Some suggestions to improve how to transform English sentences accurately for the 10th grade students

SCHOOL
EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE 
SOME MEASURES TO IMPROVE HOW TO TRANSFORM SENTENCES ACCURATELY FOR THE 10TH FORM STUDENTS 
(MỘT SỐ BIỆN PHÁP NHẰM CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG VIẾT LẠI CÂU CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10)
 Teacher: PHAN THI QUYNH MAI
 Group: FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Thanh Hoa, June 2016 
TABLE OF CONTENTS
	 PAGE 	 
PART I: INTRODUCTION	 
1. Reasons for choosing the topic .1 
2. Aims of the study .1 
3. Scope of the study .2
4. Methods of the study .2
PART II: CONTENTS
1.Theoretical background...3
1.1. Communicative language teaching .3
1.2. The importance of sentence transformation in communication
in particular and in English in general	...4	 
	1.3. Types of sentence transformation in English.4 
1.3.1. According to their meanings...5
1.3.1.1.Affirmative to negative...5
1.3.1.2.Exclamatory sentence to assertive sentence...5
1.3.1.3.Assertive to interrogative .5 
1.3.2.According to their types of sentences..6
2. The actual situation ....7 
3. Patterns of English sentence transformation made by the 
10th form students at high school. ..8
3.1.Description of subject ..8 
3.2.Data collection and procedure .8 
3.3.Data analysis ...9 
3.3.1.Common errors 9
3.3.1.1.Wrong words used .9 
3.3.1.2.Errors in word order / word choice ...10 
3.3.1.3.Errors in concord ...10 
3.3.1.4.Errors in sequence of tenses...11 
3.3.1.5.Faulty Parallelism ..11
3.3.1.6.Pronoun errors ...11 
3.3.1.7.Other errors 11 
3.3.2.Reasons for making errors .12 
3.3.2.1.Mother tonguge interference .12
3.3.2.2.Over-generalization of rules ..12 
3.3.2.3.Faulty teaching and materials 13 
4. Some suggestions for helping 11th form students to transform
sentences effectively .13 
4.1. Suggestions for teachers to improve students’ ability to 
transform sentences in the classroom in the process of teaching 
English 13 
4.2. Practical activities for students to practise transforming 
sentences accurately 15 
4.2.1. Practice with multiple choice questions..15 
4.2.2. Practice with sentence transformation exercises.16 
5.2. Reached results ...18 
PART III: CONCLUSION ...20 
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Reasons for choosing the topic
	We are living in a developing society, therefore exchanging information in communication becomes very crucial. Particularly, English plays an important part in our socio-economic life of human beings. It seems to be the golden key to open relationship between different nations in the world. Today people have a lot of opportunities to study English to enlarge and enrich their background knowledge about their surrounding world.
	However, how to master English successfully? We must study many aspects of English, one of which is writing English accurately. As we can see it, in our daily life, wirting skills are needed when communicating in both formal and informal contexts for some reasons. First of all, writing skills enables us to give information to some people we want to. Secondly, writing skills become inportant when we would like to write a letters, a poster, an advertisement, an annoucement or express our ideas about a certain topic and so on. Thirdly, one of the compulsory parts in the National General Certificate Examination is writing part which requires students’ competence in both sentence transformation and paragraph writing. Nevertheless, few of people apprehend the knowledge of writing skills properly and they do not know how to write English accurately. At high school, many students always make mistakes related to writing sentences as well as paragraphs in the process of learning English as well as in daily communication.
	For those above, I would like to find out some common errors made by students when they transform sentences and then suggest some solutions to help 10th form students at high school to avoid them. As a result, I am really interested in choosing the topic: “Some suggestions to improve how to transform English sentences accurately for the 10th grade students.”
2. Aims of the study
	The aims of this study are:
To systematically classify transformation sentences in English 
( kinds of transformation sentences) 
To help learners to distinguish subtypes of transformation sentences in order to write them accurately. 
