the supermarket 
.much beef do you want?
.hat is this? It is my brother’s 
 can I park my car? Over there 
.tall are you? 
.do you want to buy? 
 do you like with tea? I like it with cream and sugar 
 picture do you want to buy, this one or that one? 
Type 3: Choose an appropriate answer to fill in blank: 
is the name of the President of the United Stages of America? 
What 
When 
Where 
 2month is the Vietnamese New Year? 
a. Where
b.When 
c. What
 3..is the Christmas Day ? 
 a.What 
b.When 
 c.Where
 4. many pens do you have? 
 a. When
b. How
 c.Why 
 5. ..are your mother ? she is in the kitchen 
 a.Where 
b.When 
 c.Who
Type 4: Switch following sentences into questions (using words in parentheses to ask information)
 Example: 
 She often goes to work at 6 o’clock (What time) 
 ->What time does she often go to work?
He usually does his homework at night. (when )
The cats are in the house. ( Where )
I like the red house, not the blue one. ( Which )
This is an eraser. ( What )
She studies piano at the university. ( what )
My house has five rooms. ( How many ) 
They are going to Ha Noi tomorrow .(Where ) 
The woman over there is my mother .( Who ) 
She doesn’t get up early because she is tired ( Why )
 We have English class three times a week .( How often ) 
Type 5: Correction form
Find errors in the following questions: Example: 
 S1: How is favorite food? ( How -> what ) 
 S2: I like Fish 
1. What is your birthday? It is in May 
2. What time does she often get up ? She get up at 7 o’clock 
3. How often are you brush your teeth? Twice a day 
4. Who house is this ? It is my house 
5. How many rice do you want ? Two kilos , please 
6. Why do she like milk ? Because it is delicious 
7. Who does often go to school with you ? Lan and Hoa 
8. How long is it from your house to shool ? About one kilometer 
9. Where does your father work ? I work in a factory 
10. How many desks are there ? They are two 
Type 6: Make “Wh- question” with suggestive words:
1. How / tall/ you ?
2. What time /you/do /homework/night?
3. How often/your mother/go/market?
4. What /she /want/do/now ?
5. what /your /favorite/food ?
Type 7: Make a question by underlined words
According to my experience, firstly a multiple choice exercise in a form of connecting information with Wh-question is applied before doing the exercise of forming a question by underlined words, the goal is to help students proficiently determine Wh-question when replacing it for underlined words, avoid mistakes. Example: 
 Matching: 
Ha Noi A. How may
Next week B.Where
My mother C. How much 
Three D. Whose
2 kilos E . Who
Lan’s F. When
Then exercise for underlined words is applied. 
Example
 The train leave at 8 o’clock tonight 
 ->What time does the train leave tonight ?
1. Her telephone number is 8 202053
2. It is about 3 kilometers from my house to school 
3. I will go fishing this afternoon
4. Her date of birth is on August 21th
5. She can swim 
Type 8: Read the following passage, and then answer questions
Thu is my friend. She lives in the city with her parents and two brothers. She lives at 24 Le Hoan street. Her telephone number is 8 202 564 . On her next birthday, May 2nd, Thu will be 14 years old. She will have a small party for her birthday. She will invite some best friends to her house. They will eat cakes and sweet. And they will have a lot of fun. The party will start at 6 o’clock and finish at nice .
Questions:
1.What is Thu’s address ?
2.How old is she ?
3. Who does she live with?
4.What’s her telephone number?
5.What is her date of birth ?
This kind of exercise helps students practice answering the question "Wh-question" in accordance with the structure without rewriting answers in the text. 
These are questions that I synthesized from English textbooks for 6th grade students. In order to match with each lesson, the teacher can draw experience and based on the type of exercises to flexibly use. Actually if teachers spend more time training the students such exercises like this, then surely after a short period the students will understand more about the grammar of this question type. As a result, small complicated issues will disappear and "Wh-question" will not be difficult for students.
The questions in this kind of exercise can be done by students in class time or if there is not enough time in class, students can practice more at home then teachers help correct on the class. Alternatively, we can teach students to learn more in optional learning hours. Application of these questions into games, such as NOUGHTS AND CROSSES or LUCKY NUMBER also brings a good result. .
5. Teaching rhythm, pronunciation, intonation in the types of Wh-question” 
Rhythm and intonation for students is very important, if false, it will easily cause misunderstanding, so teachers must not forget to teach st