THANH HOA EDUCATION AND TRAINING DEPARTMENT HOANG HOA HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE SEARCHING FOR INTERNET INFORMATION AS MATERIALS TO PRACTICE SPEAKING SKILL IN UNIT 12: THE ASIAN GAMES – PART B: SPEAKING (ENGLISH 11) Implementer: Lê Thị Gấm Position: Teacher Experience initiavtive in the subject: English THANH HOA YEAR 2017 CONTENT TABLE CONTENTS PAGES PART I: OPENING I Reasons for choosing the theme II Study purposes III Study objects IV Study methods V Some innovations of the theme PART II: STUDY CONTENTS Chapter I: Argument grounds Theoritical grounds Practical grounds Chapter II: Real situations Students Teachers Material facilities Survey results before Unit 12 Chapter III: Some experience used to improve real situations I Basic steps of teaching a speaking lesson in English Pre - speaking While – speaking Post – speaking II Some experience applied in teaching the speaking skill in Unit 12 – The Asian Games – Part B: Speaking (English 11) Before the lesson During the lesson 2.1 Controlled practice 2.1.1 Pair work 2.1.2 Individual work 2.2 Further practice 2.2.1 Expected information searched by students 2.2.2 Presentation 12 2.2.3 Evaluation 12 After the lesson 12 3.1 Games: Names of sports 12 3.2 Homework 12 Chapter IV: Study results, experience lessons and measures 13 Study results 13 Experience lessons and measures 13 PART III: CONCLUSION AND PROPOSALS 14 Conclusion 14 Proposals 14 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 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 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 “Searching for internet information as materials to practice speaking skill in Unit 12: The Asian Games – Part B: Speaking (English 11)” II STUDY PURPOSES - Analysing real situations of teaching the speaking skill - Presenting some experience in teaching the speaking skill to raise learning effects - Bettering the results of speaking lessons - 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 High School - Unit 12: The Asian Games – Part B: Speaking (English 11) IV STUDY METHODS Exploiting the basic English textbook 11 and reference documents Exploiting teaching aids Exploiting the internet Working positively individually and in small groups V SOME INNOVATIONS OF THE THEME - Not depending on controlled tasks in textbook completely - Promoting students’ abilities to exploit information in the Internet - 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 in front of other people PART II: STUDY CONTENTS CHAPTER I: ARGUMENT GROUNDS 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” [5] 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 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 [4] 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 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 speaking lessons, teachers had better study each lesson carefully, 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 11 at my school, I have gained some encouraging results My periods of teaching speaking skill become more interesting, which makes students more active and betters their communication in English CHAPTER II: REAL SITUATIONS Students Generally, the level of students’ knowledge is quite low due to the difficult economic conditions 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 Teachers After testing some teaching methods, teachers often feel discouraged because students 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 speaking lessons They often use some simple traditional techniques to teach speaking tasks in each unit quickly Therefore, most of class time is spent on controlled tasks in textbook Material facilities Due to the lack of essential material facilities especially projectors, most teachers not make full use of such document sources as the Internet, pictures, video clips,… 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 Survey results before Unit 12 Class 11A1 11A6 11A7 Student number 39 47 43 Dislike 09 10 12 Levels of interest Normal 12 21 20 Like 18 16 11 CHAPTER III: SOME EXPERIENCE USED TO IMPROVE REAL SITUATIONS I Basic steps of teaching a speaking lesson in English Pre - speaking - Warm students up before speaking lessons by some ways such as: games, pictures, videos,… - Introduce purposes and topics that students are going to talk about, help students recall related things they have gained to prepare for their speaking (This not only helps good students revise their knowledge but also helps other students have necessary materials before doing the required tasks) - Help students know some useful languages like vocabularies, structures that help them speak more effectively This part is very important because it helps prepare necessary things for the speaking lesson Thus, it is necessary that students know how to pronounce words and phrases correctly, understand how to use the structures effectively While – speaking Depending on different speaking tasks, teachers may let students work in one of the following ways a Working in pairs Basing on the requirements, students can ask and answer using the given suggestion They also role-play in conversations or talk about some other things b Working in small groups Each group should appoint a secretary who selects and writes down other students’ ideas All group members take part in the group discussion on a specific topic by giving their own ideas and viewpoints Other members listen and express their opinions, add further information or give the opposite ideas….After finishing discussion, all group members check their discussion ideas again together and get ready to present their discussion While students are working, the teacher should go round to help them if they have difficulties in vocabulary, structures, idea expressions,… Post – speaking This is utmost importance In this step, students present their groups’ discussion in front of the whole class This helps students practice some important skills in speaking such as