Some measures to teach elementary english vocabulary for primary students

QUANG XUONG DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
QUANG LOC PRIMARY SCHOOL
EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE
SOME MEASURES TO TEACH ELEMENTARY ENGLISH VOCABULARY FOR PRIMARY STUDENTS
 Written: Doan Thi Van
 Position: English teacher
 School: Quang Loc Primary School 
 Experience initiative subject: English
QUANG XUONG 2019 
INDEX
Number
Contents
Page
1
Index 
Page 1
2
1. Introduction
Page 2
3
1.1. Reason choose topics 
Page 2
4
1.2. Thepurpose of research 
Page 2
5
1.3. Audience – research methods 
Page 2
6
1.4 Research methods 
Page 2
7
1.5 New points of experience initiatives
Page 3
8
2. Content of experience initiatives	 
Page 3
9
2.1. Theoretical basic	 
Page 3
10
2.2. The current situation	 
Page 4
11
2.3. Solution and implementation	
Page 5
12
a. Studying the textbook	
Page 5
13
b. Methods of teaching vocabularies for primary students	 
Page 6
14
c. How to help the students to learn vocabularies
Page 12
15
2.4. The results	 
Page 16
16
3. Conclusion and suggestions	 
Page 17
17
References 
Page 19
1 – INTRODUCTION
1.1. Reason choose topics
The goal of education is to train people develop a comprehensive and humane response to meet the technical requirements of the country today . In which language is considered to be a powerful and effective tool in the process of integration and development with other countries in the world . English is an international language , so the Party and State are particularly interested in the national foreign language project of the government until 2020 with the common goal: " Comprehensive renovation of the teaching and learning of foreign languages ​​in the national education system ... " In which elementary students have to listen, understand, speak, read and write simple instructions on topics that are related to themselves and their school. Primary English now also attaches great importance and interest. Teaching English from small steps will help the children have a good start for the long journey later”[1]. However, the children's language learning is completely different from adults, they are very playful, not respected to academic tasks. “To help students acquire good basic knowledge of elementary English program toward active learning activities, against passive learning habits, create a solid foundation of knowledge for children”[2] the teacher has to know how to inspite them to learning by "Some measures to teach elementary English vocabulary for primary students". This is one of the important measures in improving the academic performance of students. Hopefully this topic will contribute to reduce the difficulties and obstacles, as well as improve the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning English in primary schools.
 1.2. The purpose of research.
 - Before going into specific issues, I agree that the main method of foreign language teaching is our integrated, meaning that new words should be taught in context, the context can is a real object, picture or a conversation, however, it comes to the teaching and learning of foreign languages is still teaching new words like?, sentence structure teaches new students how to learn how to use use new words and new structures of communication in a foreign language.
 - Use available sample sentences learned or will learn to introduce new words.
 - Use pictures, visual aids to introduce new words.
 - Make sure the students understand the structure, vocabulary applied to the structure to perfect communication functions. Establish the relationship between the new structure and vocabulary had.
 1.3. Audience - research methods:
- Students in grades 5 Quang Loc Primary school.
 1.4. Research methods:
 Research Methodology document, projected colleagues now, check, compare, compare student results
 I have explored the research material, combining class observation, experiment, examine and compare the academic performance of students, that draw the best teaching methods for children.
 1.5. New points of experience initiatives:
Students have shown that the key to increase vocabulary is exposure to new words not an innate ability to learn from context. Experts emphasize that vocabulary development is an attainable goal. If given the opportunity to learn new words as well as effective instruction, most students can acquire vocabulary at rates that will improve their comprehension. This enables them to read increasingly challenging texts with fluency and betters their chances for success in school and afterward.
2. CONTENT OF EXPERIENCE INITIATIVES 
2.1. THEORETICAL BASIC:
	The views of the Party is to improve foreign language skills for the majority of the young generation of the country, and propose innovative solutions in order to solve the immediate urgent problems in improving language skills for students rapidly. So far English is considered as a subject that has been focused and got a lot of attention at the primary level. To meet the requirements of national renewal, each teacher himself/herself must complete his/her teaching career. “To do well the teaching and learning of foreign languages ​​in elementary school, the teacher must understand clearly the children’s psychology in elementary school as well as their characteristics and abilities when learning language”[3]
 + Children are very active so they can not afford to sit obediently and listen to the teacher's lecture. Moreover, they do not have the ability to concentrate for a long time on thinking and acquiring knowledge. Therefore, in the foreign language class, children have to be taken part in many different learning activities.
+ Children need the repetitive elements. I know that children can absorb and imitate very fast but forget very quick, too. Therefore, materials must be practised as much as possible. In English classes, the teacher should create opportunities for the children to further practice through physical exercises (listen and repeat) and replaced exercises. To meet the specific characteristics of children in the process of learning a foreign language, we have used the techniques and forms of communicative exercises to facilitate formation of a language learning environment. Also in these environments, students are exposed more. The visual items that are used to help the children get to know with English native speakers through audio / DVD become active elements of lectures.
