Teaching the grade 6 students at Quang Loc secondary school how to speak English correctly and naturally

 INTRODUCTION
In today’s global world, we can not deny the importance of English as it is the most common language spoken everywhere. English has been playing a key role in many aspects including medicine, science, tourism , engineering, and education, which, in my opinion, is the most important arena where English is needed. In Viet Nam, English has become one of the major and compulsory subjects at schools and universities. In order to improve Vietnamese learners’ competence to meet the demand of globalization, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has also made great efforts to help students learn English better. The 2020 National foreign language project is one of the most important projects with the aim of motivating every Vietnamese student to use English in communication and for their future jobs. Especially, the introduction of new textbooks to school curriculum marks a dramatic change in the way of language teaching and learning from the traditional approach-grammar translation method to communicative approach. 
Among the four skills known as listening, speaking, reading and writing, it can be said that speaking seems to be the most challenging skill for most of the students at Quang Loc secondary school. Most of the students only focus on learning the grammar without developing speaking skill while the goal of learning English is to communicate in it. Consequently, the students become accustomed to sitting and listening quietly rather than presenting orally.After  many school years of teaching the textbook “Tiếng Anh 6” at Quang Loc secondary school, I find that one of the biggest problem my students meet in speaking English is they don’t know how to pronounce words correctly and how to use words to make sentences. I also see that there are some problems with some activities in the textbook. Some are too difficult for my students, some are not real communicative, some are too long. All these reasons greatly contribute to the demotivation of students from the lessons. 
I think that the sixth form students are the freshmen at the secondary school.They studied English at primary school but most of them speak English incorrectly and seem to be afraid of speaking English.Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to teach them the rules of word pronunciation and how to use words and phrases to make sentences as well as adapt some activities to make the lessons suitable and interesting for students. 
The above mentioned reasons have inspired me to conduct a research titled “Teaching the grade 6 students at Quang Loc secondary school how to speak English correctly and naturally.” 
CONTENT
PART 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.The analysis of the title.
1.1. What is meant by " speaking" 
 It is obvious that speaking is the key to communication and seems to be the vital skill in comparison with reading, listening and writing. Everywhere people speak to each other to exchange attitudes, cultural values, etc. Without it communication will become difficult to proceed and our world will become as silent as a grave. Therefore, classroom activities aiming at developing learners’ ability to express themselves through speech are considered an important component in a language learning course.
Speaking is one of four necessary skills to use a language successfully. According to Chaney (1998, p.13), speaking is “the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non – verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts” (as cited in Kayi, 2006). Fowler & Thompson (2000) share the same view that speaking is “the action of conveying information or expressing one’s thoughts and feelings in spoken language”. This definition confirms that speaking is a process because it contains speakers’ thoughts and feelings.
Orwig (1999) defines speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode. It is complicated and involves more than just pronouncing words. W.F. Mackey also agrees that oral skill “involves not only the use of the right sounds in the right patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also the choice of words and inflections in the right order to convey the right meaning.” (Qouted from Bygate, M.,1987, p.5)
According to Byrne (1976, p.8), speaking is a two - way process between the speakers and the hearers involving the productive skill of speaking and the receptive skill of understanding. Both the listener and the speaker have a positive function to perform. The speaker has to encode the message to be conveyed in appropriate language, while the listener has to decode the message. The message itself in normal speech usually contains a great deal of information that the listener needs.
In summary, speaking is the ability to perform the linguistic knowledge in actual communication. It functions to express one’s idea, feeling, thought and needs orally. 
1.2. How to teach speaking
Now many teachers agree on that students learn to speak in the second language by "interacting". Communicative language teaching and collaborative learning serve best for this aim.  Communicative language teaching is based on real-life situations that require communication. By using this method in classes, students will have the opportunity of communicating with each other in the target language.  In brief, teachers should create a classroom environment where students have real-life communication, authentic activities, and meaningful tasks that promote oral language. This can occur when students collaborate in groups to achieve a goal or to complete a task.
According to Kayi (2006, p.1-2) what is meant by teaching speaking is to teach English language learners to:
Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns
Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language.
Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting, audience, situation and subject matter.
Organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence.
Use language as a means of expressing values and judgments.
Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which is called as fluency
1.3.What does it mean by speaking English correctly and naturally?
One mistake that language leanrners make is that they try to learn English grammar in order to speak better English. They do this because they are unaware of the fact that learning English grammar will not help them speak English fluently and accurately.
Knowledge of grammar and comprehension can improve our English writing skill and not English conversation skill. In order to master English conversation, it is necessary to learn conversational English.So, in order to learn to speak English fluently and correctly, it is better to concentrate on learning conversational English rather than memorizing the rules of grammar.
Communication is complete when a speaker delivers a message to his listener and the listener has understood it thoroughly to give him an accurate reply. Therefore, speaking English correctly and naturally means that the speakers have to pronounce words correctly , clearly and use them frequently. It is also necessary for speakers to listen to the person talking to understand him or her thoroughly so that you can then make a fitting reply to give him. 