To find out some common errors that students at high school often make when transforming sentences.
To mainly give out some suggestions for helping 10th form students at high school to transform English sentences accurately not only in their classroom but also in daily life.
3. Scope of the study
 The study confines one item of English grammar: Sentences in English. I also focus on the classification of sentence transformation with the definition and features of each type. Also, in the study, I mainly concentrate on offering some suggestions to improve how to transform English sentences accurately for 10th grade students. 
4. Method of study
 To conduct the study, a lot of methods are used. However, the main ones are descriptive statistics, observation and analytical method.
PART II: DEVELOPMENT
1. Theoretical background
1.1.Communicative language teaching
	There are many methods used in the process of teaching foreign language in general and in grammar in particular. Grammar – translation is one of the most popular methods that dominated foreign language teaching from the 1800s to the 1940s and in modified form it continues to be used in several part of the world today. Grammar-translation approaches the language first through detailed analysis of its grammar rules, followed by application of these rules to the task of translating sentences and text into and out of the target language. The grammar rules are memorized because learners study grammar rules first, which are then practised through translation exercises. In other words, grammar is taught deductively. In grammar translation method, reading and writing are the major focuses, whereas it pays no systematic attention to speaking and listening.	However, in fact, students learning grammar very well can be unsuccessful in communication. They have difficulties in speaking and writing. The most important goal of learning language is to effectively communicate with other people. Therefore, the communicative approach have been applied in different nations in different parts of the world. Communicative proficiency is more focused than mere mastery of structures.	According to the American and British proponents, communicative language teaching is an approach, which emphasizes the social interaction activities and the functional communication activities. Social interaction activities consist of tasks such as comparing sets of pictures and pointing out the similarities and differences, discovering missing features in a map or a picture, giving introductions on how to do something...In grammar translation method, accuracy is emphasized and students are expected to attain high standards, Unlike grammar translation method, no text and grammar rules are presented in this approach in this approach. Classroom arrangement is non-standard; students are expected to interact with each other rather than with teachers and correction of errors may be absent or infrequent. Communicative language teaching requires teachers’ two main roles. Teacher plays an important part not only in facilitating the communicatin process among all participants in the classroom but also in acting as an independent participant. Teachers have to be organizers of resources, researchers and learners, contributors in terms of appropriate knowledge, abilities and experience; counselors and group process managers. 
1.2. The importance of sentence transformation in communication in particular and in English in general. 
As can be seen, both speaking anh writing are vital skills in cimmunication. However, many people ignore the importance of writing skills. Especially, most of students have not focused on learning writing skills. As a result, they are not able to express their ideas, thoughts ... when they write a letter, an e-mail or a paragraph or sometimes they can do but not really successfully. In 2015, when the National General Certificate Examination was first applied, almost every students are extremely nervous about their writing ability. The reason for their nervousness is that they mainly pay attention to Mutiple Choice Questions and do not take enough notice of writing sentences and paragraphs. 
Sentence transformation is a good tool to help you speak English better as well as write English more effectively. If you are good at paraphrasing, you will be more successful in not only daily communication but also paragraph writing because the use of different structures and vocabulary makes you find it easy to express your opinions and your writing more diverse and more persuasive but not boring. 
The ability to rewrite sentences so that they have the same meaning as the original is often required for many English Exams such as Cambridge's FCE. It is also an important skill which can help you improve your understanding of similar English expressions and vocabulary.
Sentence transformation is a compusory part in the National General Certificate Examination which requires students to rewrite the sentences given without changing its original meanings. This part only makes up 5% of the total mark of the test but without it, students can fail the examination or can not get good mark to be admitted to good universities in our country. On the other hand, the proficiency of sentence transforming can enable you to choose the best options in Mutiple Choice Questions more correctly and help you gain a stock of English vocabulary and structures, which offer you better opportunity to get better mark in all examinations from semester exams to final exams... 