+ Children learn through listening, watching and imitating. Children acquire knowledge in a completely different way from adults. Adults acquire knowledge in a sense, analysis while the young acquire it naturally through intuition. So what exercises to strengthen the observation of children through the audio-visual and mechanical imitation as well as modeling activities of teachers to introduce the new materials must ensure the accuracy of the language, especially pronunciation.
+ The ability of children are curious, energetic and creative in a very natural way. Children always need to explore their surroundings and interact with people so that children establish an understanding of the world where they live.
+ Children would love to communicate. When we meet the children who we do not know, through the first minute they might be shy, but after a few questions of our encouragement, they will tell us about their selves, their parents, interests, including saying bad things that their friends do, and would love to ask questions back.
With the above characteristics, we can see that, in order to help them get a better ability to practice languages well, we need to have a reasonable solution. “We can not teach children like an adult. This shows that the teacher must have a high technical level to enter the world of young children to eventually lead to new concepts, to a deeper understanding of concepts that children initially approached. Children’s learning language depends heavily on incentives. This totally depends on the style of the teacher. If teachers encourage young children to create a good learning environment, children will learn a lot faster”[4]. In many teaching methods to promote children’s positivity, there are some methods which are consistent and favorite for all ages . Consequently, the teacher must know how to combine the use of all available ones and promote their abilities in self-composing songs and chants so that all class hours achieve the highest efficiency.
2.2. THE CURRENT SITUATION :
 Through practical teaching in Quang Loc primary school I see, there are some following advantages:
 Administrators are very interested in foreign language teaching. The school has two good teachers of English who always try to self-learn, self- upgrade their skills, create and know how to apply the information technology in teaching, innovate teaching methods appropriate for each kind of students in order to help them quickly understand the lesson. Those are teachers who love the teaching job, the kids and who are enthusiastic and responsible in the work, ready to complete all assigned tasks.
On the other hand, it also has a certain number of difficulties:
+ There is a number of hard students who are the children of the poor families or the families in which the parents are divorced...Therefore, the education of the children in these families are little cared for, which affects the children’s learning outcomes.
 + And what is equally important is that a lot of parents do not know English, therefore, it is impossible for them to help their children to learn English.
+ Some children have psychology of being shy when speaking in the public.
+ Because of circumstances, many children do not focus on learning foreign language, they learn how to cope and some are bored with studying English.
+ They do not speak English fluently because of no regular use.
Class
Total
Quality
Excellent
Percent
Good
Percent
Average
Percent
Weak
Percent
5A
32
5
15,6%
10
31,3%
15
46,8%
2
6,3%
* “The survey results in early school year of class 5A at Quang Loc Primary school ”
So how to help the teaching and learning English achieve high efficiency? Through teaching and research so I boldly launched "Some measures to teach elementary English vocabulary for primary students ."
2.3. SOLUTION AND IMPLEMENTATION
 Through practical teaching in Quang Loc primary schools I have researched and used the following measures to help students improve their language learning in primary schools better:
a. Studying the textbooks:
 The purpose of this method is to help the teachers master the English program of grade 3,4,5 to find the most appropriate method for each particular lesson.
Currently my school is using the book English - The Ministry of Education and Training publisher for grades 3,4,5. Through the book I find that the form of this book is suitable for primary school age: “pictures are colorful and vivid, the characters are fun and accompany them from the first lesson for the rest of the books, give them the curiosity through each lesson, help them see the characters as their friends. In terms of the content of this book revolves around the topic, the topic is very friendly, close to the lives of the children. Each topic focuses on phonics, vocabulary and grammar with very short sentence patterns consistent with age. The structure of all these books meets the aesthetic and content for elementary school children”[5]. As we know, to study well, students need to have a good set of books and teachers have to know how to use the method correctly and flexibly to transmit knowledge to the children. On the other hand, due to the requirements of society and the demands of educational strategies, each teacher must improve teaching skills that are suitable with school age. It means that when teaching in the classroom we must take into account that: 
+ Children do not have the ability to understand the rules of grammar, do not understand the explanation of rules of language such as rules on the use of the verb. 
*For example: If we explain that the present simple is used to express repeated daily action, habits ... it is too abstract, children do not have the ability to imagine the content of rules to understand, as well as remember sample sentences and grammatical rules, so they just learn the prefabricated phrases without being analyzed how to form these sentences. 
+ Children have the ability to imitate very quickly what adults do so when learning new things they will absorb very fast but also be easy to forget.
+ Children enjoy participating in different activities but do not like sitting silently long. 
So the teacher in the classroom is only the instructor and the students’ role is a positive factor, they voluntarily participate in activities that teacher provides in a natural way to help children practice well the skills as well as use new words and modal sentences exactly and smoothly. 
b. Methods of teaching vocabulary for primary students 
The purpose of these methods is to create excitement for students, create a change in class activities, review the vocabulary and sentences, help students practice the pronunciation, intonation, stressBesides, they are used to switch to a new or familiar topic, Specifically as follows:
 *Songs: 
 Most of children, especially the primary students like singing very much. Through the study of teaching songs as a kind of lively and attractive exercises in order to teach children how to learn foreign languages. I can give the benefits of teaching songs in a foreign language class. 