2.Related studies
Teaching speaking English is one of the aspects that attracts a lot of educationalists and teachers who have passion for improving students’ communicative skill in English in their daily conversations. There are a lot of studies on this such as “A Study on the Adaptation of Speaking Activities in “Tieng Anh 11” at Nghi Xuan High School.”by Dang Thi Phuong Anh at Vinh university (2014) was about some adaptations to the speaking lessons of textbook of Tieng Anh 11. In this research the writer gave some limatations of the speaking lessons from the text book and exchanged some adaptations that might help the lessons more interesting and attractive to the students. 
Another research conducted by Tran Thi Lan Anh (2010) was about “Challenges and solutions in teaching and learning speaking skill with the new English textbook for grade 10 at Xuan Hoa high school, Vinh Phuc province”. She mentioned the difficulties from teachers such as teachers’ insufficient communicative competence, teachers’ lack of training and difficulties from students were learners’ level of English, learners’ traditional features. She also suggested some solutions to those problems.
	Mai Thị Lan (2013) carried out a research on “How to motivate the 10 grade students in speaking skill at Hoa Lu A high school in Ninh Binh province”. An action research was planned and implemented with such data collection instruments as classroom observation, questionnaire and document analysis. This study set out to investigate the types of motivation possessed by students in speaking lessons at Hoa Lu A high school. It also focused and evaluated motivational techniques used by teachers at this school, students’ expectations of speaking teaching. Then, it suggested some recommendations for teachers to motivate students in speaking skill.
In conclusion, it can be seen from the above review that researchers focused on adapting speaking activities to increase students’ participation and motivation in speaking class. However, not many researchers have conducted research on how to teach the grade 6 students to speak good English. Therefore, I have decided to conduct the research with the aim of supplying students the ways to be confident in speaking English and use English correctly and naturally. It also helps improve teaching and learning English at Quang Loc secondary school.
PART 2: PRACTICAL BACKGROUND
1.The situation of teaching and learning English at Quang Loc secondary school.
In the reality, teaching of English in general, and teaching speaking English in particular have encountered a great deal of difficulties.Over years of teaching English at Quang Loc secondary school I have realized that most of the students,especially the grade 6 students, always have fears of speaking English during the lessons and most of them do not feel confident in communicating in English. This comes from many reasons:
The first reason is that the students find it difficult to pronounce words and they are always worried about saying the wrong words. Moreover, the students can remember the meaning and the use of the words but their pronunciation,stress, rhythm and intonation are bad. This is the most important characteristic of English pronunciation because the stress-timed rhythm of spoken English and its intonation patterns convey important massages. But the fact that the students often find it difficult to pronounce English words or stress the right syllables, to follow the tress-timed rhythm and intonation patterns of spoken English.
The next reason comes from the students’studying habits. Usually, students do not have a good habit of using English as much as possible. So, they can not react quickly in the real conversations. The students can have enough vocabulary to communicate but they can not use them to express their ideas because they are not used to speaking English in everyday conversations.
 Besides, speaking activity needs a good practical environment but my students do not have opportunities to communicate with native speakers and foreigners who can speak English well and they do not also creat their own English speaking environment.
	In addition to this,for the sixth form students the textbook “Tieng Anh 6” and every thing at secondary school are still quite new and too strange, so they do not have enough time to catch up with studying environment here. This prevents them a lot from learning to speak English. They are always scared and do not believe themselves to speak in English during the lessons and real life conversations.
In sum up, all the above reasons have a bad influence on improving students’ English speaking skill. Therefore, it is important for teachers to give some necessary solutions to help students overcome their first challenges in speaking English, which is the basic foudation for them to develop their speaking skill in the next classes.
2.Results and effects.
 The reasons mentioned above slow down the students’progress of learning to speak English a lot.They always feel difficult to use English in real life so they may be disapointed with their English and then fed up with learning it.As a result, they do not actively take part in English lessons because they think that they are lack of the competence of learning to speak English.This is the main reason making English lessons uninteresting and the goal of learning and teaching English ineffective.Especially, the students are not motivated in practising speaking English frequently and the efficiency of teaching and learning English can not meet the demand as expectation.
PART 3: SOLUTIONS
1.Solutions.
 In order to help the sixth form –students speak English correctly and naturally, I think the teacher needs to follow these suggestions:
Firstly, teaching students how to pronounce the English vowels and consonants.
 Secondly,teaching them the rules of the word stress and intonation in English.
Thirdly, helping students practise making sentences regularly.
Fourthly, helping them to create the English speaking environment.
2. Carrying out the solutions
2.1. Teaching students how to pronounce the English vowels and consonants.
One of the biggest problems that my students usually face up with while speaking is their pronunciation, so I think I must help them overcome this by teaching them how to pronounce vowels and consonants in English. 
In order to improve English pronunciation it is important for students to understand some of the words like letters, vowels, consonants in English.The English language may have 26 letters but there are many more sounds that we need to know. So how do we help our students learn how to pronounce English words correctly?
