SKKN How to teach a consolidation lesson in grade 8 effectively at thi tran secondary school

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1.REASONS FOR CHOOSING THIS TOPIC:
 English is a common language all over the world, so English is a compulsory subject in many countries, Viet Nam is not excepted. 
Foreign languages in general and English in particular is a difficult subject for students, specially for mountainous students. Teaching English has many oscillation and changes because of the devolopement of the civilization and culture in the world. We cannot deny this. Therefore, the teacher must be responsible and dedicated in oder to bring the knowlegde to the learners effectively.
 After giving English to the schools as a compulsory subject, many teachers have their experience in teaching English. After nearly ten years being a teacher in education, I always wonder about the way to teach my students effectively, so I have asked for other teachers and looked for many reference books. Each year I have my own experience through each lesson. One in my all experiences is that “How to teach CONSOLIDATION in grade 8 effectively” in order to have higher result in general test and develope the quality of teaching English in my school.
 Nowadays, the method of teaching grammar is not the same as in the past- teaching vocabulary and then analyze structures- most of the time is for doing exercises and practicing Listening- Speaking- Reading- Writing skills by many ways and we consolidate the lessons through playing games.
 Choosing a right method in teaching grammar is really important to the teachers. Beside that teachers must explain how important students have to learn grammar. They can use language meaningful and express their ideas exactly. The most important point is that students can understand the morphologic and the meaning of each grammar unit so as to use them in listening- speaking- reading- writing lessons usefully.
For these reasons I have chosen the topic to research is that “How to teach a CONSOLIDATION lesson in grade 8 effectively at Thi Tran secondary school”.
1.2. RESEARCH OBJECTS:
Textbook grade 8
Students in grade 8
+ Class 8A1: total 29 students
Good students: 5 (17,2%)
Middling students: 14 (48,3%)
Average and weak students: 10 (34,5%)
+ Class 8A2: total 25 students
Good students: 1 (4%)
 Middling students: 10 (40%)
Average and weak students: 14(56%)
1.3. RESEARCH METHODS:
The suggestive approach.
The communicative approach.
The interviewed approach.
The investigative approach.
The statistical approach.
1.4. RESEARCH TIME:
With this issue, I have researched in the last school year 2014-2015. I try to find the most effective way to apply it in 2015-2016.
2. ISSUE SOLVING
2.1. REALITY OF ISSUE:
 Now there are many references and fostering curriculums which are useful for the innovation in teaching English. Beside that many fostering technique courses are opened every year for the teachers, ect, to help teachers of English access and apply the new methods effectively. However, teachers cannot apply all the methods in their lessons, they should choose the most suitable methods for their lessons, their students or facility in their schools.
For the CONSOLIDATION lesson in grade 8, some teachers pay much attention to review grammar and structures and they always worry about the ability in doing grammar exercises of their students. Others cannot choose the right methods for their lessons, this leads to their lessons are not effective. 
Therefore, classifying and choosing suitable activities in each exercise is important to the lessons’ success. Planning a good lesson plan helps teachers time-consume, flexibility in teaching activity. 
2.2. SOLUTIONS AND IMPLEMENT:
2.2.1. SOLUTIONS:
There is no doubt that the main task of teachers is to teach, but the teaching work gets nowhere if their students understand and learn nothing. There are many things for the teachers to do with their students, but in the class settings teachers should show interest in their students by involving them in their teaching and by allowing them to express their opinions and do things with the language they are learning. It is true that everyone likes to show what he or she knows and can do and like to talk about himself or herself. Likewise students like to hear about their classmates/ follow students. When this is allowed in class I will find that my students involve themselves far more than if they talking about a fictional character from a course book.
Grammar is a very important and necessary part in communicative. It seems not to be easy in teaching and learning grammar for secondary students, especially in a CONSOLIDATION part of English 8. In this lesson, many grammar and structures are reviewed. 
By taking part in role-play, dialogues, sketches and whatever teachers do, both the performing students and the listeners get involved. They will be less self-conscious about the English as they concentrate on the character or acting role which they are required to carry out. They may be embarrassed or nervous at first, but hopefully when they have got through that they will be assured that they can also get over the “fear” of speaking English. Watch carefully to find out who is shy/ confident, ect and assign roles they can manage at first, gradually getting everyone confident.