+ Help students improve memory , concentration, association .
+ Help bring motivation for them .
+ Help students relax after the stressful study .
+ Help the children get along with other students in the class ​​.
+ Change the status of a classroom effectively, help the English lessons more interesting, balance energy level in the class.
+ Especially, help students review as well as practice the materials such as vocabularies, modal sentences, pronunciation and intonation effectively. Sometimes songs are used to teach new materials.They are really sticky, make children remember material very well. However, in order to teach a song successfully, the teacher has to master the basic steps to teach it:
- The process of teaching a song:
+ Review or introduce the main structures in the song using pictures/ objects if possible.
 + Play the recording, let children listen to the whole song once . This step helps them have a chance to access the melody of songs , create emotion and curiosity for this tune . This is also a step which creates excitement for the children so that they are ready to take part in.
+ Let children read the lyrics line by line. At this time, children have to pronounce exactly the lyrics. They have to particularly pay attention to the wind sound because its position in Vietnamese is not the same in English .
For example, the wind sounds in English appear a lot at the end of many words such as : Piece / pi : s / , wish / wi∫ / and they are difficult to pronounce, especially when they stand at the end of the words such as: “chair / t∫eə /, watch / w ס t∫ / , village / vilid‏צ / . Students often miss the sound when singing. This makes our Vietnamese be turned , lack of tonal English .
+ When reading vocabulary, we need drill the children to read the stress properly ('apple, 'every, 'beautiful) because in English songs, the word stress is very important. However, the sentence stress does not take any important roles because it is dominated by songs. When training them to read the lyrics we should pay attention to interrupting as the way the song breaks, do not interrupt as the grammartical request. In this way, the children will be able to acsess the rythym easily.
For example: In the song “ Where do you live ?...” the following sentence is interrupted as the rythym below:
Where do you live ?...” I live in Quang Trung street..... It’s big and pretty.
 So when practising the children to read, the teacher should teach them to interrupt in this way so that they can sing the song in the correct rythym.
 In the process of teaching children to read, the teacher should explain to children about the meaning, content of the song. However the teacher only explains the common sense without teaching each sample sentences appearing in the song. We still provide them with corpus in principle as they are prefabricated units. 
 For example: When teaching the song “ How do you learn English ? ” we only teach them know the numbers from 1 to 4 and know how to use them to count How do you learn English but we don’t teach “little” as a verb to describe How do you learn English ?
 How do you learn English ?
 1. How do you practise speaking ?
 I speak to my friends evry day.
 2 . How do you practise reading ? 
 I read English comicbooks
 3. How do you practice writing ? 
 I write emails to my friends
 4. And how do you practice listening ? 
 I watch English cartoons on TV
+ Let children sing each verse, teacher composes the movements fit the lyrics. This step children often imitate fast melody and lyrics. Teachers can use CD or DVD,get the children repeat each sentence. The reason for this requirement is that the songs in the disk are sung by British, American children. The intervention of the teacher's voice isn’t often as positively effective as the young native voice. 
+ Open tapes for children to sing along and make movements. When children have grasped the whole ways to sing each verse, children need to be connected to sing the complete song. Again CD / DVD gives opportunities for children to adjust the sound and rythym 
+ Have children sing in groups, combining both singing and making movements.
+ Call on some students to perform before the class.
After finishing teaching a song, the children will be very excited and the lessons also become more interesting. By the way teaching English through songs will be easier for the teacher to teach as well as for children to study. These songs are often used in less controlled practice / Production, warm up or checking the previous lessons. Along with songs, chants also play an important role in practising children new words, modal sentences, intonation and stress. 
*. Chants
 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. I find that a chant is a lot easier to teach than a song. However, I also use chants regularly in my weekly classes. Also, if you are not comfortable with singing in front of your students, chants are useful. 
In the process of learning a foreign language, we have used this type of chant naturally to train the students ability to speak English correctly with the sentence stress and sentence rhythm as well as remind students the grammar that they were learned as sample sentences, vocabulary... We also teach students the language functions such as explanation, asking for information, developing listening and speaking skills, creating a fun atmosphere in the classroom appealing to help students learn to speak a foreign language easier. The chants are all constructed on the basis of common everyday words, not poetry. Rhythm, stress and intonation of the chant is a version of a natural language, a speech of those who have studied in England. For example, when we read “Hi, how are you? Fine. “ How are you ?” (chant) our reading must be the same as the normal communicative speech, although it echoes the rhythm of poetry. Chant for foreign language classes often serve the purpose of teaching, grammar (sample sentence), pronunciation (stress, rhythm sentence, consonant - vowel sounds). We call these kinds of chants asVocabulary, Grammar chants or Phonics chants.To help the students study well, the teachers must master the process of teaching a chant:
- The