Using summary graphs after lessons to develop students’ speaking skill in basic English 10

THANH HOA EDUCATION AND TRAINING DEPARTMENT
HOANG HOA 3 HIGH SCHOOL
EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE
USING SUMMARY GRAPHS AFTER LESSONS TO
DEVELOP STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL
IN BASIC ENGLISH 10
 Implementer: Lê Thị Gấm
 Position: Teacher 
 	 Experience initiative in the subject: English
THANH HOA YEAR 2019
CONTENT TABLE
CONTENTS
PAGES
PART I: OPENING
 I. Reasons for choosing the theme
Study purposes
Study objects
Study methods
Some innovations of the theme
PART II: STUDY CONTENTS	
 Chapter I: Argument grounds
 1. Theoritical grounds.
 2. Practical grounds.
 Chapter II: Real situations
 1. Students.
 2. Teachers.
 3. Material facilities.
 4. Survey results before using Summary Graphs.
 Chapter III: Some experience used to improve real situations
 I. General understanding of using Summary Graphs.
 1. What is the "Summary Graph" technique?
 2. Advantages of a Summary Graph.
 3. These bases to choose the method of using a Summary 
 Graph in the lecture.
 4. How to design a Summary Graph.
 5. The steps of designing a Summary Graph to a lesson.
 6. How to organize teaching by the method of using a
 Summary Graph. 
 II. Some examples of using Summary Graphs after lessons to
 develop students’ speaking skill in basic English 10.
 Chapter IV: Study results, experience lessons and measures
 1. Study results.
 2. Experience lessons and measures.
PART III: CONCLUSION AND PROPOSALS
 1. Conclusion.
 2. Proposals.
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PART I: OPENING
I. REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE THEME.
With the speedy development of the world today, English is widely used in every field of life. It is not only the native language of many countries but also the most popular communication language of people around the world.
In order to promote international integration, communication languages especially English have played an integral part in understanding and cooperation among nations. Therefore, our Vietnamese education has paid special attention to teaching English at schools. Among the skills, speaking is considered to be the most important one. It helps us communicate, understand and cooperate with each other easily.
Learning a language without being able to speak it in specific situations of daily life is like having hands but using them for nothing. It is no use learning a language without using it for oral communication purposes. Moreover, English is an international language which is widely used in most international and regional events. Speaking English fluently and confidently helps students a lot not only in their life but also in their future work.
With those practical goals, the English program at secondary school centres on forming and developing basic knowledge and skills to students about the English language and necessary intellectual qualities so that they can either continue further study or start their working life.
To meet these practical demands, each teacher should study and choose teaching methods which are suitable to both himself/herself and his/her students. This is very important to achieve good teaching and learning results.
Actually, at most countryside schools in general and at Hoang Hoa 3 High School in particular, the results of teaching and learning English have been better and better recently, but there exist many disadvantages. The biggest difficulty here, I think, is how to help students speak English fluenty not only in class but also in real life.
With my experience in teaching English at Hoang Hoa 3 High School, I have researched reference documents, learned from co-workers as well as applied many different teaching methods. I have gained some first positive results, so I would like to choose the theme “Using Summary Graphs after lessons to develop students’ speaking skill in basic English 10”.
II. STUDY PURPOSES.
- Analysing real situations of teaching the speaking skill.
- Presenting some experience in teaching the speaking skill to raise general learning effects.
- Using what students have learnt to develop their speaking skill.
- Helping students feel confident when they present their ideas in English in front of other people.
III. STUDY OBJECTS.
- Real situations of teaching the speaking skill at Hoang Hoa 3 High School.
- Some lessons in basic English 10.
IV. STUDY METHODS.
1. Exploiting the basic English textbook 10 and reference documents.
2. Exploiting teaching aids.
3. Exploiting students’ synthetic ability.
4. Working positively individually and in small groups.
V. SOME INNOVATIONS OF THE THEME.
- Helping students to change their input knowledge into output knowlegde.
- Promoting students’ abilities to synthesize what they have learnt in lessons: students recall vocabularies, structures, understanding about the topic they have studied to speak.
- Providing students with chances to cooperate with each other in completing their duty, so that students can learn how to solve the problems by themselves.
- Bettering students’ confidence when they speak English in front of other people.