Building up the students’confidence in any situation means encouraging them at every opportunity and never “putting them down”.
2.2.2. IMPLEMENT:
A grammar lesson in general has three steps as below:
Introducing the form and meaning of the structure.
Practicing.
Consolidating by doing exercises, activities and playing games.
Each step has its own requirement and exercises. As for me, teachers should research carefully each exercise when they plan a next lesson in order to choose the right and suitable activities for each lesson. Solving this issue, I do it as follow:
Introducing the form and meaning of the structures:
Before practicing, teachers introduce the form and meaning of the structrures by speaking and writing on the board. I choose many different ways to review the meaning of the structures in different lessons to avoid students from being bored. Such as:
Sight: using real things, drawing or pictures and trait or gesture to illustrate the meaning. For example:
Consolidation 1: Unit 3:
Teachers may use a traffic sign to review modal: must
T: This is a traffic sign. What does it tell us?
S: - We must stop.
 -We must not go straight ahead. (ect.)
After students answer the question, teachers review the form of must and two other modal verbs which have the same usage have to and ought to:
 Form: must/ have to/ ought to + bare infinitive.
Comparing and contrasting the structures:
When I want to introduce two or more structures in an exercise, I always get students compare and contrast to find out the differences among these structures. For example:
 Consolidation 3: Unit 11:
 T : Now I give you some examples to show the differences between the requests, using "Do/ Would you mind ... ". Listen!
Do/ Would you mind moving your car?
Do you mind if I sit here?
Would you mind if I sat here? 
Tell me the differeces between these sentences.
S : Sentence 1 :... Do/ Would you mind + V-ing, 
 Sentence 2 and 3 : ... Do/ Would you mind + if-clause.
T : That's right. Tell me the differeces between the second sentence and the third sentence.
S: sentence 2: Do you mind if+ Subject+ V_s,es
 sentence 3: Would you mind if+ Subject+ V_ed
T : That's right. 
After that teachers repeat the form and meaning of these structures, then practicing.
Using situation:
Teachers can use the situation method in introducing some structures. I use pictures or drawing to set the scense. For example:
To teach the question why- Because in Unit 3, I give out some picture and give them a model sentence:
T: Why does Hoang fail in his math exam?
S: Because he is always playing video games.
Translation
It is a well-known fact that the best method of learning English is by using English. When teachers are using English in their teaching, their students enjoy doing the same thing, developing the habit of trying to think in English and making themselves understood in English. However, it is not always easy and convenient to do that in every situation. It is strongly advised that teachers should take every opportunity to speak English and encourage their student to do the same so that they can learn and use the language. Therefore, if teachers speak simple English by using synonyms or giving a short explanation, for example, and their students understand what they mean, they should do that. On the contrary, if teachers mime or draw pictures ect but their students still fail to understand, why not use Vietnamese. It’s quicker! For example: 
T : Thu Ha is not satisfied with her preparations for Tet. Thu Ha has decorated her house and made plenty of cakes. 
Combine two sentences above into one by using a connective- EVEN THOUGH 
S : Thu Ha is not satisfied with her preparations for Tet even though she has decorated her house and made plenty of cakes. 
T : Vietnamese ?
S : Thu Hà không hài lòng với việc chuẩn bị tết của mình mặc dù cô ấy đã trang hoàng nhà cửa và làm rất nhiều bánh.
Practicing techniques:
The textbook does not point out what structures teachers should review and teachers do not have available exercises for students, of course, they have to do it themselves. To practice structures, I do as follow:
Repetation drill
When learners get used to the sounds of English it may be easier for them not to see the language written down before they practise saying it, so get them to listen to our model and then repeat.
Make sure teachers give clear, natural sounding and consistent models.Use hand movements to indicate intonation, use our fist to beat the stress, and join or separate fingers to show word boundaries and where linking occurs in phrases. This kind of gesturing may in particular help visual learners since it helps them visualise the language they are practising.
Back chaining helps learners focus on correct pronunciation and intonation and is also attention-grabbing. For example, when we are modelling a phrase, start at the end, getting the learners to repeat after each chunk we give them.