patience, confidence, concentration, reaction, persuasiveness, manner,… This is also a completion step of a speaking lesson Thus, teachers should pay serious attention and never pass it easily because it helps students a lot in completing, self-checking their own speaking skill and improving their language knowledge by themselves II Some experience applied in teaching the speaking skill in Unit 12 – The Asian Games – Part B: Speaking (English 11) Before the lesson - Divide students in each class into groups - Give each group a task for them to prepare at home: Students have to search the Internet for required information which they will use to present in the speaking lesson - Ask each group either to write their preparation on the A paper or present their preparation in powepoint slides to display on the projector screen (Students may insert pictures, images to make their products more interesting) + Ask students of groups to search for the information about the Asian Games and complete the following table: ( Group 1: The 15th Asian Games Group 2: The 16th Asian Games Group 3: The 17th Asian Games) THE……….ASIAN GAMES Host Year country Number Number Number Country Medals of of of ranked Total Gold Silver Bronze countries athletes sports 1st + Ask students of other groups to search for the information about the medals won at the Asian Games by Vietnamese athlethes and complete the following table: ( Group 4: The 15th Asian Games Group 5: The 16th Asian Games Group 6: The 17th Asian Games) MEDALS WON BY VIETNAM (at the…….Asian Games held in……… ) Sports Gold medals Silver medals Bronze medals ……(by…) ……(by…) ……(by…) ……(by…) ……(by…) Total Rank Total During the lesson 2.1 Controlled practice Ask students to read the information in the table – page 139 textbook English 11 and make sure they understand the given information 2.1.1 Pair work - Ask students to work in pairs to ask and answer about the Asian Games, using the information from the table Example: A: When and where were the 1st Asian Games held? B: (They were held) in 1951 in India A: How many countries took part in the Games? B: Eleven (countries took part in the Games) A: How many sports were there at the Games? B: (There were) six (sports at the Games) [1] - Call pairs of students to ask and answer similarly as the given example They replace the underlined information in the example with information from the table [2] 2.1.2 Individual work - Present some more useful phrases to help student talk individually: + take place in… = be held in… + with the participation of….countries + take part in / participate in…….(different) sports [3] - Ask students to work individually to talk about the Asian Games using the information in the table and the suggestion above - Call students to talk (Each student talks about one Asian Games) 2.2 Further practice Before students present their tasks, the teacher checks each group’s preparation to prepare some other necessary things to help students their tasks better such as magnet, laptop, projector,… 2.2.1 Expected information searched by students Group 1: THE 15TH ASIAN GAMES Number Number Number Country Medals of of of ranked Total Gold Silver Bronze countries athletes sports 1st 2006 45 10500 39 China 1393 428 423 542 (316 medals: 165 golds, 88 silvers, Host Year country Qatar 63 bronzes) [6] Group 2: THE 16TH ASIAN GAMES Number Number Number Country Medals of of of ranked Total Gold Silver Bronze countries athletes sports 1st China (325 medals: 163 2010 45 9704 42 golds, 1114 338 340 436 83 silvers, 79 bronzes) Host Year country China [6] Group 3: THE 17TH ASIAN GAMES Number Number Number Country Medals of of of ranked Total Gold Silver Bronze countries athletes sports 1st China (342 medals: 151 2014 45 9501 36 golds, 1454 439 430 576 108 silvers, 83 bronzes) Host Year country Korea [6] Group 4: MEDALS WON BY VIETNAM (at the 15th Asian Games held in Doha, Qatar) Sports Shooting Billiards Sepaktakraw Gold medals 0 (1 team, pair: Luu Thi Thanh, Nguyen Hai Silver medals Bronze medals 1 Total 10 Chess Weightlifting Karatedo Taewondo Bodybuilding Wushu Thao) 0 (by Vu Thi Nguyet Anh) 0 Total Rank 1 0 1 3 0 23 19/45 [6] Group 5: MEDALS WON BY VIETNAM (at the 16 Asian Games held in Guangzhou, China) th Sports Karatedo Shooting Wushu Chess Athletics Rowing Sepaktakraw Taewondo Wrestling Billiards Gold medals Silver medals Bronze medals (women’s sepaktakraw: Thuy An, 1 Thu Ba, Bach Van) 4 2 0 1 0 Total Rank Total 3 2 33 24/45 [6] Group 6: MEDALS WON BY VIETNAM (at the 17th Asian Games held in Incheon, Korea) Sports Wushu Karatedo Weightlifting Shooting Gold medals (by Duong Thuy Vi) 0 Silver medals Bronze medals Total 1 11 Rowing Gymnastics Cycling Athletics Boxing Fencing Sepaktakraw Swimming Taewondo 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 Total Rank 0 2 3 2 2 36 21/45 [6] 2.2.2 Presentation - The order of presentation: Group – Group (Information about the 15th Asian Games) Group – Group (Information about the 16th Asian Games) Group – Group (Information about the 17th Asian Games) - The way of presentation: + The representative of each group (one by one) goes to the board and present his/her group’s product basing on the information on A0 papers or slides + Other students listen to the presentation and take notes (if necessary) 2.2.3 Evaluation - Students’ evaluation: Call students to give their remarks about each presentation (Good things and bad things) - Teacher’s evaluation: + Remark students’ work in general: preparation, presentation, manner, + Give detailed remarks to each group’s work on the ground of encouraging students’ participation After the lesson 3.1 Games: Names of sports a) Objectives: After the process of preparation and practice, students have already known many names of sports Being involved in the game, students will have a good chance to recall their vocabulary relating to sport names Besides, they can enrich their vocabulary naturally and actively b) Preparation: small gifts with different sizes (candies, snack, pens, pencils,…) c) Procedures: - Divide the board into equal parts - Call voluntary students to the board - Give students minutes to write down as many sport names as they can - Ask the whole class to check and decide the order of the participants - Let the winner choose his/her gift first, then the participants with 12 numbers 2, and respectively 3.2 Homework: Talking about the athlete you admire most Suggestions: Name, age, place of birth, some physical characteristics Sport(s) he/she specializes in Achievements (Other talents) If students want to have enough information, they may exploit sources in the Internet for their talk 13 CHAPTER IV: STUDY RESULTS, EXPERIENCE LESSONS AND MEASURES Study results Through the study and lesson which are designed and carried out according to the suggested ways, most students become more interested in the speaking lesson Besides, they take part in the speaking tasks more actively As a result, the quality of students’ participation has improved greatly Students who used to be afraid of speaking lessons have found it less difficult They can easily many simple tasks before doing the main tasks Gradually, their confidence and interest increase after each lesson This plays an important role in bettering students’ speaking Survey results after the lesson Class 11A1 11A6 11A7 Student number 39 47 43 Dislike 02 05 07 Levels of interest Normal 10 12 12 Like 27 30 24 Experience lessons and measures After studying and experimenting the lesson, attending co-workers’ periods, I find that in order to achieve high results in teaching English in general and teaching the speaking skill in particular, teachers must be enthusiastic and try to design the lesson suitably to each class basing on the main teaching contents Besides, they should understand their students, so they can know how to design each lesson effectively Teachers should define the objectives and core requirements of each lesson clearly They should also know how to use and combine different teaching methods flexibly and creatively so that they are suitable to contents of each lesson, students of each class As a result, students would become more eager when taking part in designed activites Besides, teachers should research seriously to change teaching techniques which are used repeatedly lesson by lesson in order to avoid boredom This is also a good way to promote students’ active participation in different activities This helps to bring positive learning results When designing each lesson in general and speaking lessons in particular, teachers should take into account many things such as the available material facility conditions of their school (projectors, pictures, real objects, video clips, …) Thus, teachers can decide the best ways to design and exploit each lesson as well as use teaching aids effectively All these things help teachers know how to prepare and present the lesson actively and effectively This helps to gain educational purposes 14 PART III: CONCLUSION AND PROPOSALS Conclusion These are only some of the methods and teachniques which I have applied in teaching the speaking lesson of Unit 12 (English 11) They have helped to better students’ participation and speaking practice However, the most important thing that should be focused here is that teachers should highly concentrate on researching, designing and applying effective ways to achieve educational purposes: conveying knowledge and bettering students’ skills Besides, teachers should be friendly to students so that they can create the friendly class atmosphere, this is very useful especially to speaking periods The study theme cannot help having limitations I look forward to receiving remarks and contributions from other co-workers in order to better this study Proposals I would like school leaders to create better conditions for teaching and learning activites such as installing projectors in classrooms, buying more reference books and documents I also expect to receive the understanding and sympathy from school’s leaders and other teachers because when students take part in group work in speaking lessons, it cannot help being noisy In order to avoid this disturbance to other classes, I would expect to have a separated area for speaking lessons LEADER’S CONFIRMATION Thanh Hóa, May 10th 2017 I assure this is my own experience initiative, not copying the contents of other people The author Lê Thị Gấm 15 REFERENCE DOCUMENTS Notes: - In section 1: “Just when students….hands - on” the author got the fererence from document number - In section 1: “Starting from the view…in real life” the author got the fererence from document number - In section 2.1.1: the author quoted from reference document number - In section 2.1.1: the author got the reference from document number - In section 2.1.2: the author got the reference from document number - In section 2.2.1: the author got the reference from document number **************************** [1] Textbook 11 (basic program) (Vietnam Education Publishing House) [2] Teacher’s book 11 (basic program) (Vietnam Education Publishing House) [3] English Dictionary – Advanced Learners (The Oxford Dictionary) [4] Phương pháp giảng dạy tiếng Anh trường phổ thông (Nguyễn Hạnh Dung – Vietnam Education Publishing House) [5] Teach English (Adrian Doff) [6] Internet Source: www.voc.org.vn Source: thethao.vnexpress.net Source: vtv.vn › The thao 16 ... groups to search for the information about the Asian Games and complete the following table: ( Group 1: The 15th Asian Games Group 2: The 16th Asian Games Group 3: The 17th Asian Games) THE? ??…… .ASIAN. .. results, so I would like to choose the theme ? ?Searching for internet information as materials to practice speaking skill in Unit 12: The Asian Games – Part B: Speaking (English 11)? ?? II STUDY PURPOSES... information about the medals won at the Asian Games by Vietnamese athlethes and complete the following table: ( Group 4: The 15th Asian Games Group 5: The 16th Asian Games Group 6: The 17th Asian Games)