PART II: STUDY CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: ARGUMENT GROUNDS
1. Theoritical grounds.
	Just when students start learning English, they get accustomed to four basic skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. It is through these four skills that teachers pass knowledge to students and students gain their knowledge. Among these four skills, speaking is an important skill to students. It requires that teachers not only understand well effective teaching methods but also apply smoothly the principle “Learning parallels hands-on” [4]
	Starting from the view of “Learners are the centre”, teaching and learning methods have changed greatly. Teachers are not those who hold knowledge and pass it to students, but those who guide, support, consult and check students’ working. Students do not absorb knowledge passively. Becoming the centre of the teaching-learning process, students are completely active and creative in study to achieve good learning results and know how to apply knowledge in real life. [3]
	From the grounds above, how to apply innovative methods of teaching the speaking skill is very important. It helps students feel confident when they present their ideas in front of other people and communicate effectively in daily life. This meets the real demands of learning a language.
2. Practical grounds.
 Most high schools have used new English teaching and learning materials, which ask students to develop equally all four skills, among which the speaking one requires that students have to spend much time practising not only in class time but also outside class so that they can communicate better in English.
	In order to raise the effect of students’speaking English, both teachers and students need to have good preparations before each lesson. For teachers, they had better study each lesson carefully, choose suitable teaching methods to students’ levels, design proper teaching steps and use teaching aids to achieve the aims. Besides, teachers should also ask students to prepare necessary things before the lessons, find out and apply a wide variety of practice forms which are suitable to material facilities of each school to improve students’ English.
	When experimenting in some classes of grade 10 at my school, I have gained some encouraging results. My periods of teaching become more interesting and exciting with students’ speaking English after each lesson, which makes students more active and betters their communication in English. 
CHAPTER II: REAL SITUATIONS
1. Students.
 Generally, the level of students’ knowledge is quite low due to the difficult economic conditions in the poor countryside and little contact with situations in which they use English. Besides, the English knowledge of students is not equal in the same class and among classes in the same grade. Besides, the number of students in a class is quite high (about 40-45 students). These result in difficulties when teachers decide to choose methods as well as control class activites during speaking lessons.
2. Teachers.
 After testing some teaching methods, teachers often feel discouraged because students do not participate in activities actively. Thus, the practical results are not as good as expected ones. Gradually, teachers seem not to pay serious attention to promoting students’ speaking English. They often teach each lesson separately with few chances for students to practice speaking skill. They often use some simple traditional techniques to teach tasks in each unit quickly. Therefore, most of class time is spent on controlled tasks in textbook. Students rarely have time to speak English freely about the topic they have learnt.
3. Material facilities.
 Due to the lack of essential material facilities especially projectors, most teachers do not make full use of such teaching aids as diagrams, pictures, video clips,It often takes much time to prepare diagrams on papers.
With these limitations, the effect of speaking tasks is not good enough to satisfy the general purposes. It is like a vicious circle which has no exit for quite a long time.
4. Survey results before using Summary Graphs.
(Average percentage on completing speaking tasks)
Class
Student number
Levels of task completion
Under 50%
50% - 80%
Over 80%
10A1
42
25
59,5%
12
28,6%
5
11,9%
10A6
45
22
48,9%
19
42,2%
4
8,9%
Class 10A1 is chosen to become the experimental class and 10A6 is the control class in my study.
CHAPTER III:
SOME EXPERIENCE USED TO IMPROVE REAL SITUATIONS
I. General understanding of using Summary Graphs. [5]
1. What is the "Summary Graph" technique?
The summary graph is a diagram that clearly outlines the contents of a topic. The summary chart can be written on a large paper, on a transparent paper, on the board or on the projector.
2. Advantages of a Summary Graph.
- It presents a summary of information about a newly-learned topic.
- Basing on the diagram, students can recall the contents, vocabularies and structures they have just learned.
- Students can practice English speaking skills based on the information contained in the diagram and students' memorization through the lesson.
- It helps to pratice students’ confidence in speaking English in public.
- It helps students become familiar with how to summarize the lesson contents scientifically in the process of learning all subjects in general.
- The summary graph of a lesson can also be used for the check-up of the old lesson in the next learning period.