However, being an effective writer a lot to do with how to transfrom a sentence. Once the purpose of the sentence transformation exercise has been established, we ourselves should take the following things into account: What types of sentence transformation can be? How to do each type successfully? 
1.3. Types of sentence transformations in English
	Transformation is changing the form of a sentence without changing its meaning. In the exams, transformation should be done according to the direction given in the question paper. In doing transformation a student should have a fairly well knowledge about the kinds of sentence and their formation. 
1.3.1. According to their meanings:
	Sentences can be classified into affirmative, negative, interrogative or assertive, imperative and exclamatory sentences. They can be transformed into different kinds of sentences without changing the meanings of the sentences. 
1.3.1.1.Affirmative to negative: 
	An affirmative sentence and a negative sentence can be interchanged. Sometimes affirmative sentence can be changed into negative by using opposite words ( before the word, of course “not” is used.) 
	e.g:	 Remember to lock the door before going to bed. ( affirmative) 
	 Don’t forget to lock the door before going to bed. ( negative)
	An affirmative sentence can be converted into a negative sentence by removing “too” and replacing by “so.... that .... can not / could not....” 
	e.g: 	He is too weak to walk. ( affirmative)
	 He is so weak that he can not walk. ( negative)
	Affirmative and negative sentences can be interchanged using degrees of comparisons. ( superlative degree replaced by “no other + ...+ so / as + adjective + as + subject”) 
	e.g: Dhala is the biggest city in Bangladesh. ( affirmative)
	 No other city in Bangladesh is as big as Dhala. ( negative)
1.3.1.2. Exclamatory sentence to assertive sentence
 	Exclamatory sentence and assertive sentence can be interchanged without changing the meaning of the sentences .
To convert exclamations into statements, the following changes are made: 
-All the words such as “ what” or “ how” used at the beginning of the exclamatory sentence” are replaced by “very”
-Words “Oh” , “Oh what” , “If only” are replaced by “Subject wish” followed by a full clause. 
-The exclamatory mark must be removed. 
e.g: 	What a splendid day!
 It is a very splendid day. 
1.3.1.3. Assertive to interrogative
	To interchange the assertive and interrogative sentences, we make the following changes:
	-the verb or the auxiliary verb is placed before the subject. 
	-the negative is put if it is not mentioned in the sentence or left out if it is there
	- The mark of interrogation is placed at the end of the sentence 
	e.g: 	He was very gentle. 
	 Wasn’t he very gentle? 
1.3.2. According to their types of sentences
	When we transform a sentence from a structure to another structure without changing its meaning, it is called transformation. 
	Transformation is a method of expressing the same idea, concept or meaning in different grammatical forms. Transformation of sentences helps us bring variety in spoken and written language. 
	In English, there are mainly three types of sentences: 
Simple sentenc
Compound sentence
Complex sentence
We can change a simple sentence into a compound sentence or a complex sentence. This is usually done by expanding a word or phrase into a clause. In the same way, we can change a complex or compound sentence into a simple sentence. This is done by reducing a clause into a word or phrase.
Study the examples given below.
It is too late to start a new lesson.
As you can see this sentence has just one clause and therefore it is as simple sentence. The number of clauses in a sentence is equal to the number of finite verbs in it. Note that to-infinitives and –ing forms are not finite verbs.
The structure tooto can be replaced by the structure sothat.
It is so late that we cannot start a new lesson.
As you can see this sentence has two clauses: one main clause (It is so late) and one subordinate clause (That we cannot start a new lesson.) We have already learned that a sentence containing one main clause and one or more subordinate clauses is called a complex sentence.
Another example is given below.
He worked hard that he might pass the examination.
The above sentence is an example of a complex sentence. It has one main clause (He worked hard) and one subordinate clause of purpose (That he might pass the examination). Subordinate clauses of purpose can be reduced to to-infinitives.
He worked hard to pass the examination. (Simple sentence)
One more example is given below.
He ordered that the traitor be jailed. (Complex sentence)
This sentence, too, can be converted into a simple sentence with the help of a to-infinitive.