Firstly,teacher needs to introduce the students about :
 Letters
There are twenty-six letters in the English alphabet. Some letters are pronounced differently depending on which letters they are with. For example, 'c' can be pronounced like a hard /k/ or as an /s/ in the verb 'cite'. Letters are made up of consonants and vowels. Consonants can be voiced or voiceless depending on the sound (or phoneme). The difference between voiced and voiceless is explained below.
Consonants
Consonants are the sounds that interrupt vowel sounds. Consonants are combined with vowels to form a syllable. They include:b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, z. Consonants can be voiced or voiceless.
Vowels
Vowels are open sounds caused with the vibration of vocal sounds, but without obstruction. Consonants interrupt vowels to form syllables. They include:
a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y
There are 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds in English. The teacher should teach the students these sounds in each lesson. It is important that the teacher should help students know how to pronounce these sounds correctly.For example, in the lesson the teacher teaches students two vowel sounds /æ/ and /е/. They are different sounds and have different pronunciation.We pronounce /æ/ with the words: hat, man, bad. but /е/ with the words: best, letter..And the teacher also needs to help students to know that no sounds in English are the same as the ones in Vietnamese.
I think that if our students know how to pronounce the sounds in English correctly, they are definitely more confident in speaking English so that they can say words easily. Almost the students don’t understand the rules of sounds in English, they often listen to their teacher’s pronunciation and imitate their teacher’s sounds but a lot of students hear the wrong sounds or forget them quickly.Therefore, when they know the ways to pronounce each word, they can easily remember it and in case they forget they can check from the dictionaries.
This is the key for students to pronounce words correctly and it is also the basic foundation to help students speak English naturrally.
This is a chart of vowel and consonant sounds.
* 3 groups of sound symbol
1. Short vowels (12 = 6 pairs)
1
luck; cup
car ; heart
2
bed; head
cat; black
3
away; convert
girl
4.
pit,hit,delete
leave
5.
good; book; could,foot
too; food; blue
6.
hot; rock
call; daughter
2. Dipthongs 
1
day
5.
bear
2
sky
6.
tour
3
boy
7.
go
4
beer
8.
cow
3. Consonants
14 consonants have the same sounds as the ones in Vietnamese.
1
pit
8
cat
2
fan
9
leg
3
rat
10
ring
4
get
11
hat
5
bit
12
man
6
van
13
nice
7
door
14
/// time
10 consonants have different sounds from Vietnamese.
1.
think
6
that
2
send
7
shop
3
jump
8
leisure
4
zip
9
yet
5
chop
10
wet
These are some ways I always use to teach pronunciation in the class.
In every lesson I spend five minutes teaching pronunciation.
First I will teach students vowel sounds.Through each lesson I choose a vowel , a pair or some pairs of vowels which are mostly used to introduce in the class. For example, in the lesson of English 6- Unit 1: A567 I choose the sound / aі / to teach the students because they appear mostly in words “fine,nice,bye” . This is a dipthong so we can combine the pronunciation of vowel “/a / and “/i/” = /ai/. Or the other one in Unit 1: C1,2 I will teach the students the sounds /i/ and /i:/ in the numbers “thirteen- thirty”  After each lesson students will know more about the vowel sounds and consonant sounds, so they can know the pronunciation of the words they say clearly. This will help them from the fear of saying the words wrongly. While teaching vowels and consonants sounds, teacher needs to pay much atttention to teaching the students how to pronounce the sound correctly in English in order to help them speak English naturally. 
I see that after learning how to pronounce these sounds, students’pronunciation improves a lot.They know how to pronounce the words the same as English do and can correct their mistakes in pronunciation.
2.2. Teaching students the rules of the word and sentence stress in English.
According to me, in the first lessons of learning English, students need teaching about the rules of stress syllables and the intonations in order to form their good habits in learning to speak English correctly and naturally because word stress and intonation are important factors in helping students to use language perfectly. The teacher needs to help students understand that in Vietnamese we use marks to make our words meaningful and in English we must put stress syllables on words and stress words in the sentences to make them meaningful. So if we do not make stress and intonation while speaking, the others can not understand us and we can not understand them. This is the second important factor to help the communication sucessfully.
In order to do this, the teacher needs to teach students the simple rules of stress syllables and intonation. 
2.2.1.What is the word stress?. 
To communicate clearly when you are speaking in English, it’s important to stress the correct syllables in each word. This is called word stress, which means pronouncing one syllable of a multisyllabic word with greater emphasis (stress) than the other syllables in the word
The teacher should help them know the syllabes in English. For example, teacher asks one student to read the word “ Hi” /“teacher” aloud and asks the class “How many syllables do these words have” –and students can easily regconise the word “hi” has one syllable and “teacher” has two syllabes. How do we pronounce “teacher”?. We have to put stress on the first syllable.
Teachers should encourage students to say words with correct stress syllables. 
For example: Hat (one syllable)
 ‘Apple (two syllable)
Here are four general rules that teacher should