3. These bases to choose the method of using a Summary Graph in the lecture.
 - Based on the objectives, contents of the lesson or other factors such as facilities, psychological characteristics, thinking ability of students to apply the Summary Graph method to teaching.
- A Summary Graph should show the content structure of a lesson in a
appropriate logic. The design of a Summary Graph should be based on the contents of the lesson in the textbook and the knowledge logic that needs forming in students’ understanding. The content of the lesson consists of knowledge units that are the main contents of the lesson. A Summary Graph should show the basic knowledge, central knowledge of the lesson and the relationships between those knowledge units. Therefore, when we build a Summary Graph, pay attention to the logic of the lesson content, we should not abuse graphs.
4. How to design a Summary Graph.
- Write the topic name in the center or draw an image that reflects the topic.
- From the central theme, draw the main branches. On each main branch, write a large content of the topic.
- From each main branch, draw the sub-branches to write the contents of that branch.
- Continue like that for the next groups of information.
5. The steps of designing a Summary Graph to a lesson.
+ Step 1: Determining the lesson objectives
Lesson objectives are the requirements for students to implement when they study a lesson. There are many factors that influence the determination of lesson objectives. The most notable are the elements: Lesson contents, students' cognitive abilities, teacher’ capacity.
+ Step 2: Determining the activity
Determining activities in a lesson can be based on a graph. (In this research topic, Graph is applied to revise and summarize the lesson contents after the lesson is finished. This is done in the form of practice to develop speaking skills for students)
+ Step 3: Creating a Summary Graph of a lesson after conducting learning activities.
6. How to organize teaching by the method of using a Summary Graph. 
This research topic focuses on organizing the research for students to use and exploit a Graph to summarize the lesson contents with a view to developing speaking skills for students.
The specific steps:
Step 1: The teacher shows a Summary Graph that has already been prepared.
Step 2: Depending on the students, teachers can ask students to work individually or in pairs or small groups (3-4 students).
Step 3: Students work individually or in groups (teachers can help if students meet any obstacles)
Step 4: Depending on the remaining time of the lesson, the teacher calls students (2-4 ones) to present information in the graph.
Step 5: The teacher comments, adds and covers the whole content of the leson’s Summary Graph.
II. Some examples of using Summary Graphs after lessons to develop students’ speaking skill in basic English 10.
1. UNIT 6: AN EXCURSION – PART C: LISTENING (Page 67-68) [1]
Weekend picnic
glorious Sunday
meet: schoolgate, on time
way: long, by bus, sing happily
	Botanical Garden: peaceful, quiet, large glassland
activities: walk, play games, sing, dance, take 
 photographs, have lunch, sleep soundly
	afternoon: play games, go home
Some key words students have learnt after the listening lesson:
	- glorious	
	- schoolgate
	- Botanical Garden
	- destination
	- spacious
	- delicious
	- grassland
Expected speaking:
	A class of students had a weekend picnic in a Botanical Garden on a glorious Sunday. They met at schoolgate on time. They went by bus. It’s a long way to the destination, so they sang happily on the way. The Botanical Garden was very spacious, peaceful and quiet. It had a large grassland. They did many activities in the garden such as walking, playing games, singing, dancing, taking photographs, etc They had a delicious meal in the garden. After lunch, they slept soundly. In the afternoon, they continued to play some more games and then they went home.
2. UNIT 9: UNDERSEA WORLD – PART C: LISTENING (Page 98) [1]
mammals, live in water
largest (on earth), most intelligent (in the ocean)
Whales
feed in cold oceans (favorite food: krill)
	(some) migrate into warm waters (bear calves)
danger (hunting pressure)
	no measures → disappear forever 
Some key words and phrases students have learnt after the listening lesson:
	- mammal
	- krill
	- migrate into
	- bear
	- calf
	- be in danger
	- due to
	- hunting pressure
- take measures
Expected speaking:
	Whales are mammals, not fish. They live in water all their life. They are the largest animals on earth and the most intelligent in the ocean. They like feeding in cold oceans because there are a lot of krills – their favorite food. Some whales migrate into warm waters to bear their calves. Whales are now in danger due to heavy hunting pressure. If we didn’t take measures to protect them, they would disappear forever.