For example: yesterday / get up yesterday/ did you get up yesterday/what time did you get up yesterday?
We can vary the drill in terms of who repeats - whole class, half the class, boys only, girls only, individuals. Make sure drilling is done at a snappy pace. We can also try:
Whisper drills (for quietening down a rowdy class)
Shouting drills (for livening them up ).
These ideas work particularly well with young learners or we can liven drills up by saying things in different ways. For example, sound very happy, very sad, very bored, very excited with a facial expression to match as we model the language and get the learners to do the same. Putting expression into it and exaggerating the intonation helps make the language more memorable.
Guessing games
Simple guessing games which require lots of repetition of the target language are ideal for practising language items at low levels and are in fact a form of drill. After you have used pictures to introduce vocabulary or phrases stick the pictures on the board back to front so they can't be seen. Students try to guess which picture is which.
Pick out one picture and don't show it. Students guess which one it is. If you're using real objects you can use the same principle by hiding the objects under a cloth or in a bag and getting them to guess which object you're holding.
For practising 'Is it..?' questions, classroom objects and describing location with children, hide a plastic spider somewhere in the room and get the children to guess where it is. 'Is it under the teacher's desk?', 'Is it behind Jose's chair?'
Disappearing text
This can be done with a list of vocabulary items or phrases, a short text or a dialogue at any level.
Write up the text on the board. Read out the text and drill.
Rub off a small part of it. Students have to say the whole text again.
Gradually rub off more and more in bits and each time get the students to say the whole text. This provides intensive drilling practice as the students have to repeat it so many times. However, the game factor also increases motivation to get it right and that gets more challenging as the activity continues.
Dialogue building
This is useful particularly for low level students to build confidence in speaking and to learn useful chunks of language. Use pictures to set a scene and elicit a dialogue.
Example:
 A: Have you got a pet?
 B: Yes, I've got a cat.
 A: Oh, what's its name?
 B: It's called Fred.
Drill each line as you elicit the dialogue rather than writing the whole dialogue on the board as you go, you can just write one or two words to help them remember each line. 
Example:
 A: Have/pet?
 B: Yes/
 A: /name?
 B: /Fred
Then let the students choose different pets and make up similar dialogues in pairs. Aim for not more than eight lines or so in the dialogue or it may become difficult to memorise.
Mingle activities with smaller classes, mingle activities work well and provide opportunities for lots of repetition of target language. A simple example of this for low level learners is 'Say and swap'.
Learners are given flashcards or small pictures of target vocabulary items or phrases.
They mingle and swap their pictures but as they swap they have to say the word on the picture they have. Alternatively this can be done as a more stationary chain drill: students pass the flashcards or pictures around the whole class and again say the word each time they pass it on.
Another example is 'Find Someone Who' which can be adapted to any level. Students have a list of people to find.
Example: Find someone who
gets up before 7.00
watches TV in the morning
eats toast for breakfast etc.
Students go around asking the question. In this example the language practised is 'Do you?' and the topic daily routines. This activity generates lots of repetition of this pattern as well as providing opportunities for freer responses if the learners develop the conversation. In larger classes it can be done as a stationary group work activity.
Information gaps
Information gap activities are often designed to provide highly controlled practice of particular structures. By swapping information which requires use of a particular language pattern, the students have to solve a problem. This problem solving provides a communicative purpose to what is essentially a drill.
Example:
The students have a shopping list of fruit they need to buy (6 oranges, 1 kilo of apples etc.)
Student A has the prices of various fruits in one shop, student B has the prices in another shop.
They have to ask each other and answer about the prices and complete a grid with the information.
The task is then to decide which shop will be the cheaper one for them to buy their fruit in.
Songs, rhymes and chants
Many learners respond very well to songs, games and chants. These learners can find it very difficult to remember how to say complete phrases in a foreign language when they are first learning, but they remember whole songs and chants with ease. Action songs like 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes' provide fun drills of language for parts of the body. Or you can make up your own action songs by putting target language to a well known tune and getting the children to do actions. 