He ordered them to jail the traitor.
	In short, according to the types of sentences, sentence transformation may be classified into subtypes: simple to compound, simple to complex and vice versa. 
2. THE ACTUAL SITUATION
	Many students consider speaking as well as writing a language as knowing that language, and thus it is a notion that studying a language is to learn how to speak and write the language. Therefore, if students are not learning how to write a language or don’t have chance to write the language in class, sooner or later they will lose their motivation and interest in learning language. Conversely, if appropriate activities are properly carried out, these activities can be a fun and may help increase students’ learning motivation and make English class as an interesting place. However, not many students know the importance of writing skills as well as writing lesson at school. Like these students, the majority of the students at my school, Quang Xuong 1 high school, are not aware of how important the ability of writing English is. Most of them are studying English for their written exams or to get good marks, not for their daily communication in foreign language or their further goals in the future. They mostly focus on reading, or language focus lessons, but pay little attention to speaking, listening anf writing lessons. Their learning motivation is limited and their learning attitude is not good, too. As a consquence, students sometimes suffer from psychological tension whenever they are asked to express their opinions in English or may even be “uncooperative”; that is to say, they do not listen to teachers or their classmates attentively or they are not ready or willing to participate in writing activities. Can you imagine the following situation? When you, an English teacher, organize an activity in class, in which a student does not actively take part in the task, how can the activity be successful? 
	As language environment is concerned, another problem is raised. The scale of class is an obsctacle to teachers in general and English ones in particular: the number of students in a class is too great, there are still about 40 to 48 students per class. Thus, in a fortyfive –minute lesson, only some students’ papers can be corrected, most students have few opportunites to practice writing English in class. Moreover, a large number of students have a bad habit of thinking of the topics in Vietnamese and then trying to translate their ideas into English. This habit have a great influence on the ways the students write English while there is a big difference between two languages, Vietnamese and English. In addition, most of students in my school who live in the countryside do not take any chance to practice, use their English and communicate with other in English in their daily life as they are out of the class. 
	Last but not least, some English teachers themselves are concentrating on teaching students how to get high marks in different exams by providing them with vocabulary, structures or grammar exercises day by day but they are not really concerned about teaching communicative skills for their students. To have an interesting lesson, teachers have to spend much of their time preparing their lesson, making plan for it, redesigning the tasks to make them more suitable for the levels of their own students, thinking of extra activities to motivate students to be more interested in and more involved in them....and even spend some money on , hand-outs or worksheets... 
	In short, through observation and reality when teaching English for nearly 10 years and teaching two classes 10C5 and 10C6 at Quang Xuong 1 high school in the school year: 2015– 2016, it can be seen that the students’ inactiveness and uncooperation, the limitation of communicative environment, lack of teachers’ investment lead to the students’ inability of writing English and transforming sentences without changing their meanings. To solve these problems, I myself point out some errors that students often make when transforming English sentences and then chiefly offer some measures to improve 10th grade students’ transforming English sentences as follow.
3. PATTERNS OF ENGLISH SENTENCE TRANSFORMATION MADE BY 10TH FORM STUDENTS AT HIGH SCHOOL
3.1.Description of subjects
	The subjects of this study involved students from two classses: 10C5 and 10C6 at Quang Xuong 1 high school. 
3.2.Data collection and the procedure
	To collect the data for this study, I carried out a type of test. The test is designed on the basis of knowledge in English text book of the 10th form. Hence, it can be ensured that all the questions of the test are suitable for the level of the students.
	The test consists of 10 sentences focusing on basic grammatical knowledge in 10th grade textbook . 
Finish each of the following sentences in such a way that it is as similar as possible in meaning to the original sentence. 
1. The boy didn’t do his homework until his father came in. 
 It was not.....................................................................................
2. The man is interviewing my niece. He is a film director.
 The man who 
3. He has two brothers, both of them work in television.
 He has. 
4. This is the most delicious cake I’ve ever tasted.
 I’ve...........