3. UNIT 11: NATIONAL PARKS – PART C: LISTENING (Page 115) [1]
First ( Vietnam, open in 1960, 160 km South west of 
 Hanoi, 3 provinces: Ninh Binh, Hoa Binh, 
 Thanh Hoa)
Cuc Phuong National Park
200 km2 (flora: 2,000, fauna: 450)
visitors (100,000 in 2002; see: animals and plants, 
 work done → protect)
historic features (Nguyen Hue’s army stationed, attacked and defeated Qing invaders – Spring 1789)
Muong ethnic minority (bee keeping and farming)
Some key words and phrases students have learnt after the listening lesson:
	- officially
	- be located in
	- flora
	- fauna
	- historic features
	- attack
	- invader
	- ethnic minority
Expected speaking:
Cuc Phuong National Park is the first National Park of Vietnam. It was officially opened in 1960. It is located 160 km South west of Hanoi and it spans 3 provinces: Ninh Binh, Hoa Binh and Thanh Hoa. It covers about 200 square kilometres with 2,000 species of flora and 450 species of fauna. Every year many visitors come to visit Cuc Phuong. For example, in 2002, there were about 100,000 visitors coming to visit it. They come to see plants and animals and the work done to protect the National Park. Cuc Phuong National Park also has historic features. This was the place where Nguyen Hue’s army stationed, attacked and defeated Qing invaders in the Spring of 1789. Cuc Phuong is also the home of Muong ethnic minority who live mainly on bee keeping and farming.
4. UNIT 12: MUSIC – PART A: READING (Page 124 - 125) [1]
make humans different from all other animals
communicate (express ideas, thoughts; show emotions: 
anger, love, hate, friendship; convey: 
Music
hopes, dreams )
integral (important events, special occasions: festivals
 - joyful, funerals – solemn, mournful, lull
 babies, wake up)
 entertain (happy, excited) 
Without music?
Some key words and phrases students have learnt after the reading lesson:
	- emotion
	- convey
	- integral
	- funeral
	- solemn
	- mournful
	- lull
	- delight the senses
Expected speaking:
	Music plays an important role in people’s life. It makes humans different from all other animals. Music helps people communicate many things such as expressing ideas and thoughts; showing emotions like anger, love, hate, friendship; conveying hopes and dreams, etc.. Music also plays 	an integral part in important events and special occasions. It adds joyful atmostphere to festivals, it makes	funerals more solemn and mournful, it helps to lull babies to sleep at night and wake people up in the morningBesides, it entertains us by making us happy and excited. It also delights our senses. What would our life be like without music?
5. UNIT 12: MUSIC – PART D: WRITING (Page 129) [1]
famous, talented
born: 15/11/1923, Nam Dinh, poor workers’ family
	start composing music: young (first song: 1939)
Van Cao
Tien Quan Ca (national anthem: 1944)
rural life (sweet, gentle, lyrical)
artistic works: songs, poems, paintings
die: 10/7/1995
appreciated by the Vietnamese people
Some key words and phrases students have learnt after the writing lesson:
	- national anthem
	- be born into
	- compose
	- rural life
	- gentle
	- lyrical
	- artistic works
	- appreciate
Expected speaking:
Van Cao was a famous and talented musician of Vietnam. He was born on
November 15th 1923 in Nam Dinh, into a poor workers’ family. He started composing music at a very young age in 1939 (when he was 16 years old) and he quickly became famous. In 1944, he wrote Tien Quan Ca which soon became the National Anthem of Vietnam. He wrote about rural life in Vietnam. His music was sweet, gentle and lyrical. His artistic works included songs, poems and paintings. He died on July 10th 1995. He was highly appreciated by the Vietnamese people.
6. UNIT 13: FILMS AND CINEMA – PART B: SPEAKING (Page 135) [1]
(This is a suggestion for student to talk about a film they have seen. Students can base on this outline to talk about other films they have seen or they like watching).
cartoon, series of comedy short episodes
made in America
Film
“Tom and Jerry”
	special friendship between two cute animals
little mouse Jerry cunning, intelligent
 play tricks on the cat
big cat Tom stupid, greedy
 take revenge of the mouse
get into troubles, willing to help each other
happy, funny endings
Expected speaking:
Of all the films I have seen, “Tom and Jerry” is the one I like most. It