When accompanied by gestures and actions, songs and chants appeal to different learning styles such as aural and kinaesthetic. Older learners may be self conscious about singing but chants and raps can still work well and, once again, involve lots of repetition. 
Tips in consolidation and testing after practicing:
The grammar and structures in a consolidation lesson have been learnt before, so the purpose in these lessons is to review what students studied and how well they can use these grammar and structures. To help students get the content and apply these grammar and structures, beside guiding them doing exercises, teachers should make their students interested and excited in learning English, then they take part in the lesson naturally. The best way is that teachers should let students play different games in their English class.
Teachers can apply these games: Dialogue build, Dictation, Gap fill, Matching, Network, Finding friends, Find someone who, Ordering words, Write-it-up, Language games. 
I really like language games which concludes many small games, such as Chain game, Noughts & crosses, Pelmanism, Guessing game, Rub out and remember, Lucky numbers, ...
We can use Language games in some exercises: 
Consolidation 1: 
Lucky numbers ( group work - Time : 10' )
Teaching aids: pictures and the poster :
 Lan/ downstairs
Lucky number
Lucky number
buy / flowers
do / chores
go / shopping 
Lucky numbers 
paint / a picture of Paris
Divide the class into 2 groups.
For a lucky number, Ss will get 2 points without answering any questions. For other numbers, Ss have to write the things Lan and her friends did to prepare for the party, using the words given. 2 points for a correct sentence.
Ex. : Lan / downstairs à Lan is not downstairs. Etc.
Consolidation 1 : 
Brainstorming ( Individual work - Time 5')
 myself
 yourself/ yourselves himself
 itself reflexive pronouns herself
 ourselves themselves
Ask Ss to think of reflexive pronouns that they have learnt.
Have Ss write down the reflexive pronouns. 
Give feedback.
Ask Ss to give Vietnamese meaning.
Ask Ss have to complete the sentences by using correct reflexive pronouns 
Consolidation 2 : 
Lucky numbers ( Group work - Time : 10' ) 
Teaching aids: the poster :
LN
How old are you ?
Is your school near here ?
What is the name of your school ?
LN
Do you go to school by bicycle ?
Which grade are you in ?
Can you use a computer ?
Why do you want this job ?
When does your school vacation start ?
Divide the class into 2 groups.
For a lucky number, Ss will get 2 points without answering any questions. For other numbers, Ss have to turn the direct speech to the reported speech, 2 points for a correct sentence.
Ex. : 1à She asked me how old I was. etc.
Consolidation 3 : 
Survey ( Group work -Time : 5 -7' )
Teaching aids : handouts
Divide class into groups of four
Samples : 
S1 :Have you ever read a comic ? 
S2 : Yes, I have.
S1 : When did you last read one ?
S2 : This morning.
S1 : Have you ever been to Singapore ?
S2 : No, I haven't.
Give feedback
Consolidation 3 : 
 Chain game ( Time : 10')
S1 : My father likes watching sports but my mother doesn't. She loves listening to music.
S2 : My father likes watching sports, my mother loves listening to music but my sister doesn't. She enjoys playing games.
S3 : My father likes watching sports, my mother loves listening to music, my sister enjoys playing games but my brother doesn't. He likes watching advertisements.etc.
Consolidation 4 : 
 Matching Game ( Stage : Production - Group work - Time : 5-8' )
Divide the class into two teams ( A & B ) to review “in oder to/ so as to”.
Each student from team A writes a part of clause on a small piece of paper.
Each student from B writes an other part of clause.
Take 2 pieces of paper from 2 teams to have a complete these sentences. Call on some students to pick up 2 pieces of paper from two teams and call out the sentences.
Consolidation 5 : 
Noughts and Crosses ( Group work - Time : 10' )
Teaching aids : the chart : 
(1) pleased /work hard
(2) excited / go / DaLat 
(3) sorry / break/ bicycle
(4)disappointed/ not phone 
(5) amazed/ win first prize 
(6) sure / like film
(7)happy / pass exam 
(8)afraid / not help you 
(9)delighted/ show/ good
Divide the class into teams : 0 & X
Model sentence : 
I'm pleased that you are working hard.
I'm excited that I can go to DaLat